Book Blogger Confessions {2}

Karen over at For What It's Worth, along with Tiger from All Consuming Books, started this new meme called Book Blogger Confessions. Basically, it's where they ask a question on alternating Mondays, and bloggers can respond/confess the behind-the-scenes work on blogging and such.

This week's question is: Have you ever had reading/blogging slumps? How do you work through them or work around them?

What's funny is that I'm going through a reading slump right now. The only book that brought me out of it for a sliver of a second was A Million Suns by Beth Revis. Then I read a few more books that pulled me right back under.


I have different ways of working through them. The primary factor is time. If I have a lot of time on my hands (which is almost never), I'll just read book after book after book until I break free of the darn slump. If I don't have any time on my hands (almost always--as it is right now), I might actually stop reading for a while. Here's why:


The biggest asset a book can have is originality. But as there are only seven plots under the everlasting sky (Ha, I almost said Under the Never Sky), originality is almost impossible to find--especially in such a popular genre as YA. The books I enjoy the most are always, always original is some way. So if I'm hitting a reading slump, and I'm on a time restraint, that means one of two things.


1) My expectations are higher than normal-When I have barely any free time at all, I want to read something that will shock me with its brilliance. Transitively, this raises my expectations and lowers the number of books I'll likely enjoy.
2) All the books resonate each other with their lack of originality-I think this is why fantasy is my favorite genre of all time. Because there, you will almost never run into this problem. Books always are similar in some way, but I think, most likely, in character behavior. One protagonist may have fell in love at first sight, and then discovered the truly unfortunate and tragic plot twist that they cannot be together. Together, then, the couple fights it and lives a somewhat happily ever after. How many times have you read a book like that? Not that I don't enjoy such a theme, but just that it's not particularly helpful for me to read a book like this again right after one of the same category. This might bore me--as it makes the novel hopelessly predictable--and ultimately suck me back into the whirlpool of endless slumps.


So how do I get over these reading slumps? Read what I want to read. Not what everyone else is saying is amazing. Not what the cover embellishes like a  gem. Not what I am told to read.


What I have been wanting to read for a long time, but never did. Actually, I have a specific shelf for that. (okay, that shelf isn't reliable. 3/4th of it isn't out yet. I think I need to build a new shelf...)


But I suppose that didn't make too much sense, so let me go ahead and explain really quick, because I'm sure you're already asleep. :)


I can guess that you've probably been pressured by your friends or the hype before to read this one book. It really doesn't sound that great, and you know it's not really your type of book, but you read it anyway--mostly out of curiosity.


You didn't like it.


So now you're more careful to take your friends' suggestions. Kind of a problem, because you mostly choose books off of those suggestions. So from there the spiral of uncertainty and questioning begins, until you are spinning down this rabbit hole of slumping.


The bottom word, I presume, would be this: Reading slumps are a way for your brain to tell you that it needs something different right now. Something unique. Something buried under miles of hype that no one has yet dug up.


Something you will love.


How do YOU solve reading slumps?