when a reading slump isn't a reading slump
I got up to close my balcony doors three times today. Each time, I ended up doing something else instead. Anyway, what was I about to write about?
Oh, yeah.
So, I’m on a book slump. It took me some time to realise this, because I’m not not reading. After all, I’m reading articles on New Yorker and BitchMag and ComicsXF and Women Write About Comics and Tordotcom in the mornings, as I usually do. And I haven’t had much trouble finishing the chapters I needed to read for the two book clubs we had going on on Discord - still for Tam Lin (Pamela Dean), and Greenwitch (Susan Cooper) this month. I’ve been reading the occasional fairy or folk tale or myth or legend or… you get the picture. I usually say fairy tale as an umbrella term, so let’s just assume that I mean it all okay. I was reading about the Minotaur again a few days ago and had a vignette about it all stuck in my head that I didn’t have time to write down. So soon after the vignette on the Volsungs that got stuck in my head before newly faded away. I don’t know why I always want to write while waiting for my Grab or bus. Anyway! In the last few days I’ve even been catching up with Marvel Unlimited!
So, I’ve been reading. But when I read this article on Tordotcom about book slumps I realised that I’m going through one.
I was breezing through the October Daye books and then just… stopped. I figured it was the fact that I reached a book that dealt with October’s mommy issues, which I wasn’t in the mood for, but I wasn’t eager to pick up any other ebooks I put up on my Play Books app at all. And everything I started to listen to on Scribd, I never got past the first chapter. Even the books I was really looking forward to. Normally, when I’m not in a slump, I’d be going through book after book after book on Scribd. Now I’m just adding more and more titles to my list, wishing that they have Susan Cooper or Lloyd Alexander audiobooks when I feel like listening to anything at all.
I’m watching the occasional Netflix or Disney+ show, but I haven’t even been feeling like binging on any of them. I’m so behind on the Haikyuu!! reaction videos I used to watch so obsessively. I will put down a few of the books I’ve been wanting to read on my coffee table, to read while having tea, but I haven’t touched any of them since placing them there. I haven’t been keeping up with my journaling, some days even missing out on my 5-year diary and having to write in for the day before. And, really, up until a couple of days ago, I haven’t been reading my weekly comics on Marvel Unlimited for the last few weeks. (This is for the X-Men stuff. I’m even more behind on the non-X stuff - today I finally caught up with TEN ISSUES of Runaways. Ten. Issues. That’s ten whole months of not reading the books when they’re out.)
I only started to catch up with my comics because I forced myself start - thankfully, it wasn’t a chore at all to finish. And that made me realise that the books I am reading - the book club books - I’m only catching up with because I had a deadline for them, and I wanted to have read them by the time the next discussion rolls around. I’d probably never start if it was just up to me.
And the funny thing is, I’m not unmotivated to read, not exactly. I’ve been in slumps when I really would rather do just about anything else, and this isn’t one of those. I’m just… feeling extremely selective, and many of the books I want to read, I do not own. And knowing that I have only this one day off, and have chores to do, food to eat, sleep to catch, etc., puts me off the reading mood because I wanted the freedom to just go on a long reading and writing bend. As I write this I remember the last time I was in this mood - it was years and years ago, when I was still doing my BA, and working part-time, so I had all the time I needed in a way. (I could always call in sick if I needed to back then, not that I exploited that fact much. Just the knowledge that I could was enough!) And I was living with my parents, so I didn’t have to worry about a lot of other things, like umm making sure I’m fed and stuff like that. So I was reading 4-5 books at a time, sometimes simultaneously, at least 2-3 of them non-fiction (lit criticism or theory), and the remaining 2-3 either kid lit or fairy tales. I’d read sitting on my uncomfortable chair in front of my uncomfortable desk, because I could have the books laid open in front of me, and the computer switched on so that I could write notes and paragraphs that would eventually become essays. Some of those essays ended up in my eventual thesis paper, but most disappeared when the computer died on me years later. I used to have a colleague who liked to discuss folklore stuff and we’d talk about it at work if we were on the same shift, and we read each other’s random writings about the books and fairy tales we were reading.
As the years went by I kept thinking back on that time wishing I could have some of that drive again. It’s kind of funny that now I am feeling exactly the same way and it is manifesting as a kind of reading slump because I have too much other shit to do. And what’s even funnier is, I bet one day I’ll have a few days to myself, but find that this drive to read and write have mostly left me, or they’ve been bottled up for so long they’ve piled up and I get frozen from not know how to even start, because I had a month’s worth of reading and writing to do and only two or three days to do it. And I’ll spend those two or three days looking at my phone, instead.
Until then, I’ll have to power through this slump, I guess.
UPDATES ETC
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FedEx is still The Worst. After last year’s terrible experience with getting my Hobonichi delivered properly, they’ve somehow gotten even worse?
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The place of my employment put up a sign saying that all of our staff are fully vaccinated but I know for a fact that many staff only had one dose, or are anti-vax. So no matter where you’re shopping, don’t believe these signs! Also even if the staff are all fully vaxxed, it doesn’t mean that they can’t get Covid and pass it on. Make sure you’re careful when you go out!
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Cinemas are reopening soon. I doubt it’s a good idea, but will that stop me from seeing Shang-Chi? Probably not. The MCU is one of those things where I feel, to quote an acquaintance, “kalau mati, mati lah!” I mean, Patricia did ask me if I wouldn’t rather try to stay alive until my fave mutants go on screen finally, but right now there isn’t even a hint of any mutant-related stuff in the MCU and I might die before it ever happens anyway. So. Yeah. I’m watching Shang-Chi. Which I’ve watched a bad copy on streaming of, and is really worth seeing on the big screen for Morris the dijian alone. But, as a reminder to myself and you - STAY SAFE!