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Ten Ideas for Breaking Out of a Reading Slump

Slumps happen to all of us

Paul Combs
7 min readNov 18, 2024
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

“When you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.” ― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

There is something that is readily acknowledged in baseball that is rarely talked about when it comes to books: the dreaded reading slump. Part of the reason it’s rarely talked about is because it doesn’t happen in public. If you’re the centerfielder for the New York Yankees and haven’t had a hit in your last 35 at-bats, everyone knows it; if you’re a voracious reader who hasn’t been able to finish a single paragraph for six months, you’re suffering in silence.

The reason you’re suffering in silence is because the last thing you want to do is admit to your reading friends — or God forbid, your friends who don’t read at all — that you’re having trouble reading. Being a reader can be a huge part of your identity, and not being able to read puts a real dent in that identity. It might just throw you into a full-blown existential crisis. If you’re not a reader, that probably sounds extreme but I can assure you it is not, and you readers out there know exactly what I’m talking about.

What exactly constitutes a reading slump? Just like in baseball, while there is no single defined point at which you are officially “in a…

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Paul Combs
Paul Combs

Written by Paul Combs

Writer, bookseller, would-be roadie for the E Street Band. My ultimate goal is to make books as popular in Texas as high school football...it may take a while.

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