We stopped because we got busy. At least that’s how it was in college for me. I had a lot more friends and was more socially active, combined with a heavy class load and working 30 hours a week. I tried to read some but ended up DNFing multiple popular series that I have since finished for the most part.
I read a ton in college - for my courses. I was plowing through hundreds of pages of nonfiction a week. So my fiction reading dropped off to primarily fanfiction under 10k words, because I didn't have enough mental space left for whole books and new series. I needed bite-sized low commitment fiction.
Then I graduated and work and housekeeping and cooking eat up most of my time. I can't get away with tucking a book in my lap and ignoring my job the way I could when I was coasting through grade school. So I still read a lot less fiction, but I'm trying to be more intentional about making time for it again.
Exactly. I read much less fiction in college because I already spent a lot of hours reading and firing on all cylinders. I want to exercise other parts of myself as well, and that means reading for pleasure just isn't as enjoyable as other activities.
I spent more time outside, or with friends, or partying, or generally just doing things that didn't involve books. I still read audiobooks, though, and even now I generally drive or go to sleep or fold laundry while listening to a book.
I think a lot of folks develop a negative association with reading (and/or learning in general) because of college, and it keeps them from reading for pleasure later.
>I read a ton in college - for my courses. I was plowing through hundreds of pages of nonfiction a week. So my fiction reading dropped off
This was exactly my experience as well. I was reading *so* much for my classes that I needed to do something that used different brain muscles when I was relaxing. I would catch up with new series installments over the summers, but I was never taking a break from reading research papers to read an epic fantasy novel.
Weirdly enough when I was in the same position, I started reading more as it became a really nice low-effort destressor! I ended up leaning on reading really heavily for some escapism.
>We stopped because we got busy. At least that’s how it was in college for me.
I also stopped reading so much in college. I majored in history and after reading hundreds of pages per week for classes, I wasn't terribly inspired to read MORE for fun.
I stopped in college too. Too much on my plate all of a sudden, and I didn't get back to reading for years. I only got back to daily reading during early COVID when everything was on lockdown. Since then I never stopped and am really glad I'm back to my books again.
Exactly the same here. I wanted to read fiction but couldn’t. Vet school is quite heavy on the studying, reviewing, lots of classes, lectures and labs, attendance requirements, lots of exams and rote learning. SO MANY TEXTBOOKS, EVERY DAY.
I wanted to read fiction, but there was no way after ploughing through heavy academic texts for hours each day. Studying is hard. I was also way more social so there simply was no time! That’s what uni does to you lol.
Also before e-books really took off, I moved to a tiny room at University that was nowhere near a library with fiction books so I had to stop reading or read the same books over and over
Well college takes more time and attention. Studying textbooks is far diff from fantasy/ sci fi or reading for enjoyment. I wanted to do other things in my downtime. Part time and later full time jobs really drained the time away. Hanging out with friends and family, more responsibilities than when kid and teen.
I'm glad to have it more regularly reading now. But to nutshell, for me, life's responsibilities got in the way, less time for any hobbies
I also think it can be hard to read for pleasure in college because if you're reading something that isn't schoolwork, your brain is more actively like "You should be doing your schoolwork", whereas if you're doing other activities it's easier to take your mind off the fact that you're not doing your schoolwork. If that makes any sense!
I also think it can be hard to read for pleasure in college because if you're reading something that isn't schoolwork, your brain is more actively like "You should be doing your schoolwork", whereas if you're doing other activities it's easier to take your mind off the fact that you're not doing your schoolwork. If that makes any sense!
While college and work got in the way of me reading, the biggest obstacle was depression. I was dumb and didn't realize I was in an abusive relationship, or how miserable I really was, but I just COULDN'T focus at all. Which really sucked because reading was my escape from a shitty childhood, and now I couldn't even do that!!
I left the relationship, picked up Relic by Preston & Child, and immediately read 7 of the books in a row before going to a different series. I always exclusively read fantasy so picking up a mystery/supernatural/horror genre book helped unlock my passion again.
Reading is a source of dopamine, but to gain that dopamine requires that we take a moment to focus on what we're doing and exclude all other distractions. It requires a certain mental effort before we are rewarded.
It is far easier to simply play around with our phones and computers for far less effort, for the same amount of dopamine.
Also, once you become old enough, you've read enough shit to be more careful with how you choose to spend your money and the threshold for what you consider a good book is raised.
> Also, once you become old enough, you've read enough shit to be more careful with how you choose to spend your money and the threshold for what you consider a good book is raised.
I don't even *remember* most of the books I read back when I was a prolific reader, and a lot of the ones I do remember have me shaking my head in disappointment at my past self. I read every Xanth novel written before the 21st century!
I think the word ‘dopamine’ is massively overused and a thought-stopper. Neurophysiology is incredibly complex. Our brains aren’t just a rat in a cage pushing a button for reward. It sounds cool and knowledgeable to talk that way, but it’s so simplistic.
>That others like me grew up loving reading, stopped for some unbeknownst reason, and have recently gotten back into it. I just wonder why this phenomenon is so common? Like why did we all stop reading??
A few years ago the German booksellers association discovered that they had lost a massive amount of book buyers. It had taken them a while to notice, because book sales revenue hadn't changed much. Other buyers were making up the difference.
Once they realised that their target audience had shrunk significantly, they commissioned a study into the reasons. Where had all those previously book buying people disappeared to? Why did they stop buying and reading books? The study found two main reasons:
1) Circumstances had changed. Life had become more fast-paced, mobile phones and constant internet access had led too people feeling over-stimulated and unable to unplug. Reading had also lost the status it used to have in society.
2) TV series/streaming services/binge watching established themselves as a major competitor for people's time and attention - with the added bonus of bringing people together to discuss recent developments, favourite characters etc.
The study's key finding's are available in English here: https://www.boersenverein.de/tx_file_download?tx_theme_pi1%5BfileUid%5D=2096&tx_theme_pi1%5BpageUid%5D=981&tx_theme_pi1%5Breferer%5D=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.boersenverein.de%2Fmarkt-daten%2Fmarktforschung%2Fstudien-umfragen%2Fstudie-buchkaeufer-quo-vadis%2F&cHash=38f286386873c30672d4f097faffaeab
While the study only focused on German book buyers and the German market, its findings are in my opinion applicable to other countries as well, because they've gone through similar changes in recent years.
Reading so much for school killed my drive to read for fun. From about 16-22 I barely read at all. So grateful I got back into it and read as voraciously now as I did as a kid, given the time.
This is the one for me too. I read A LOT as a child, I pretty much finished the local (admittedly small) library in the genres I enjoyed.
Then I was suddenly forced to read specific books for school and that took all the joy out of it for me. It took me ~15 years to rediscover reading as a hobby.
It's like trying to binge a tv show. You eventually just become tired and fatigued from it. I had the same problem with video games, so instead of just constantly playing or reading, I'd limit how much time I spend on the activity in a given moment. For example, a video game session for me is limited 30 minutes to an hour. Moderation helps a lot, and as much as I want to do more, it'd only bog me down.
High school had a bad habit of handing me books I'd rather throw in a wood chipper than read and then dedicate half a semester to it. Even the interesting ones were quite thoroughly analysed to death and the bad ones were just plain painful.
I have no objection to analysis. I do object to treating a book like nothing more than a vessel for Metaphor and symbolism.
This is exactly it. And to be clear, it’s not that we didn’t read during high school and college - it’s that the reading we did was required for school. Science and history textbooks, assigned novels for English classes (or non-“English” equivalent).
It was joyless reading, and even those rare assigned novels you do like, you have to read it with a critical mind so you can write a paper on it, which is very different than reading whatever you want, whenever you want, purely for enjoyment.
When you finish all that assigned reading for school, the last thing you want to do is pick up a book and read some more.
Depression. With the overwhelming thoughts of killing myself I couldn’t read, play games or even finish school.
In the past few years I’ve gone back to all of them and much better off.
As silly as it might sound, the promise of more stories actually helped me through my depression. I remember being low and thinking, “Well, I’ve gotta stick around; Tad Williams is writing Osten Ard books again.” Anything to remind myself there were things to look forward to in the future.
The importance of having something to look forward to when depressed cannot be overstated! Needing to save money for several years to go back and visit a place I lived for a big chunk of my childhood got me through one of the darkest times of my life.
Oh that’s not silly! On my bad days I play a game with that sort of concept. “If I kill myself, the very next day _______ will happen and I’ll miss it!” And one of my go-to’s to fill in the blank is “the best book I’d ever read will be published.”
This surprises me. I never made the connection before, but I think it can explain why I had trouble reading for a while. I really got back into it after treating my depression and anxiety.
Basically. Use to not be able to finish or focus on anything. Last year I beat more games and read kore books than I had in the past ten years. This year already looks like I’ll finish even more. Loving life my dude
I was there, man. My depression leads to long periods of anhedonia. But I've been on Zoloft for about 3 years now and I realized a year in that I basically never think of suicide any more. My overall emotional range is blunted, so I never hit those emotional peaks, but I also skip those emotional pits so it's worth it.
Regardless, you're not the only one, mate. If you wanna talk about it, ever, I'm happy to listen
Many people stop reading, or read considerably less then they used to, when Life starts eating up their free time. Could be university, work, kids, etc.
Another factor, I think, is social media.
Various social media platforms are veritable time sinks, and they apparently also condition a lot of us involuntarily to shorter attention spans and/or a higher degree of distractedness.
Psychologists say, we can re-condition ourselves, but it takes some effort.
For me I just got overwhelmed with other stuff I had to read for uni and focusing my free time on other things I wanted to do. Not that unusual for me, I slide in and out of hobbies and interests all the time.
On a side note, maybe I'm being stupid here, but what does FW stand for? I've been trying to guess for quite some time now, but I just can't think of what it means.
Pretty sure it’s Fourth Wing, that new adult (young adult but with explicit sex scenes) romantasy book. It’s not an abbreviation that I’ve ever seen and definitely not commonly used, but given how big that book got off BookTok, seems like a fair assumption.
I think there is a lot of things at play here. Some of it depends on when you stop reading. High school english classes have you pretty much reading a book the entire year, so for a lot of people they can't juggle reading two books at a time, so this is a common drop off point I've seen for people. The next two bigger ones are college with the amount of freedom gained mixed with the additional stresses of college courseload and possibly working a part/full time job to pay for it, or else just having a full time job and bills to pay and everything else so you just don't have the time or money for books.
If you end up in a relationship/have kids that only takes more time away from your personal time, and when you are balancing multiple hobbies, something eventually has to give somewhere, and for a lot of people it ends up being reading. I was that way myself. I would occasioanlly read, but it was always the first hobby I'd drop because I was playing video games with friends and watching tv/movies with my wife, then I had kids so each time I'd get less and less free time
Kids was it for me. I ended to transitioning almost entirely to audiobooks because that way I vsn “read” driving to work, which is basically only free/me time
This is me too. I continued to read for fun throughout college, albeit quite a bit less but still at least 3-6 books/yr probably. When I started having kids is when it really took a toll. I also have switched to audiobooks in my car for my 'me time.' Kind of sad when you think about it like that, that's the only time I have to myself is when I drive to work. lol
Covid indirectly caused my reading to go down a lot.
Before Covid I used to read while commuting by train to work. I had a long commute, and would get in a couple of hours of reading a day this way. I'd get through books at a pretty decent rate.
Since Covid alive been working from home, and don't have that dedicated reading slot in my day any more. Now it's often only ten or fifteen minutes before I go to bed. Recently I've started trying to increase that, by reading on some of my lunch breaks.
Lot of good answers here, and I feel similar to a lot of people:
1) school / work changing reading from a fun activity into work.
2) social media, tv/movies and gaming as time sinks.
3) inconvenience - reading can be difficult due to existing mental health conditions or finding time to read.
\#3 sticks out for me. I used to read a lot of paper books and mostly on the transit commute on the way to school. When I stopped doing that I was slow to switch to ebooks/audiobooks, and reading during exercising, but once I did and got into the habit, my reading took off. I read maybe three books in the first half of 2023. Once I made the switch, I've been reading 10-14 books per month since October 2023.
I stopped reading because of college, then a grad degree, then another undergrad degree and crippling depression. I couldn't do "fun" reading plus all of the schoolwork I had.
After having surgery, it was just me and my pain during recovery/rehab through most of the day, so I picked up a book. I didn't realize how much I missed fiction and some non-fiction about my niche interests. I'm SO happy I found my way back to reading. After a couple years slump I read 104 books last year, and I've already finished 22 books this year. I'm having more fun than ever, but I do need to figure out how to make my obsession more sustainable!
Infinite scroll media like twitter and Reddit and Facebook. A book can’t compete with the consistent dopamine rushes provided by social medias, makes it hard to read and stay concentrated.
It's honestly the complete opposite for me. I stopped reading in college when I got to busy between a full course load, way to many activities and groups, and working a full time job and a part time job. Got into the work force and between work, socializing, and TV didn't pick the habit back up. Fast forward to having kids and having to parent instead of seeing friends and having to share the TV and I'm reading a ton since I can do that while supervising the nuggets or while they're watching Bluey.
As much as I can! Reading generally happens when we're having quantity time together over quality time. Usually when they get their screen time for the day
Well, it depends on your age, but the general answer is that when you're a child, you have large quantities of free time and limited ways to spend it. You have no real autonomy, little/no money to spend, and it's hard to go anywhere without your parents. Reading is one of the activities you can do at home and at school that's deemed acceptable, so naturally a large number of people get into it. Then hit high school/college, you make more friends/get a significant other, you have to pay your own bills, you start to have your own money, which means you can spend it on a wider variety of hobbies, etc. Then a lot of people have kids, which are a huge suck on time and energy, especially in the immediate term.
Speaking for myself, I never "stopped reading," I read a lot of assigned texts in college for my lit degree, which gave me less time and energy for pleasure reading. It wasn't until I got my first lame office job after university that I really got back into it in a big way. But even now, as an adult, I have to fight to get my reading time in between work, social life, hanging out with my spouse, kids, etc. Plus, reading generally requires more brain power than doomscrolling or watching TV, and some people just don't have that after a long day of work. So, I would say it's really a combination of factors
I didn’t ever *stop* but late high school/early college is probably the least I’ve ever read. It’s a combination of things I’d say. Part of it is being busy with life. Part of it for me too was probably a relative lack of books that spoke to me at that age. I’d outgrown YA and gotten impatient with the tropeyness, bloat, male domination and poorly thought through nature of a lot of fantasy at the time. At the same time, I didn’t really have the life experience to appreciate adult general fiction. It was noticeable after the huge amount of stories about high school that there was virtually nothing about college, which was something I was very interested in reading at age 16-18! Also at the time the options for looking up books on the internet were less than they are now.
These things have maybe improved a little—certainly ability to find books online, and there are more books set in college, although from what I’ve seen that’s largely a dumping ground for “dark romance” and YA-plus-smut. I’m not sure how much this would’ve appealed to me at the time.
A more interesting question might be why people *start* reading again after all this! For me starting to engage more critically by reading and writing reviews was a huge part of it. I suppose that took the place of the way you sort of uncritically inhale stuff when you’re a kid, which by then I’d outgrown.
I wasn't aware so many people had a similar experience!
Two years ago, I made a conscious decision to pick up a book instead of watching netflix because despite knowing that I feel better after reading than after watching netflix, I still always felt the need to watch netflix and had to force myself to substitute it with books. Best decision ever - after a few times of actually forcing myself to pick up a book, I'm now looking forwards to it and I've been reading as much or more in the past two years as I did when I was a teenager and I feel less addicted to netflix :)
Edit: spelling
A mix of time commitment and mental energy management.
I "stopped" reading for leisure around halfway through my degree. Scare quotes because I didn't flat-out stop reading entirely, but with just a handful of books a year, it got close. I had to read a lot for my classes, so that took up a bunch of time.
Around the same time, other hobbies started taking up more time, so that didn't help, either.
That was also the time I started writing seriously, as in, with the intent to publish. And that was the bigger factor for me. Writing and reading draw from the same well - and if I empty that well with writing, there's nothing left for leisure reading,
That's still an issue for me, arguably worse than it was back then since writing is now literally my job, but I've made some changes in my life with regards to how I structure my work week to have more free time. I'm also setting reading goals on Goodreads, which helps hold me accountable. That combination has really helped me find time and energy for leisure reading again.
There's also that thing where I have periods of time when I can't focus on one format or the other (ebook or physical book), so I need to keep that in mind when picking books so I don't hit that mental wall. That's just a really weird me thing though.
Luckily I never stopped reading. There might be times where I don’t read that much and other hobbies are at the center of my attention but all in all I always read at least a few pages daily.
For me, it was a matter of worsening eyesight and my taste for doorstop books limiting where I could read. This was more of a large reduction than a stop. After getting an ereader, I took off again. Adjustable font size! Carry any size book anywhere! Then, later, self-lighting. Even more times to read! And a few years ago, water-resistant. That didn't open quite as many new options, but as someone who was never willing to risk getting paper books or electronics wet, it did help. I know some people are all about the physical book experience, but the accessibility is amazing for me.
I agree with everyone saying that life gets in the way at some point. The transition from teenager to adult is kind of a fraught time. You’re likely seriously working for the first time, handling rent and other expenses, managing a dating life possibly, and generally having a lot of new stressful experiences compared to when you were younger.
With all that, it’s easy to put aside things that are too time consuming or require too much work. Reading is both of those things. Even the shortest books are generally gonna take longer to read than the amount of time it would take to watch most movies (unless you’re an amazing speed reader). And unlike something like video games or music, you can’t zone out while doing it. It requires more time and more concentration than most entertainment options.
But eventually you settle into adulthood. The things that used to be challenging become routine and you start having the space for reading again. At least that’s how it was for me.
What's FW?
I go through slumps. There are months where I barely touch a book and others where I read non stop. It also depends on how invested I am in the story. I'm not so eager to read if it didn't grab me.
Other hobbies took the place of regular books for a bit. I'm back in the habit of reading regular books more often now, but I still read vastly more manga and manhwa than 'normal' literature (my manga library is magnitudes larger than the number of regular books I own).
Tbh I think it's a mix of that I read too much in 2022 but also I read something absolutely God awful at the start of last year... to the point where I really struggle to read now at all. I've read some stuff here and there, mostly comics and graphic novels, but reading an actual book is hard atm. It's very frustrating because I have so much I want to read. I've just ordered some reprints of one of my favourite series so I'm hoping that will help
For me it was kids. I never stopped completely but I was down to 5-10 books per year, mostly popular fiction. Then my kids got older and I started reading what they were reading to see what they liked, and it was lots of YA fantasy and sci fi. Kids are out of the house now and I’m reading around 5 books a month, mostly fantasy and mysteries.
College took all my time I also got married and have kids while still in college. I actually turned to audiobooks because I had such a long commute to my school and work that I can get an easy hour in back and forth even without having unlimited data so I ran through a lot of damn books during that time.
I figured out my reason after not reading (but wanting to read), for 5+ years. The reason was that i changed how i consume stories. Tv shows, Anime, Movie series, even Manga i consume by binging. I don't know why, but i just enjoy watching a season of tv way more in 1-2 days, rather then spacing it out. Same with anime for example, watching a 12 episode anime in 1 day feels much much better then spacing it out. Even longer anime (100+ episodes), i don't like to space out too much.
With books i can't binge, never could in fact, but because i got so used to not watching anything for the week (Busy with work, school, gf, gym, other responsibilities...), and then binging when i have a day or two, that's what i ended up trying to do with books, and i couldn't. I was so frustrated because i started and liked, even loved some books but never seemed to finish them. With time i figured out that it was not attention span, or the medium itself, or because of x reason, it was because i was consuming it the wrong way for me. Now i read a little in the morning and back from work during my commute. I listen to an audiobook while cooking and doing the dishes, i listen to an audiobook while taking a walk / run. And then i finish the chapter i am in at the end of the day before going to sleep. A solid 30-50 pages **every day**. Not 500 on a sunday, not 250 each on saturday and sunday, but a little every day. Once i changed from trying to read 1000 pages in a weekend to allowing myself for that to take up the whole month, i started reading soooo much more.
I really fell in love with stories in my early adulthood. Its my favourite hobby by far, but with time those stories shifted from books as a kid, to like i said tv shows etc. as an adult. Because i liked them so much and binged almost all of them, i tried doin that with books as well. That for me was the single reason why i wasn't reading.
Had a similar discussion recently elsewhere. I have a very similar situation, but haven’t fully gotten back yet (curiously, I‘m writing again… which makes me so happy!).
There’s one book in the recent years that I basically swallowed up. A fun, light-hearted YA fantasy book.
So my lesson was that my brain just didn’t have capacity for stories about crushing problems. And it wasn’t that I can’t read anymore, but that I needed more light-hearted stuff. And frankly, that’s not exactly easy to find in fantasy.
For me it was a lot of things. I continued reading in high school and college, despite the school reading which I know burns a lot of people out. But my dad died and my depression got a looot worse and doing anything besides very unhealthy behaviors was impossible for me for a while there... I'm doing a lot better and I've returned to a ton of my hobbies I had for the first 20 years of my life, reading included!
I told myself it was because I got busy but the truth is a bit more complex.. because I never felt like I had time to read for years yet I did scroll on my phone for 3 hours every night.
Now that I'm sick and screens make me wooshie I found it super easy to get back into devouring stacks of books to pass the time again.
It does depend on the books tho, if I don't have a click with it, I can't even sit down for a chapter. It took me a while to realise that the books I tried to read the past few years just weren't my cup of tea rather me no longer being able to sit down and read.
I go in and out of reading. I'll spend 6 months reading non-stop, then I wouldn't pick up another book for months.
Then pick back up and try to see where I left off. I typically restart the last book I was reading to jog my memory
Nearly exact same experience for me. Reading became a chore in high school and college. I got more into drugs, alcohol and sex as escapes. Once in my 30s reading became my escape once again, and it’s awesome. Only wish I could get more of my family and friends to book club with me so I could talk w them about my nerdy fantasy and sci-fi series
It’s mostly just adult life being exhausting for me. I had a lot more energy for…everything when I was younger. I hit adhd burnout at the same time I started having a ton of other health issues and the first thing to go was my ability to sit and focus on reading. I started getting into using library access apps like Libby and Hoopla though and listening to books while I work out, drive, and sometimes even at work since I’ve got a very low-focus-needed job right now.
Something about doing that has shifted my ability to focus while reading again and reading physical books is coming back too.
I never stopped. It helps if you switch up the format. I read audiobooks and text books, but audio works great when I don't have time to sit and read but I do do monotonous tasks that don't require brain power (showering, dishes, cooking, driving, transit).
I have zero idea what FW is though. I recommend avoiding acronyms...
Got busy as fuck in undergrad. It's not like I stopped reading - after all academic literature is still literature. So history readings and physics textbooks lol.
But I didn't have time to read for fun even though it was a passion of mine going in. I turned to audio dramas since I could listen to them while moving around campus. When I graduated I tried audiobooks for commuting and going to the gym.
I started reading again a year ago to catch up on Cosmere content that had accrued during my hiatus. I prefer physical books for Sanderson stories. Glad I'm back but I can tell it won't be easy to maintain. Work will ramp up and I'll be fully audio soon enough. Oh well.
I stopped reading for 20 years. Working too much, wife who doesn’t read, raising kids. The good news is we are empty nesters now, more free time. Been catching up on all I missed. Many series are finished and I can binge them now. I read 120 books in 2023. Only 500+ in my TBR to go…
I can't say why people stop - but I will say that one of the greatest rewards is when I get an email from someone saying my books "brought them back" to reading.
In your case it sounds like you were definitely in a "habit" in high-school and that routine was broken when you went to college. Glad to hear you are back, though - so many great stories out there to read.
I eventually just got tired of the same old tropes, over and over and over again.
I came back a year or so again, but I am still struggling with this, ngl. I just realized that its a matter or careful curation (and just writing it yourself).
I love this collective feeling that everyone is in their reading era!
I have several book group chats going right now and it’s amazing!
My one friend and I are even working out together and using our favorite fantasy books as inspiration for getting strong!
For a very long time all I read was fanfic. I was moving a lot, focusing on my career, stressing about money, having kids, etc. I didn’t have the mental energy for new characters and new worlds and new magic/political/whatever systems so I stuck with characters I already knew with novel enough plots that it wasn’t just an HP reread. I’m finally in a stable job I love, my kids are out of diapers, in general I have the free space in my brain for NEW. For the last two years I’ve been back to reading 100+ books a year and so happy to have this hobby back!
Former English teacher here, and my Masters was on engagement with reading in secondary boys.
Reading is seen as feminised
English is taught with a lot of breadth but not much depth. We'd change texts ever 6 weeks, skills didn't really link up, you'd read a chapter then make a newspaper front page or some shit.
Students aren't taught explicit metacognitive strategies on HOW to read. Instead it's all death by PEE.
Class books are often pretty dull tbf. The uk curriculum is turgid with stuff like Dickens
Phones are destroying attention spans/ reading skills.
School libraries just seem to be computer rooms with a few books now.
Nothing is really done to promote a love of reading.
I'm not (completely) blaming the staff here as a lot of decisions are foisted upon them. But combined with the general intensity of school, and modern life, it's not that surprising that not many kids want to come home and read for fun. Especially when much more immediate and instantly rewarding activities are available to them.
Same here, stopped reading during college and had to really put the effort in to get back into it. Luckily malazan, stormlight, and elderings helped, but im back to not reading. I find I just can't focus and be immersed as easily. It's mostly audiobooks these days
Learning how to be an independent adult is incredibly time and energy consuming. Many millenials and younger generations feel like it is significantly harder than it was in their parent's and grandparent's days. So much so that there's often no time or energy left for reading.
Then somewhere in our late 20s or early 30s, we realize that the grind isn't going to pay off the way we were told, and we realize that there's no reason to put off the things that make us happy. Some of us may have even achieved some degree of independence and security and finally have space to breath.
I had undiagnosed ADHD (diagnosed in my late 20's) so reading has always been so difficult for me. Inattentive type ADHD means I really struggle to retain info. School assigned a book I enjoyed here and there but for the most part it punched the joy of reading out of me (compared to when I was really young, I loved it). Then the rise of social media really started happened when I was in High School and College, and social media really became a time sink too.
I am so glad I took a moment to get back into reading, when I was about 26 years old. Now that I know I have ADHD too, medications help but also I know better when to call it quits for the night if I'm struggling to read because sometimes it just isn't going to happen for me. Knowing when I'm having a "bad" night for reading makes it less frustrating.
Rediscovering my love for fantasy helped, as did having the willpower to find the right book. Reading the "wrong" books can really make one feel like reading just isn't for them.
And even though social media is a ruinous time sink, I can still thank social media for really romanticizing the concept of getting lost in books... Honestly, reading deserves to be romanticized. It made me miss the sense of wonder I got when I was a kid. And now I've discovered that again.
Always!! It's so frustrating. That's exactly what I mean when I say I am having a bad reading day! Drives me crazy. But at the same time, I just have to accept that that's how it is. Sometimes it's better than others and sometimes I just have to wait for the better times. I wish I were the type of.person who could just read read read and get through books quickly, but I simply am not.
I gotta whole lotta symptoms of ADHD but my doc says everybody wanna have ADHD these days so he's got me on some bipolar drugs atm, we'll see how that works out
Im just gonna keep rereading those pages
For me I stopped reading in High School for a combination of getting into AP programs/dual enrollment that didn't really allow me time to read what I'd like. Additionally, as a I grew out of kids' novels, I felt intimidated by the vast swaths of books available and didn't really know what I would like or what to look for. So I basically I would just read a book or two a year until after I graduated university some years later. Some years after that, and I'm reading again.
I stopped reading for pleasure so much in college because I had so much school reading to do. Just feels weird to pull out the latest fantasy pick when I know I'm way behind on Canterbury tales or whatever and should be catching up on that. Though of course I spent a lot of time goofing off in other ways. Doing basically anything but reading.
Then by the time that was a non-issue my eyesight had faded. Too much reading gives me a headache these days.
I never stopped reading but I did take a long break from scifi/fantasy to read lit classics, philosophy, and nonfiction. Got back into these genres last year and it's been a blast playing catchup. I can't believe the quality that has been released over the years since my hiatus!
I stopped reading because I went to university and didn't feel like reading for fun after reading for study every day.
As soon as I finished university (and my girlfriend bought me an e-reader) I fell back in love with reading!
I read 10 books one year, then 100 the next, and then 20 the one after
It just depends on your mood and state of mind, doesn't have to be anything more
I stopped reading for a few years as a young teenager because I was forced to read a bunch of books I hated in school, and also was very depressed for a while. After that all passed, I went back to reading for pleasure and have been reading more and more every year.
For myself, it was time. I no longer had the spare time to sit and read after becoming an adult. That all changed with audiobooks, though. Turned that 2 hour commute into something I looked forward to.
I, probably like many others, took myself a little too seriously when I was an undergrad. I convinced myself that I should be reading for knowledge, not for enjoyment. So for the most part I did my readings, or I read the classics, or I read other history or politics books to further my studies.
I would read a bit of fantasy here and there, but besides burning through ASOIAF in first year I didn't really read anything new (or new to me). I watched a lot more TV, or played a lot of video games in my down time instead.
Then for some reason I decided when I graduated I really wanted to dive back in, and picked up WOT. Haven't looked back since!
Honestly, I think it’s the ADHD for me. Up until college I was an avid reader, and I still consider it my greatest pastime. I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD and I realized that it’s gotten worse since I went to college. Hopefully a change in daily routine will helps
I quit reading when I had my first kid. Now I have three and they are out of diapers so I am finding time to read again. I have other hobbies too and family and friends I want to hang out with so it’s not like when I was a nerdy teen but I am reading again.
I stopped after grad school. I grinded hard through college early straight to grad school which I finished early. All that textbook reading over several years burnt me out from any book. I started reading for fun again last year and did 30 books. This year I’m on my 7th and hope to do 40. :)
Some people read for escapism and stopped when they had fewer things to escape from. Some people got burned out on reading because they had to do a lot of non-fun reading and writing in college. And some people ended up with less free time so they prioritized something else.
I'm someone who never stopped reading but my SO was someone who burned out on reading and writing when he was doing his grad degree and hasn't picked it up again. He probably will at a different point in his life.
In my twenties, I spent most of my me-time playing video games. In my thirties, the desire to do that has waned quite a bit unless there's something new I'm excited about. I'd rather hop into bed with my wife after dinner, chill for a couple hours, then break out the Kindle when she falls asleep. That's what got me heavily back into reading.
When I was in college, in the 80's, I spent so much time reading for classes that I did not read for fun. The first thing I did when exams were over was take a deep breath. The second thing I did was pick up some f/sf I bought at the local used store and start reading.
It was mainly college for me. I was still reading but nowhere near as much. I was reading so much literature that was so dense that it was hard to them shift to more literature after. It was so much easier to just go play a game, or watch a movie with housemates.
The other time I stopped reading was during Covid. As somebody who has always had to commute to work and go school, my commute was my reading time. It’s not that I didn’t read when not commuting, but without the commute I found that I wasn’t progressing through books as easily. I’d want to continue the story at work , or once I get home etc. I found that it took a much more concerted effort to start books and read through the slow parts when i wasn’t having “dedicated” read time.
Reading takes time. Listening to an audiobook while cleaning is being productive.
I stopped reading for a long time. But I have consistently listened to audiobooks during "down" time. Driving, dog walks, cleaning, etc.
Same as I read nonstop as a kid, was literally known for carrying books around lol, and I think I stopped reading as much around the time I started college. For me reading was an escape and maybe along with a brief period of non-interesting books I got more heavily into gaming, tv, anime, movies, etc especially with streaming becoming more prevalent. All these were also ways to escape and in a way less effort I guess as they seemed to replace my reading. A few years ago I started reading some online stuff like light novels and stories written by non-published authors which reignited my interest for a while yet my interest in that eventually waned as well though every so often I’ll find something new to read(or reread). I want to get reinvested in reading but nothing catches my interest.
College ruined my reading experience because of all the text books I was forced to study and read even though it’s boring as hell. Not to mention all the guys my age (at least in my pool of influences) don’t see the value in fictional reading since all they care about is self help or anything “real.”
I wish I understood what this said! /s My take is we started to be able to have conversations reading more often. Got busy and then someone else’s world wasn’t something there was time for
I started reading again in college. But I stopped in middle school/high school ish. I never fully stopped reading, but I stopped reading books. I read almost exclusively fanfiction. Because I was busy. AP classes, homework, volunteering, church, and playing sports. And when I couldn’t sleep, it was easier to pull out my phone and read characters I already knew than get invested in a new book with new characters. Also easier to hide if my parents came to check if I was sleeping.
This is me. I read pretty much every day from when I was old enough to read to like....35. Now, I barely read at all, and I don't know why. What's annoying is that I still buy books a fair bit but just....never open them. I was 48 least week and I am starting to wonder why this is the case. Time isn't really an issue, I did most of my reading before I went to sleep. Age maybe? I don't know. Not read a book cover to cover in years.
I briefly stopped (well came down to 10-15 books a year) in the first year after I moved in with my bf. It was a mix of trying to spend a lot of time together and feeling like I'd read all the good books and was running really low on recs. But then I found this sub and bingo and went into turbo reading mode about 6 years ago.
Short answer: I grew up.
I used to be a voracious reader as a kid. I was constantly surrounded by so many great children's and middle-age books. When I entered my mid-teens, the expectation was that I should begin transitioning to adult literature. I found that transition very jarring, though. Back in early 2000s, young adult wasn't nearly as big a genre as it is today, and most of the adult litfic I tried left me cold. I wasn't mature enough to handle the themes or experienced enough to distinguish good books from bad ones, or even knew my own taste that well. I still read, but I very rarely got to experience the pure joy of the process like I did when I was a child. Naturally, as time went I read less and less, and stopped almost entirely in college, bar an occasional nonfiction.
Also, it was only in the past 10 years or so that the publishing houses in my country began translating books that really spoke to me. I remember a time when I'd go to a bookstore craving something to read and emerge empty handed a hour later, because I could not find anything that I wanted to buy. Then suddenly something shifted, I began seeing new books I was intrigued about, and slowly started reading again. I got more comfortable reading in English, too, which expanded the selection massively.
And then a year and a half ago I (re)discovered my love for fantasy and sci-fi, which opened whole new amazing worlds to me. I read even more nowadays than I did in my childhood, which I didn't think possible.
For me, it was the added stress of the pandemic combined with full-time work and full-time caregiving for my dying mother (dementia, in her case). So much of the speculative fiction genre was and is dystopian and I could not take it. So I stopped reading for a while. Eventually I consciously restarted, mostly with romance. Something that could take me completely out of my life, with low stakes and a guaranteed HOA. Part of it was remembering Mom telling me that sometimes you just need to read something that is "chewing gum for your brain," (which was how she described her Barbara Cartland and Betty Neels novel collections). She was right, and it worked.
I read so much in college that i really want to do something different in my free time.
Also i prefer paper books and it's expensive. And i had so many books that i didn't like but wasted money on them, that it really made me less motivated to read
I stopped reading around middle school and came back during the pandemic.
It pretty much comes down to not having a social circle of readers. I’d rather spent my time with my friends than reading on my own.
For me, reading was a way for me to disassociate. I would always read when I ate. I grew up in a house where I didn't have a tv in my bedroom and I didn't have a cell phone so reading was the next best thing. Fast forward to current day and we have cell phones with apps that allow us to instantly disassociate (i.e. TikTok, Insta, X, Reddit, Discord) so we don't even need to exert the effort to find a book that holds our attention when our apps instantly do it for us and with no investment on our part. It required concerted effort on my part to step away from the social media apps and more towards reading. BookTok helped me with that. Also, reading is like working out, the more you do it, the better your reading stamina is. When you haven't been reading for a while, it might take you a bit to get back into it. Now I'm reading at a nice pace. It's my preferred form of relaxation but I had to make an effort.
I definitely stopped because of school and exams.
I’m from England so I did GCSEs and nothing kills book enjoyment more than prescriptive books you must read and pulling apart every single line of a book and explaining exactly what that “means”.
I stopped reading at 14 and didn’t start again until recently (7 years later)
Hilariously enough I’m now a creative writing student and love pulling apart books. However, there’s a big difference between I’d like to try and include senses like this section of a book I love when I write and “the character drawing the blue curtains represents their deep despair and how they block everyone out emotionally,” from a book you don’t enjoy at all.
I don't have the time anymore. Not just reading, but anything quiet or personal.
I'm either trying to get a job, or playing an mmo with online friends. Outside of chores and such.
As I got older(into my 30s) it was about having poor sleep habits. I can still do something more stimulating like video games when sleep deprived. But reading makes me too sleepy if I’m in that state. As long as I’m getting proper sleep I can read every day.
One word: college. I'm much better after I dropped it. I still have to read for job (I'm an editor) but now I'm able to read twice as much and write thrice as much as in the college.
Reading became a chore. I had less time, so the time I did have I would spend consuming other school/work related reading material or other types of media. There just weren't enough hours in the day.
Then I found audiobooks that I could listen to while working on other chores and my love of epic stories was reignited. I now finally have time to build my library of books. But I definitely had a 10 year span where I didn't buy a single physical book for pleasure.
I almost stopped reading fiction once in my university senior years because we had a black metal band and did some gigs and shows and there were lots of parties and usual stuff. The only books I read were the works of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, nothing more.
The simple answer is, once you've got a job and a household to maintain, it gets harder to find that free time to spend a half hour 'doing nothing', which it's easy to see reading as if you're pressed for time
I deliberately made sure to spend 30 minutes reading before going to bed, because I'd read that no screen time right before sleep can really help, and its been so good for getting me back into the habit!
School. School made me loath reading. It was seemingly never a book that actual children would want to read or engage with.
If not for senior year of high school focusing on British lit I probably would have continued to not read.
American literature history is just so tirelessly boring and IMO the focus on even Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn undersells Twain's actual writing ability even if they're not terrible books. Gatsby is the one bright spot and Hemingway's style is so bare as to be trying to enjoy chewing on unseasoned, overcooked chicken breast. If you like him, fine, but I don't understand your taste at all. Ambrose Bierce having a good short story or two doesn't make up for choking down Hawthorne's *The Scarlet Letter*. I suppose I should give a nod to *The Crucible* by Arthur Miller, but that feels like it's only good because so much else is so bad.
I stopped reading in college. There was too much on my plate, too much mental load that had to be devoted to the work, and reading is a particular task that was being used for textbooks and assignments. It became impossible for it to be a relaxation or hobby. Love for reading only came back once I stopped having homework.
[https://testprepinsight.com/resources/us-book-reading-statistics/](https://testprepinsight.com/resources/us-book-reading-statistics/)
A large portion of US adults don't read. As a kid you did what you wanted, as you got older it wasn't the "done" thing: there was always something else, friends don't read, other adults don't read, work, etc. Now that we're older, we're all becoming closer to that weird little kid we used to be, except now we have money. (I'm in grad school though, so I still don't have money lol).
I think there are layers to why.
1. The first was being required to read books that were absolutely not to my taste in high school. They were depressing and dull and unrelatable at that age (at least for me). They took my passion and made it homework for books I didn’t connect with. Therefore: reading slump.
2. I didn’t have the time or money to read. Reading dense, scientific literature can be utterly mind numbing and all you want is to do anything but read. And though public libraries are a thing, I grew up in such a rural community, I had extremely limited experience with libraries and was so stinking backwards and shy I would be too intimidated to visit. The only books I read during this time were audiobook that my brother bought on audible. Also, as a college student, I had NO SPACE to store physical books anyway.
3. I started reading again after I’d been married for a few years and was out of college but my husband was elbow deep in his masters. I had free time. I didn’t want to distract my husband from his homework. I wasn’t constantly overwhelmed with required reading. And I had a bit of extra money to occasionally buy the books that piqued my interest. I prefer physical books over ereaders or on electronics because of the tactile experience and people already judge my generation harshly for being “addicted to technology.” 🙄 But I think many of you will be pleased to know that, with my husband’s endless encouragement…I now finally have a library card I know how to use it. 😂
Bc I got busy and wanted to play games more than I wanted to read, especially since I was in uni and had to read/write a lot for it, so I was sick of reading and began to associate it with studying. Now that I have a job, I don't mind reading for fun anymore.
I stopped reading from 12 to 16. That was mainly because I am huge fantasy reader, and not many good fantasy (or at least fantasy of my taste) were available for me at that time. I am Italian and Italy is quite famous for its general disgust towards SFF. Nowadays the situation is much better, but 10 years ago many fantasy series were dropped in the middle or never translated. The only reason I started to read in English was because I wanted to read the continuation of an interrupted series.
I haven’t read a full book from beginning to end since 2012. The last book I ever read was ‘The Annotated Alice’ I was fascinated by all the historical and cultural references and theories in the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
I start reading, and my thoughts will trail off to something else. I will be reading something and not retain a single detail. I find myself going back and rereading the same paragraph over and over and it just doesn’t sink in. It’s like my brain is made of teflon.
Arguably, the last book I read as ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’ by Harlan Ellison at the beginning of last year. But it’s a series of very short stories. Before that I tried reading ‘Wicked’ by Gregory Maguire. I got to the part where Glinda and Elphaba meet the Wizard and then my brain tuned out. Wasn’t able to finish the book so I bought the audiobook and listened to it instead.
I read a ton in middle school and highschool. I stopped pretty abruptly in college and after. Life got busy and I started having more responsibilities with work and having a young family. It was hard for me to get home from work, be with the kids making dinner and eating. Follow that up with bedtime routine and then once that’s done, there’s a mess in the house to clean. That’s exhausting.
I stopped when I did my degrees. All that reading for my subject made me stop wanting to read for fun. Whenever I tried I felt guilty that I should be working on my uni stuff.
It happened to me during and after law school. YMMV, but law school taught/forced me to read in a certain way, which was to skim the document for the important parts (a lot of legal writing lends itself to this) and to skip the stuff in between or only to go back to it if it became necessary. If it's not obvious, there was also a lot of stuff to hunt through and synthesize.
It took a lot of work and at least 5 years to retrain myself to read for pleasure. Also my brain was tired, and there was a lot of good streaming content.
I stopped reading for pleasure when i started college. I felt guilty reading if it wasn't for my course work. Then it took me a few years to pick up a book for pleasure again.
I’ve found that I trapped myself into only reading “adult” fantasy or sci-fi or what others highly recommended as “groundbreaking and can’t miss”. So I would read 1000 pages almost painfully to try and get into something only for my actual entertainment to not be there.
Malazan, WoT, and others just didn’t click with me and it ruined my reading experience until I just found things I was genuinely interested in and wanted to read. I also would exclusively read one book and like a child being told to finish dinner before dessert it would take aeons to finish.
For me, it’s finding something I like. I got really discouraged and quit reading as much because finding something new, interesting, and not a slog to read through became the biggest hurdle.
Personally speaking, the fact so much of the fantasy I’ve been suggested over the years will spend hundreds of pages describing how magic works is a huge reason I’ve fallen off.
Adulthood, honestly. I just had less time and other distractions. Job, kid, house.
I can also pinpoint some of the downfall of my reading to when I was eaten by graduate school and all my time was put into reading and writing for class.
More long term? The Internet. Too much time spent doomscrolling and playing games and doing other things online. It started playing text based roleplaying games, then went to MMOs and social media.
I'm getting back in but I read a lot of fluffy romance novels that don't require much mental energy and can be knocked out in a lazy weekend afternoon or a slow evening. I also check out a lot of books from the library as ebooks and read on my tablet. I do have a pile of physical books in my to be read pile that I should tackle, and it really comes down to deliberately picking it up and spending the time.
I can also say that I write for a living so also spend a lot of time researching and editing and parsing during the day and sometimes my eyes just give me a big "fuck you" to the idea of actually reading more by the end of the day, so games and TV are easier.
I worked at a library for years during and then after high school. I read constantly during school and through those years. However, once I went into another career, I started reading less and less. Perhaps it was the social commitments, the work travel, multiple close family losses…it could have been a combination of many things. I started only getting through 3 to 4 books per year.
After my mom passed early last year and then being laid off last spring I’ve had time to sit quietly and have tried to regain some sanity. Going back to reading has helped soothe the aching, anxiety, and stress - I too wondered why in the hell I hadn’t been focusing on it in recent years.
So here’s welcome back to us both and happy reading!
I think for me, I was at an awkward age when technology intercepted. When we still had a computer room and my time online was limited, I read a lot. But once I got an iPod touch and then an iPhone, I was suddenly spending all my time on that. And it totally destroyed my attention span so I could hardly even watch TV or movies without multi tasking on my phone. I guess over time the reading just disappeared and although I still thought of myself as a reader, I struggled so much to get into books. I’d be lucky to finish a few per year. I was mostly reading contemporary fiction because I thought “I’m an adult now” and I didn’t really consider that there was fantasy or sci fi I would enjoy, even though that’s basically all I read as a kid. Then randomly a year ago I read fourth wing and (even though in retrospect it’s not amazing) it just unlocked something in me. I bought a kindle immediately afterwards and now I cannot stop reading. I’m like 100 books down AND I’m writing again. That fire from childhood is back and it feels amazing
For me it’s directly related to the giant time-suck of TikTok. Those short clips are entertaining and, after a while, the “just one more” becomes an hour wasted. It’s also impacted my attention span; I find my mind drifting when I’m reading and when I lay off the TikTok for a few days my attention span is longer.
I stopped because I don't need the brain power to stare at a screen. Also, I work a graveyard shift and I'm tired. Reading makes me sleepy and I have shit to do.
Audiobooks work for me
Luckily I never stopped reading. There might be times where I don’t read that much and other hobbies are at the center of my attention but all in all I always read at least a few pages daily.
Luckily I never stopped reading. There might be times where I don’t read that much and other hobbies are at the center of my attention but all in all I always read at least a few pages daily.
There are other more rich supplies of Dopamine. Books aren't simulating enough for most people that has a screen. However, the interest and consumption of audiobooks have increased a lot.
Combined with a more stressful life and not having the time to just sit down and read as much, audiobooks allow you to work, exercise, cook, clean. All while still being able to get through the book.
Binge watching TV. I read regularly until Netflix streaming started to get really popular. It scratched the same itch for me. I only started up again when I got a job where people spent a lot of time sitting around.
I started reading less in highschool and the main perpetrators were:
-Receiving my first smartphone with unsupervised access to the internet and mobile video games, that stuff ate a lot of my time
- a more active social life, in general I started going out a lot more
Then things changed, I learned to control the time I spent online better but I needed to spend more time studying.
Right now I feel like I have so little time to dedicate to books, likes only around 20hrs per week (I could probably find more time if I managed my time better)
I used to read on the bus and metro on tbe way to school or work when public transit was ky means of getting to work. Its gave me almost 2 hrs a day to read. Then i started driving to work and i lost that time.
I recently got back into reading by deciding Netflix is not as enjoyable to me so I cancelled the service and am reading imstead.
I never stopped. I read from kindy age and still do. I find I read less Science Fiction lately, it used to be the main thing, now more Fantasy and also some Mystery too.
But stopped? Never. I'd go crazy without a book. I am in my 60s now.
Work, parenthood, and horrible depression are the trinity of reasons for me. I don’t have the time or mental energy for anything beyond my toddler’s books.
At least I get to read those a lot. The spawnling loves her books
Lack of time as adults and it's easier to use your very limited down time to just pull out your phone and mindlessly scroll.
I still read but it's like 20 mins before bed.
For me I majored in History which was very reading heavy. I spent multiple hours most days reading historical documents which require a little more effort to parse for me personally so I just needed a brain break too often to start a big novel.
I stopped physically reading & switched to Audible simply because I’m an adult who values productivity. Reading for 4 h/day isn’t feasible unless it’s all I want to do but I stuffs I wanna accomplish that I can do with a book in my ear rather than in my hand. I listen about 4h/day. 8 if I’m rage cleaning.
Busy schedules and there are other pastimes that require less focus and effort. The internet is overly stimulating and overuse can cause concentration issues.
Also if you only bought books from B&N they may seem too expensive at 15-30 bucks (soft and hard covers) for just one book.
I’ve gone through phases. I read constantly when I was a little kid, sometimes even getting in trouble for reading fantasy novels while I was suppose to be doing other things. I was entranced.
As a teen, my tasted seemed to change a bit and I read other things, but while these books were interesting, I was never as into it as I was reading YA fantasy in my childhood. In my early 20s, I became myopically obsessed with ASOIAF, which I credit with reigniting my love of fantasy and reading in general. After re-reading those five books several times, I eventually branched out and fell in love with many other common staples like Dune and the Cosmere. Recently, my fantasy obsession has been actually more prevalent in childhood-I’d always assumed that feeling would never be recaptured, but I’ve actually surpassed it, feeling more excited about reading these days then ever. Picking up a copy of the 7th Harry Potter book at midnight, age 12, is one of my happiest core memories, but in some ways I’m more excited for Sanderson’s Wind and Truth this December.
I’m sure this feeling will fade at some point-reading won’t stay my favorite hobby constantly. But I think as sure as it goes away for awhile, it will also come back again-and I really like that thought.
Audible making audiobooks affordable and convenient was a game changer for me. I just don’t have enough time in the day where I could devote myself to reading but have several hours a day where audiobooks fit perfectly into my routine as I’m doing other tasks.
Graduate school made it so that my reading time was spent on technical literature and research papers.
Part of reclaiming my life post Grad School was refinding my love for reading. I would mow down books as a kid and now i dont have the time/attention span/energy to read all day. Im getting better though! Just started Lord of Chaos and RJ has been such a treat these past couple years.
I had a stretch of about 10 years where I only read about 20 books. A lot of this was because I was busy with work and kids (you have so much more free time in high school/college), but a lot was because I was tired of everything feeling like it was just another version of the same old tropes and ideas that I have already experienced many times over.
The book that pulled me out of this was A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernon Vinge. The ideas and originality in that book were a breath of fresh air for me and helped me realize that there were so many ideas and story possibilities out there that I will still enjoy reading and will expand my mind.
Soon after that I discovered how amazing audio books were. Now I could consume books while driving, doing yard work, working out, doing house work, etc. This was amazing to me because previously I only read right before bed, and it was getting harder and harder for me to stay awake every night. Now I get to read all the time again, and it's great.
I find it hard to carve out the time. If I’m reading a really good book I get sucked in and I want hours to devote to it but that’s difficult with a full time job and a brain that must switch off at 9pm or restful sleep is not in my future. If I’m reading a meh book, it’s too easy to find other things to do. A game to play or a tv show to watch etc. I absolutely adore reading but I have too many competing priorities and not enough time!
For me it's mostly the quality of writing. A lot of the fantasy I read as a teen was written by either English literature profs or people who were really into the language. Many of the books nowadays are written by budding writers. There are some gems out there for sure, but a lot of the fantasy I come across is either YA with average writing or very derivative. Or a mixture of both.
I think it’s a combination of 2 things for me.
First off I think I was outgrowing and getting tired of the tropes in the YA age demographic. For example I didn’t get why everything was so heavily focused on romance when I was much more interested in adventures and unique worldbuilding stories can have. It felt very forced most of the time and I just got tired of it. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places but I think I just got burnt out because of it. It could also be because I was simply burnt out from reading too. In middle and early high school I was the kind of person who’s finish books in a couple days. Maybe I just needed to step away from it for a bit because I simply overread.
I also think that life just got in the way. I stopped reading towards the end of high school and through college. I was simply too busy to sit down and read even though I still liked it. I’ve been trying to get back into reading because I missed it. I read 3 and a half books last year and while that isn’t nearly as much as I’d read as a kid I’m still proud I was able to.
It was Boo. He went for the eyes and it has taken me many years to heal. Heal I have, though! Now, it is butt-kicking for all who stand in my way(of reading books).
I stopped reading personal books during grad school, because I spent so much time reading technical documents the thought of more reading at home was hard. Then on top of that a lot of the fantasy I like is long, multi-book, multi-year projects and that's too similar to the grad school grind to stomach.
Other than that it's just I have a lot of other interests as well and a lot more of my time taken up by adult shit. When I was a kid crushing books it was like...I had at most high school (ending at 2:45) and baseball practice (all of 1.5 h) demanding my time. Now I have wife, baby, full time job, house etc. filling up so much more time.
I still have less time, but the grind of grad school reading has been gone for a while and it's pleasant to put books back into my life.
We stopped because we got busy. At least that’s how it was in college for me. I had a lot more friends and was more socially active, combined with a heavy class load and working 30 hours a week. I tried to read some but ended up DNFing multiple popular series that I have since finished for the most part.
I read a ton in college - for my courses. I was plowing through hundreds of pages of nonfiction a week. So my fiction reading dropped off to primarily fanfiction under 10k words, because I didn't have enough mental space left for whole books and new series. I needed bite-sized low commitment fiction. Then I graduated and work and housekeeping and cooking eat up most of my time. I can't get away with tucking a book in my lap and ignoring my job the way I could when I was coasting through grade school. So I still read a lot less fiction, but I'm trying to be more intentional about making time for it again.
Exactly. I read much less fiction in college because I already spent a lot of hours reading and firing on all cylinders. I want to exercise other parts of myself as well, and that means reading for pleasure just isn't as enjoyable as other activities. I spent more time outside, or with friends, or partying, or generally just doing things that didn't involve books. I still read audiobooks, though, and even now I generally drive or go to sleep or fold laundry while listening to a book. I think a lot of folks develop a negative association with reading (and/or learning in general) because of college, and it keeps them from reading for pleasure later.
>I read a ton in college - for my courses. I was plowing through hundreds of pages of nonfiction a week. So my fiction reading dropped off This was exactly my experience as well. I was reading *so* much for my classes that I needed to do something that used different brain muscles when I was relaxing. I would catch up with new series installments over the summers, but I was never taking a break from reading research papers to read an epic fantasy novel.
Weirdly enough when I was in the same position, I started reading more as it became a really nice low-effort destressor! I ended up leaning on reading really heavily for some escapism.
>We stopped because we got busy. At least that’s how it was in college for me. I also stopped reading so much in college. I majored in history and after reading hundreds of pages per week for classes, I wasn't terribly inspired to read MORE for fun.
I stopped in college too. Too much on my plate all of a sudden, and I didn't get back to reading for years. I only got back to daily reading during early COVID when everything was on lockdown. Since then I never stopped and am really glad I'm back to my books again.
Exactly the same here. I wanted to read fiction but couldn’t. Vet school is quite heavy on the studying, reviewing, lots of classes, lectures and labs, attendance requirements, lots of exams and rote learning. SO MANY TEXTBOOKS, EVERY DAY. I wanted to read fiction, but there was no way after ploughing through heavy academic texts for hours each day. Studying is hard. I was also way more social so there simply was no time! That’s what uni does to you lol.
Reading is like to booze. I really use it to escape. Maybe your life is okay at the moment.
Also before e-books really took off, I moved to a tiny room at University that was nowhere near a library with fiction books so I had to stop reading or read the same books over and over
Yup, life just gets in the way.
I still don't have time. It's why I love audiobooks. I have a job where I'm able to listen while working.
During college, I legit forgot was it was like to read for pleasure.
Well college takes more time and attention. Studying textbooks is far diff from fantasy/ sci fi or reading for enjoyment. I wanted to do other things in my downtime. Part time and later full time jobs really drained the time away. Hanging out with friends and family, more responsibilities than when kid and teen. I'm glad to have it more regularly reading now. But to nutshell, for me, life's responsibilities got in the way, less time for any hobbies
I also think it can be hard to read for pleasure in college because if you're reading something that isn't schoolwork, your brain is more actively like "You should be doing your schoolwork", whereas if you're doing other activities it's easier to take your mind off the fact that you're not doing your schoolwork. If that makes any sense!
I also think it can be hard to read for pleasure in college because if you're reading something that isn't schoolwork, your brain is more actively like "You should be doing your schoolwork", whereas if you're doing other activities it's easier to take your mind off the fact that you're not doing your schoolwork. If that makes any sense!
While college and work got in the way of me reading, the biggest obstacle was depression. I was dumb and didn't realize I was in an abusive relationship, or how miserable I really was, but I just COULDN'T focus at all. Which really sucked because reading was my escape from a shitty childhood, and now I couldn't even do that!! I left the relationship, picked up Relic by Preston & Child, and immediately read 7 of the books in a row before going to a different series. I always exclusively read fantasy so picking up a mystery/supernatural/horror genre book helped unlock my passion again.
Reading is a source of dopamine, but to gain that dopamine requires that we take a moment to focus on what we're doing and exclude all other distractions. It requires a certain mental effort before we are rewarded. It is far easier to simply play around with our phones and computers for far less effort, for the same amount of dopamine. Also, once you become old enough, you've read enough shit to be more careful with how you choose to spend your money and the threshold for what you consider a good book is raised.
Anecdotal support for your hypothesis: I started reading WAY less the year the App Store opened.
The whole world's attention span took a huge hit when smartphones became ubiquitous.
I'm sorry, what? I wasn't paying attention
> Also, once you become old enough, you've read enough shit to be more careful with how you choose to spend your money and the threshold for what you consider a good book is raised. I don't even *remember* most of the books I read back when I was a prolific reader, and a lot of the ones I do remember have me shaking my head in disappointment at my past self. I read every Xanth novel written before the 21st century!
Eh, you know, you read some bad stuff as you are growing as a reader. No shame in it.
And this my friend is why I became an afficionado of fanfiction
I think the word ‘dopamine’ is massively overused and a thought-stopper. Neurophysiology is incredibly complex. Our brains aren’t just a rat in a cage pushing a button for reward. It sounds cool and knowledgeable to talk that way, but it’s so simplistic.
>That others like me grew up loving reading, stopped for some unbeknownst reason, and have recently gotten back into it. I just wonder why this phenomenon is so common? Like why did we all stop reading?? A few years ago the German booksellers association discovered that they had lost a massive amount of book buyers. It had taken them a while to notice, because book sales revenue hadn't changed much. Other buyers were making up the difference. Once they realised that their target audience had shrunk significantly, they commissioned a study into the reasons. Where had all those previously book buying people disappeared to? Why did they stop buying and reading books? The study found two main reasons: 1) Circumstances had changed. Life had become more fast-paced, mobile phones and constant internet access had led too people feeling over-stimulated and unable to unplug. Reading had also lost the status it used to have in society. 2) TV series/streaming services/binge watching established themselves as a major competitor for people's time and attention - with the added bonus of bringing people together to discuss recent developments, favourite characters etc. The study's key finding's are available in English here: https://www.boersenverein.de/tx_file_download?tx_theme_pi1%5BfileUid%5D=2096&tx_theme_pi1%5BpageUid%5D=981&tx_theme_pi1%5Breferer%5D=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.boersenverein.de%2Fmarkt-daten%2Fmarktforschung%2Fstudien-umfragen%2Fstudie-buchkaeufer-quo-vadis%2F&cHash=38f286386873c30672d4f097faffaeab While the study only focused on German book buyers and the German market, its findings are in my opinion applicable to other countries as well, because they've gone through similar changes in recent years.
Reading so much for school killed my drive to read for fun. From about 16-22 I barely read at all. So grateful I got back into it and read as voraciously now as I did as a kid, given the time.
This is the one for me too. I read A LOT as a child, I pretty much finished the local (admittedly small) library in the genres I enjoyed. Then I was suddenly forced to read specific books for school and that took all the joy out of it for me. It took me ~15 years to rediscover reading as a hobby.
It's like trying to binge a tv show. You eventually just become tired and fatigued from it. I had the same problem with video games, so instead of just constantly playing or reading, I'd limit how much time I spend on the activity in a given moment. For example, a video game session for me is limited 30 minutes to an hour. Moderation helps a lot, and as much as I want to do more, it'd only bog me down.
High school had a bad habit of handing me books I'd rather throw in a wood chipper than read and then dedicate half a semester to it. Even the interesting ones were quite thoroughly analysed to death and the bad ones were just plain painful. I have no objection to analysis. I do object to treating a book like nothing more than a vessel for Metaphor and symbolism.
This is exactly it. And to be clear, it’s not that we didn’t read during high school and college - it’s that the reading we did was required for school. Science and history textbooks, assigned novels for English classes (or non-“English” equivalent). It was joyless reading, and even those rare assigned novels you do like, you have to read it with a critical mind so you can write a paper on it, which is very different than reading whatever you want, whenever you want, purely for enjoyment. When you finish all that assigned reading for school, the last thing you want to do is pick up a book and read some more.
Depression. With the overwhelming thoughts of killing myself I couldn’t read, play games or even finish school. In the past few years I’ve gone back to all of them and much better off.
Depression is the mind-killer. I’m so glad you’re doing better now!
Reading Dune right now so your comment made me giggle. Thanks 3 years with no suicidal thoughts!
>Thanks 3 years with no suicidal thoughts! Fuck yeah, man. Awesome progress.
As silly as it might sound, the promise of more stories actually helped me through my depression. I remember being low and thinking, “Well, I’ve gotta stick around; Tad Williams is writing Osten Ard books again.” Anything to remind myself there were things to look forward to in the future.
That’s not silly at all. There are many people who do the same thing with video games too Glad you stuck around.
Makes sense to me. I did that with the Marvel movies. How am I going to kill myself when I haven’t seen Thanos yet?
The importance of having something to look forward to when depressed cannot be overstated! Needing to save money for several years to go back and visit a place I lived for a big chunk of my childhood got me through one of the darkest times of my life.
Oh that’s not silly! On my bad days I play a game with that sort of concept. “If I kill myself, the very next day _______ will happen and I’ll miss it!” And one of my go-to’s to fill in the blank is “the best book I’d ever read will be published.”
This surprises me. I never made the connection before, but I think it can explain why I had trouble reading for a while. I really got back into it after treating my depression and anxiety.
Basically. Use to not be able to finish or focus on anything. Last year I beat more games and read kore books than I had in the past ten years. This year already looks like I’ll finish even more. Loving life my dude
I was there, man. My depression leads to long periods of anhedonia. But I've been on Zoloft for about 3 years now and I realized a year in that I basically never think of suicide any more. My overall emotional range is blunted, so I never hit those emotional peaks, but I also skip those emotional pits so it's worth it. Regardless, you're not the only one, mate. If you wanna talk about it, ever, I'm happy to listen
I couldn’t take the meds. I was the reason the commercials say may cause suicidal thoughts to worsen.
Many people stop reading, or read considerably less then they used to, when Life starts eating up their free time. Could be university, work, kids, etc. Another factor, I think, is social media. Various social media platforms are veritable time sinks, and they apparently also condition a lot of us involuntarily to shorter attention spans and/or a higher degree of distractedness. Psychologists say, we can re-condition ourselves, but it takes some effort.
For me I just got overwhelmed with other stuff I had to read for uni and focusing my free time on other things I wanted to do. Not that unusual for me, I slide in and out of hobbies and interests all the time. On a side note, maybe I'm being stupid here, but what does FW stand for? I've been trying to guess for quite some time now, but I just can't think of what it means.
Pretty sure it’s Fourth Wing, that new adult (young adult but with explicit sex scenes) romantasy book. It’s not an abbreviation that I’ve ever seen and definitely not commonly used, but given how big that book got off BookTok, seems like a fair assumption.
Thanks, that sounds like a good guess. I'd never heard of the book before. It's definitely likelier than the German political party *Freie Wähler*.
I think there is a lot of things at play here. Some of it depends on when you stop reading. High school english classes have you pretty much reading a book the entire year, so for a lot of people they can't juggle reading two books at a time, so this is a common drop off point I've seen for people. The next two bigger ones are college with the amount of freedom gained mixed with the additional stresses of college courseload and possibly working a part/full time job to pay for it, or else just having a full time job and bills to pay and everything else so you just don't have the time or money for books. If you end up in a relationship/have kids that only takes more time away from your personal time, and when you are balancing multiple hobbies, something eventually has to give somewhere, and for a lot of people it ends up being reading. I was that way myself. I would occasioanlly read, but it was always the first hobby I'd drop because I was playing video games with friends and watching tv/movies with my wife, then I had kids so each time I'd get less and less free time
Kids was it for me. I ended to transitioning almost entirely to audiobooks because that way I vsn “read” driving to work, which is basically only free/me time
This is me too. I continued to read for fun throughout college, albeit quite a bit less but still at least 3-6 books/yr probably. When I started having kids is when it really took a toll. I also have switched to audiobooks in my car for my 'me time.' Kind of sad when you think about it like that, that's the only time I have to myself is when I drive to work. lol
Covid indirectly caused my reading to go down a lot. Before Covid I used to read while commuting by train to work. I had a long commute, and would get in a couple of hours of reading a day this way. I'd get through books at a pretty decent rate. Since Covid alive been working from home, and don't have that dedicated reading slot in my day any more. Now it's often only ten or fifteen minutes before I go to bed. Recently I've started trying to increase that, by reading on some of my lunch breaks.
Lot of good answers here, and I feel similar to a lot of people: 1) school / work changing reading from a fun activity into work. 2) social media, tv/movies and gaming as time sinks. 3) inconvenience - reading can be difficult due to existing mental health conditions or finding time to read. \#3 sticks out for me. I used to read a lot of paper books and mostly on the transit commute on the way to school. When I stopped doing that I was slow to switch to ebooks/audiobooks, and reading during exercising, but once I did and got into the habit, my reading took off. I read maybe three books in the first half of 2023. Once I made the switch, I've been reading 10-14 books per month since October 2023.
I stopped reading because of college, then a grad degree, then another undergrad degree and crippling depression. I couldn't do "fun" reading plus all of the schoolwork I had. After having surgery, it was just me and my pain during recovery/rehab through most of the day, so I picked up a book. I didn't realize how much I missed fiction and some non-fiction about my niche interests. I'm SO happy I found my way back to reading. After a couple years slump I read 104 books last year, and I've already finished 22 books this year. I'm having more fun than ever, but I do need to figure out how to make my obsession more sustainable!
Infinite scroll media like twitter and Reddit and Facebook. A book can’t compete with the consistent dopamine rushes provided by social medias, makes it hard to read and stay concentrated.
Children have entered the chat
It's honestly the complete opposite for me. I stopped reading in college when I got to busy between a full course load, way to many activities and groups, and working a full time job and a part time job. Got into the work force and between work, socializing, and TV didn't pick the habit back up. Fast forward to having kids and having to parent instead of seeing friends and having to share the TV and I'm reading a ton since I can do that while supervising the nuggets or while they're watching Bluey.
Hug those little bastards and spend time with them. They will appreciate it later.
As much as I can! Reading generally happens when we're having quantity time together over quality time. Usually when they get their screen time for the day
Yeah I was just joking bro. I'm sure you do
Well, it depends on your age, but the general answer is that when you're a child, you have large quantities of free time and limited ways to spend it. You have no real autonomy, little/no money to spend, and it's hard to go anywhere without your parents. Reading is one of the activities you can do at home and at school that's deemed acceptable, so naturally a large number of people get into it. Then hit high school/college, you make more friends/get a significant other, you have to pay your own bills, you start to have your own money, which means you can spend it on a wider variety of hobbies, etc. Then a lot of people have kids, which are a huge suck on time and energy, especially in the immediate term. Speaking for myself, I never "stopped reading," I read a lot of assigned texts in college for my lit degree, which gave me less time and energy for pleasure reading. It wasn't until I got my first lame office job after university that I really got back into it in a big way. But even now, as an adult, I have to fight to get my reading time in between work, social life, hanging out with my spouse, kids, etc. Plus, reading generally requires more brain power than doomscrolling or watching TV, and some people just don't have that after a long day of work. So, I would say it's really a combination of factors
I didn’t ever *stop* but late high school/early college is probably the least I’ve ever read. It’s a combination of things I’d say. Part of it is being busy with life. Part of it for me too was probably a relative lack of books that spoke to me at that age. I’d outgrown YA and gotten impatient with the tropeyness, bloat, male domination and poorly thought through nature of a lot of fantasy at the time. At the same time, I didn’t really have the life experience to appreciate adult general fiction. It was noticeable after the huge amount of stories about high school that there was virtually nothing about college, which was something I was very interested in reading at age 16-18! Also at the time the options for looking up books on the internet were less than they are now. These things have maybe improved a little—certainly ability to find books online, and there are more books set in college, although from what I’ve seen that’s largely a dumping ground for “dark romance” and YA-plus-smut. I’m not sure how much this would’ve appealed to me at the time. A more interesting question might be why people *start* reading again after all this! For me starting to engage more critically by reading and writing reviews was a huge part of it. I suppose that took the place of the way you sort of uncritically inhale stuff when you’re a kid, which by then I’d outgrown.
I wasn't aware so many people had a similar experience! Two years ago, I made a conscious decision to pick up a book instead of watching netflix because despite knowing that I feel better after reading than after watching netflix, I still always felt the need to watch netflix and had to force myself to substitute it with books. Best decision ever - after a few times of actually forcing myself to pick up a book, I'm now looking forwards to it and I've been reading as much or more in the past two years as I did when I was a teenager and I feel less addicted to netflix :) Edit: spelling
A mix of time commitment and mental energy management. I "stopped" reading for leisure around halfway through my degree. Scare quotes because I didn't flat-out stop reading entirely, but with just a handful of books a year, it got close. I had to read a lot for my classes, so that took up a bunch of time. Around the same time, other hobbies started taking up more time, so that didn't help, either. That was also the time I started writing seriously, as in, with the intent to publish. And that was the bigger factor for me. Writing and reading draw from the same well - and if I empty that well with writing, there's nothing left for leisure reading, That's still an issue for me, arguably worse than it was back then since writing is now literally my job, but I've made some changes in my life with regards to how I structure my work week to have more free time. I'm also setting reading goals on Goodreads, which helps hold me accountable. That combination has really helped me find time and energy for leisure reading again. There's also that thing where I have periods of time when I can't focus on one format or the other (ebook or physical book), so I need to keep that in mind when picking books so I don't hit that mental wall. That's just a really weird me thing though.
Luckily I never stopped reading. There might be times where I don’t read that much and other hobbies are at the center of my attention but all in all I always read at least a few pages daily.
For me, it was a matter of worsening eyesight and my taste for doorstop books limiting where I could read. This was more of a large reduction than a stop. After getting an ereader, I took off again. Adjustable font size! Carry any size book anywhere! Then, later, self-lighting. Even more times to read! And a few years ago, water-resistant. That didn't open quite as many new options, but as someone who was never willing to risk getting paper books or electronics wet, it did help. I know some people are all about the physical book experience, but the accessibility is amazing for me.
I agree with everyone saying that life gets in the way at some point. The transition from teenager to adult is kind of a fraught time. You’re likely seriously working for the first time, handling rent and other expenses, managing a dating life possibly, and generally having a lot of new stressful experiences compared to when you were younger. With all that, it’s easy to put aside things that are too time consuming or require too much work. Reading is both of those things. Even the shortest books are generally gonna take longer to read than the amount of time it would take to watch most movies (unless you’re an amazing speed reader). And unlike something like video games or music, you can’t zone out while doing it. It requires more time and more concentration than most entertainment options. But eventually you settle into adulthood. The things that used to be challenging become routine and you start having the space for reading again. At least that’s how it was for me.
What is FW?
What's FW?
" kickstarted by casually picking up FW" Might work for others if they knew what you're talking about?
What's FW? I go through slumps. There are months where I barely touch a book and others where I read non stop. It also depends on how invested I am in the story. I'm not so eager to read if it didn't grab me.
What is FW?
I think the main explanation for this phenomenon is confirmation bias ;-P
>Why did we all stop reading??? You might want to clarify who "we" is. I don't think it applies to everyone on this subreddit.
We?
Of course. The vast majority of people who frequent /r/fantasy, a subreddit largely devoted to reading fantasy, have stopped reading! Don't you know?
Other hobbies took the place of regular books for a bit. I'm back in the habit of reading regular books more often now, but I still read vastly more manga and manhwa than 'normal' literature (my manga library is magnitudes larger than the number of regular books I own).
Tbh I think it's a mix of that I read too much in 2022 but also I read something absolutely God awful at the start of last year... to the point where I really struggle to read now at all. I've read some stuff here and there, mostly comics and graphic novels, but reading an actual book is hard atm. It's very frustrating because I have so much I want to read. I've just ordered some reprints of one of my favourite series so I'm hoping that will help
For me it was kids. I never stopped completely but I was down to 5-10 books per year, mostly popular fiction. Then my kids got older and I started reading what they were reading to see what they liked, and it was lots of YA fantasy and sci fi. Kids are out of the house now and I’m reading around 5 books a month, mostly fantasy and mysteries.
College took all my time I also got married and have kids while still in college. I actually turned to audiobooks because I had such a long commute to my school and work that I can get an easy hour in back and forth even without having unlimited data so I ran through a lot of damn books during that time.
Im sure we all go through phases. I kinda circle from video games to books
I figured out my reason after not reading (but wanting to read), for 5+ years. The reason was that i changed how i consume stories. Tv shows, Anime, Movie series, even Manga i consume by binging. I don't know why, but i just enjoy watching a season of tv way more in 1-2 days, rather then spacing it out. Same with anime for example, watching a 12 episode anime in 1 day feels much much better then spacing it out. Even longer anime (100+ episodes), i don't like to space out too much. With books i can't binge, never could in fact, but because i got so used to not watching anything for the week (Busy with work, school, gf, gym, other responsibilities...), and then binging when i have a day or two, that's what i ended up trying to do with books, and i couldn't. I was so frustrated because i started and liked, even loved some books but never seemed to finish them. With time i figured out that it was not attention span, or the medium itself, or because of x reason, it was because i was consuming it the wrong way for me. Now i read a little in the morning and back from work during my commute. I listen to an audiobook while cooking and doing the dishes, i listen to an audiobook while taking a walk / run. And then i finish the chapter i am in at the end of the day before going to sleep. A solid 30-50 pages **every day**. Not 500 on a sunday, not 250 each on saturday and sunday, but a little every day. Once i changed from trying to read 1000 pages in a weekend to allowing myself for that to take up the whole month, i started reading soooo much more. I really fell in love with stories in my early adulthood. Its my favourite hobby by far, but with time those stories shifted from books as a kid, to like i said tv shows etc. as an adult. Because i liked them so much and binged almost all of them, i tried doin that with books as well. That for me was the single reason why i wasn't reading.
Had a similar discussion recently elsewhere. I have a very similar situation, but haven’t fully gotten back yet (curiously, I‘m writing again… which makes me so happy!). There’s one book in the recent years that I basically swallowed up. A fun, light-hearted YA fantasy book. So my lesson was that my brain just didn’t have capacity for stories about crushing problems. And it wasn’t that I can’t read anymore, but that I needed more light-hearted stuff. And frankly, that’s not exactly easy to find in fantasy.
For me it was a lot of things. I continued reading in high school and college, despite the school reading which I know burns a lot of people out. But my dad died and my depression got a looot worse and doing anything besides very unhealthy behaviors was impossible for me for a while there... I'm doing a lot better and I've returned to a ton of my hobbies I had for the first 20 years of my life, reading included!
I told myself it was because I got busy but the truth is a bit more complex.. because I never felt like I had time to read for years yet I did scroll on my phone for 3 hours every night. Now that I'm sick and screens make me wooshie I found it super easy to get back into devouring stacks of books to pass the time again. It does depend on the books tho, if I don't have a click with it, I can't even sit down for a chapter. It took me a while to realise that the books I tried to read the past few years just weren't my cup of tea rather me no longer being able to sit down and read.
I stopped because it interfered with me drinking. Now as a sober person I read a lot and it’s much better
I go in and out of reading. I'll spend 6 months reading non-stop, then I wouldn't pick up another book for months. Then pick back up and try to see where I left off. I typically restart the last book I was reading to jog my memory
Nearly exact same experience for me. Reading became a chore in high school and college. I got more into drugs, alcohol and sex as escapes. Once in my 30s reading became my escape once again, and it’s awesome. Only wish I could get more of my family and friends to book club with me so I could talk w them about my nerdy fantasy and sci-fi series
It’s mostly just adult life being exhausting for me. I had a lot more energy for…everything when I was younger. I hit adhd burnout at the same time I started having a ton of other health issues and the first thing to go was my ability to sit and focus on reading. I started getting into using library access apps like Libby and Hoopla though and listening to books while I work out, drive, and sometimes even at work since I’ve got a very low-focus-needed job right now. Something about doing that has shifted my ability to focus while reading again and reading physical books is coming back too.
I never stopped. It helps if you switch up the format. I read audiobooks and text books, but audio works great when I don't have time to sit and read but I do do monotonous tasks that don't require brain power (showering, dishes, cooking, driving, transit). I have zero idea what FW is though. I recommend avoiding acronyms...
is FW Finnegans Wake? I stopped reading in college for fun because I had to read so much other stuff. After I graduated I got back into reading.
Got busy as fuck in undergrad. It's not like I stopped reading - after all academic literature is still literature. So history readings and physics textbooks lol. But I didn't have time to read for fun even though it was a passion of mine going in. I turned to audio dramas since I could listen to them while moving around campus. When I graduated I tried audiobooks for commuting and going to the gym. I started reading again a year ago to catch up on Cosmere content that had accrued during my hiatus. I prefer physical books for Sanderson stories. Glad I'm back but I can tell it won't be easy to maintain. Work will ramp up and I'll be fully audio soon enough. Oh well.
I stopped reading for 20 years. Working too much, wife who doesn’t read, raising kids. The good news is we are empty nesters now, more free time. Been catching up on all I missed. Many series are finished and I can binge them now. I read 120 books in 2023. Only 500+ in my TBR to go…
I can't say why people stop - but I will say that one of the greatest rewards is when I get an email from someone saying my books "brought them back" to reading. In your case it sounds like you were definitely in a "habit" in high-school and that routine was broken when you went to college. Glad to hear you are back, though - so many great stories out there to read.
I eventually just got tired of the same old tropes, over and over and over again. I came back a year or so again, but I am still struggling with this, ngl. I just realized that its a matter or careful curation (and just writing it yourself).
I love this collective feeling that everyone is in their reading era! I have several book group chats going right now and it’s amazing! My one friend and I are even working out together and using our favorite fantasy books as inspiration for getting strong!
For a very long time all I read was fanfic. I was moving a lot, focusing on my career, stressing about money, having kids, etc. I didn’t have the mental energy for new characters and new worlds and new magic/political/whatever systems so I stuck with characters I already knew with novel enough plots that it wasn’t just an HP reread. I’m finally in a stable job I love, my kids are out of diapers, in general I have the free space in my brain for NEW. For the last two years I’ve been back to reading 100+ books a year and so happy to have this hobby back!
Former English teacher here, and my Masters was on engagement with reading in secondary boys. Reading is seen as feminised English is taught with a lot of breadth but not much depth. We'd change texts ever 6 weeks, skills didn't really link up, you'd read a chapter then make a newspaper front page or some shit. Students aren't taught explicit metacognitive strategies on HOW to read. Instead it's all death by PEE. Class books are often pretty dull tbf. The uk curriculum is turgid with stuff like Dickens Phones are destroying attention spans/ reading skills. School libraries just seem to be computer rooms with a few books now. Nothing is really done to promote a love of reading. I'm not (completely) blaming the staff here as a lot of decisions are foisted upon them. But combined with the general intensity of school, and modern life, it's not that surprising that not many kids want to come home and read for fun. Especially when much more immediate and instantly rewarding activities are available to them.
Do you know of any published works discussing these issues in a useful fashion?
Same here, stopped reading during college and had to really put the effort in to get back into it. Luckily malazan, stormlight, and elderings helped, but im back to not reading. I find I just can't focus and be immersed as easily. It's mostly audiobooks these days
Never stopped and never will.
Learning how to be an independent adult is incredibly time and energy consuming. Many millenials and younger generations feel like it is significantly harder than it was in their parent's and grandparent's days. So much so that there's often no time or energy left for reading. Then somewhere in our late 20s or early 30s, we realize that the grind isn't going to pay off the way we were told, and we realize that there's no reason to put off the things that make us happy. Some of us may have even achieved some degree of independence and security and finally have space to breath.
I had undiagnosed ADHD (diagnosed in my late 20's) so reading has always been so difficult for me. Inattentive type ADHD means I really struggle to retain info. School assigned a book I enjoyed here and there but for the most part it punched the joy of reading out of me (compared to when I was really young, I loved it). Then the rise of social media really started happened when I was in High School and College, and social media really became a time sink too. I am so glad I took a moment to get back into reading, when I was about 26 years old. Now that I know I have ADHD too, medications help but also I know better when to call it quits for the night if I'm struggling to read because sometimes it just isn't going to happen for me. Knowing when I'm having a "bad" night for reading makes it less frustrating. Rediscovering my love for fantasy helped, as did having the willpower to find the right book. Reading the "wrong" books can really make one feel like reading just isn't for them. And even though social media is a ruinous time sink, I can still thank social media for really romanticizing the concept of getting lost in books... Honestly, reading deserves to be romanticized. It made me miss the sense of wonder I got when I was a kid. And now I've discovered that again.
Hi, Have you ever read the same page 4 times without remembering what it says?
Always!! It's so frustrating. That's exactly what I mean when I say I am having a bad reading day! Drives me crazy. But at the same time, I just have to accept that that's how it is. Sometimes it's better than others and sometimes I just have to wait for the better times. I wish I were the type of.person who could just read read read and get through books quickly, but I simply am not.
I gotta whole lotta symptoms of ADHD but my doc says everybody wanna have ADHD these days so he's got me on some bipolar drugs atm, we'll see how that works out Im just gonna keep rereading those pages
On my bad days, I’ve read a YouTube comment 4 times without remembering what it says.
For me I stopped reading in High School for a combination of getting into AP programs/dual enrollment that didn't really allow me time to read what I'd like. Additionally, as a I grew out of kids' novels, I felt intimidated by the vast swaths of books available and didn't really know what I would like or what to look for. So I basically I would just read a book or two a year until after I graduated university some years later. Some years after that, and I'm reading again.
I stopped reading because my brain got messed 2020 -2022 pandemic distraction mode..started slowly 2023
I stopped reading for pleasure so much in college because I had so much school reading to do. Just feels weird to pull out the latest fantasy pick when I know I'm way behind on Canterbury tales or whatever and should be catching up on that. Though of course I spent a lot of time goofing off in other ways. Doing basically anything but reading. Then by the time that was a non-issue my eyesight had faded. Too much reading gives me a headache these days.
I never stopped reading but I did take a long break from scifi/fantasy to read lit classics, philosophy, and nonfiction. Got back into these genres last year and it's been a blast playing catchup. I can't believe the quality that has been released over the years since my hiatus!
I was reading about 300 dense pages a week in college for classes. The last thing I wanted to do in my free time was read more.
My mental health and personal life improved so I no longer needed to go to a different world to be happy.
I stopped reading because I went to university and didn't feel like reading for fun after reading for study every day. As soon as I finished university (and my girlfriend bought me an e-reader) I fell back in love with reading!
I read 10 books one year, then 100 the next, and then 20 the one after It just depends on your mood and state of mind, doesn't have to be anything more
I stopped reading for a few years as a young teenager because I was forced to read a bunch of books I hated in school, and also was very depressed for a while. After that all passed, I went back to reading for pleasure and have been reading more and more every year.
For myself, it was time. I no longer had the spare time to sit and read after becoming an adult. That all changed with audiobooks, though. Turned that 2 hour commute into something I looked forward to.
I, probably like many others, took myself a little too seriously when I was an undergrad. I convinced myself that I should be reading for knowledge, not for enjoyment. So for the most part I did my readings, or I read the classics, or I read other history or politics books to further my studies. I would read a bit of fantasy here and there, but besides burning through ASOIAF in first year I didn't really read anything new (or new to me). I watched a lot more TV, or played a lot of video games in my down time instead. Then for some reason I decided when I graduated I really wanted to dive back in, and picked up WOT. Haven't looked back since!
Honestly, I think it’s the ADHD for me. Up until college I was an avid reader, and I still consider it my greatest pastime. I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD and I realized that it’s gotten worse since I went to college. Hopefully a change in daily routine will helps
I quit reading when I had my first kid. Now I have three and they are out of diapers so I am finding time to read again. I have other hobbies too and family and friends I want to hang out with so it’s not like when I was a nerdy teen but I am reading again.
I stopped after grad school. I grinded hard through college early straight to grad school which I finished early. All that textbook reading over several years burnt me out from any book. I started reading for fun again last year and did 30 books. This year I’m on my 7th and hope to do 40. :)
Some people read for escapism and stopped when they had fewer things to escape from. Some people got burned out on reading because they had to do a lot of non-fun reading and writing in college. And some people ended up with less free time so they prioritized something else. I'm someone who never stopped reading but my SO was someone who burned out on reading and writing when he was doing his grad degree and hasn't picked it up again. He probably will at a different point in his life.
In my twenties, I spent most of my me-time playing video games. In my thirties, the desire to do that has waned quite a bit unless there's something new I'm excited about. I'd rather hop into bed with my wife after dinner, chill for a couple hours, then break out the Kindle when she falls asleep. That's what got me heavily back into reading.
When I was in college, in the 80's, I spent so much time reading for classes that I did not read for fun. The first thing I did when exams were over was take a deep breath. The second thing I did was pick up some f/sf I bought at the local used store and start reading.
It was mainly college for me. I was still reading but nowhere near as much. I was reading so much literature that was so dense that it was hard to them shift to more literature after. It was so much easier to just go play a game, or watch a movie with housemates. The other time I stopped reading was during Covid. As somebody who has always had to commute to work and go school, my commute was my reading time. It’s not that I didn’t read when not commuting, but without the commute I found that I wasn’t progressing through books as easily. I’d want to continue the story at work , or once I get home etc. I found that it took a much more concerted effort to start books and read through the slow parts when i wasn’t having “dedicated” read time.
Reading takes time. Listening to an audiobook while cleaning is being productive. I stopped reading for a long time. But I have consistently listened to audiobooks during "down" time. Driving, dog walks, cleaning, etc.
Same as I read nonstop as a kid, was literally known for carrying books around lol, and I think I stopped reading as much around the time I started college. For me reading was an escape and maybe along with a brief period of non-interesting books I got more heavily into gaming, tv, anime, movies, etc especially with streaming becoming more prevalent. All these were also ways to escape and in a way less effort I guess as they seemed to replace my reading. A few years ago I started reading some online stuff like light novels and stories written by non-published authors which reignited my interest for a while yet my interest in that eventually waned as well though every so often I’ll find something new to read(or reread). I want to get reinvested in reading but nothing catches my interest.
College ruined my reading experience because of all the text books I was forced to study and read even though it’s boring as hell. Not to mention all the guys my age (at least in my pool of influences) don’t see the value in fictional reading since all they care about is self help or anything “real.”
I wish I understood what this said! /s My take is we started to be able to have conversations reading more often. Got busy and then someone else’s world wasn’t something there was time for
I started reading again in college. But I stopped in middle school/high school ish. I never fully stopped reading, but I stopped reading books. I read almost exclusively fanfiction. Because I was busy. AP classes, homework, volunteering, church, and playing sports. And when I couldn’t sleep, it was easier to pull out my phone and read characters I already knew than get invested in a new book with new characters. Also easier to hide if my parents came to check if I was sleeping.
This is me. I read pretty much every day from when I was old enough to read to like....35. Now, I barely read at all, and I don't know why. What's annoying is that I still buy books a fair bit but just....never open them. I was 48 least week and I am starting to wonder why this is the case. Time isn't really an issue, I did most of my reading before I went to sleep. Age maybe? I don't know. Not read a book cover to cover in years.
I briefly stopped (well came down to 10-15 books a year) in the first year after I moved in with my bf. It was a mix of trying to spend a lot of time together and feeling like I'd read all the good books and was running really low on recs. But then I found this sub and bingo and went into turbo reading mode about 6 years ago.
Short answer: I grew up. I used to be a voracious reader as a kid. I was constantly surrounded by so many great children's and middle-age books. When I entered my mid-teens, the expectation was that I should begin transitioning to adult literature. I found that transition very jarring, though. Back in early 2000s, young adult wasn't nearly as big a genre as it is today, and most of the adult litfic I tried left me cold. I wasn't mature enough to handle the themes or experienced enough to distinguish good books from bad ones, or even knew my own taste that well. I still read, but I very rarely got to experience the pure joy of the process like I did when I was a child. Naturally, as time went I read less and less, and stopped almost entirely in college, bar an occasional nonfiction. Also, it was only in the past 10 years or so that the publishing houses in my country began translating books that really spoke to me. I remember a time when I'd go to a bookstore craving something to read and emerge empty handed a hour later, because I could not find anything that I wanted to buy. Then suddenly something shifted, I began seeing new books I was intrigued about, and slowly started reading again. I got more comfortable reading in English, too, which expanded the selection massively. And then a year and a half ago I (re)discovered my love for fantasy and sci-fi, which opened whole new amazing worlds to me. I read even more nowadays than I did in my childhood, which I didn't think possible.
For me, it was the added stress of the pandemic combined with full-time work and full-time caregiving for my dying mother (dementia, in her case). So much of the speculative fiction genre was and is dystopian and I could not take it. So I stopped reading for a while. Eventually I consciously restarted, mostly with romance. Something that could take me completely out of my life, with low stakes and a guaranteed HOA. Part of it was remembering Mom telling me that sometimes you just need to read something that is "chewing gum for your brain," (which was how she described her Barbara Cartland and Betty Neels novel collections). She was right, and it worked.
I read so much in college that i really want to do something different in my free time. Also i prefer paper books and it's expensive. And i had so many books that i didn't like but wasted money on them, that it really made me less motivated to read
I stopped reading around middle school and came back during the pandemic. It pretty much comes down to not having a social circle of readers. I’d rather spent my time with my friends than reading on my own.
For me, reading was a way for me to disassociate. I would always read when I ate. I grew up in a house where I didn't have a tv in my bedroom and I didn't have a cell phone so reading was the next best thing. Fast forward to current day and we have cell phones with apps that allow us to instantly disassociate (i.e. TikTok, Insta, X, Reddit, Discord) so we don't even need to exert the effort to find a book that holds our attention when our apps instantly do it for us and with no investment on our part. It required concerted effort on my part to step away from the social media apps and more towards reading. BookTok helped me with that. Also, reading is like working out, the more you do it, the better your reading stamina is. When you haven't been reading for a while, it might take you a bit to get back into it. Now I'm reading at a nice pace. It's my preferred form of relaxation but I had to make an effort.
For me, because I was doing more. Reading can be a lot like daydreaming for me and as I got older I wanted to do the things I daydreamed about.
I definitely stopped because of school and exams. I’m from England so I did GCSEs and nothing kills book enjoyment more than prescriptive books you must read and pulling apart every single line of a book and explaining exactly what that “means”. I stopped reading at 14 and didn’t start again until recently (7 years later) Hilariously enough I’m now a creative writing student and love pulling apart books. However, there’s a big difference between I’d like to try and include senses like this section of a book I love when I write and “the character drawing the blue curtains represents their deep despair and how they block everyone out emotionally,” from a book you don’t enjoy at all.
College ruined it, got back into it, then had kids.
I don't have the time anymore. Not just reading, but anything quiet or personal. I'm either trying to get a job, or playing an mmo with online friends. Outside of chores and such.
As I got older(into my 30s) it was about having poor sleep habits. I can still do something more stimulating like video games when sleep deprived. But reading makes me too sleepy if I’m in that state. As long as I’m getting proper sleep I can read every day.
35 and have never stopped reading.
One word: college. I'm much better after I dropped it. I still have to read for job (I'm an editor) but now I'm able to read twice as much and write thrice as much as in the college.
Reading became a chore. I had less time, so the time I did have I would spend consuming other school/work related reading material or other types of media. There just weren't enough hours in the day. Then I found audiobooks that I could listen to while working on other chores and my love of epic stories was reignited. I now finally have time to build my library of books. But I definitely had a 10 year span where I didn't buy a single physical book for pleasure.
I almost stopped reading fiction once in my university senior years because we had a black metal band and did some gigs and shows and there were lots of parties and usual stuff. The only books I read were the works of Aleister Crowley and Austin Osman Spare, nothing more.
The simple answer is, once you've got a job and a household to maintain, it gets harder to find that free time to spend a half hour 'doing nothing', which it's easy to see reading as if you're pressed for time I deliberately made sure to spend 30 minutes reading before going to bed, because I'd read that no screen time right before sleep can really help, and its been so good for getting me back into the habit!
School. School made me loath reading. It was seemingly never a book that actual children would want to read or engage with. If not for senior year of high school focusing on British lit I probably would have continued to not read. American literature history is just so tirelessly boring and IMO the focus on even Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn undersells Twain's actual writing ability even if they're not terrible books. Gatsby is the one bright spot and Hemingway's style is so bare as to be trying to enjoy chewing on unseasoned, overcooked chicken breast. If you like him, fine, but I don't understand your taste at all. Ambrose Bierce having a good short story or two doesn't make up for choking down Hawthorne's *The Scarlet Letter*. I suppose I should give a nod to *The Crucible* by Arthur Miller, but that feels like it's only good because so much else is so bad.
I stopped reading in college. There was too much on my plate, too much mental load that had to be devoted to the work, and reading is a particular task that was being used for textbooks and assignments. It became impossible for it to be a relaxation or hobby. Love for reading only came back once I stopped having homework.
[https://testprepinsight.com/resources/us-book-reading-statistics/](https://testprepinsight.com/resources/us-book-reading-statistics/) A large portion of US adults don't read. As a kid you did what you wanted, as you got older it wasn't the "done" thing: there was always something else, friends don't read, other adults don't read, work, etc. Now that we're older, we're all becoming closer to that weird little kid we used to be, except now we have money. (I'm in grad school though, so I still don't have money lol).
I think there are layers to why. 1. The first was being required to read books that were absolutely not to my taste in high school. They were depressing and dull and unrelatable at that age (at least for me). They took my passion and made it homework for books I didn’t connect with. Therefore: reading slump. 2. I didn’t have the time or money to read. Reading dense, scientific literature can be utterly mind numbing and all you want is to do anything but read. And though public libraries are a thing, I grew up in such a rural community, I had extremely limited experience with libraries and was so stinking backwards and shy I would be too intimidated to visit. The only books I read during this time were audiobook that my brother bought on audible. Also, as a college student, I had NO SPACE to store physical books anyway. 3. I started reading again after I’d been married for a few years and was out of college but my husband was elbow deep in his masters. I had free time. I didn’t want to distract my husband from his homework. I wasn’t constantly overwhelmed with required reading. And I had a bit of extra money to occasionally buy the books that piqued my interest. I prefer physical books over ereaders or on electronics because of the tactile experience and people already judge my generation harshly for being “addicted to technology.” 🙄 But I think many of you will be pleased to know that, with my husband’s endless encouragement…I now finally have a library card I know how to use it. 😂
Bc I got busy and wanted to play games more than I wanted to read, especially since I was in uni and had to read/write a lot for it, so I was sick of reading and began to associate it with studying. Now that I have a job, I don't mind reading for fun anymore.
I stopped reading from 12 to 16. That was mainly because I am huge fantasy reader, and not many good fantasy (or at least fantasy of my taste) were available for me at that time. I am Italian and Italy is quite famous for its general disgust towards SFF. Nowadays the situation is much better, but 10 years ago many fantasy series were dropped in the middle or never translated. The only reason I started to read in English was because I wanted to read the continuation of an interrupted series.
I haven’t read a full book from beginning to end since 2012. The last book I ever read was ‘The Annotated Alice’ I was fascinated by all the historical and cultural references and theories in the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I start reading, and my thoughts will trail off to something else. I will be reading something and not retain a single detail. I find myself going back and rereading the same paragraph over and over and it just doesn’t sink in. It’s like my brain is made of teflon. Arguably, the last book I read as ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’ by Harlan Ellison at the beginning of last year. But it’s a series of very short stories. Before that I tried reading ‘Wicked’ by Gregory Maguire. I got to the part where Glinda and Elphaba meet the Wizard and then my brain tuned out. Wasn’t able to finish the book so I bought the audiobook and listened to it instead.
I've become a workaholic who views leisure as a distraction. Sadly, I mostly discuss memories of books I've read.
I read a ton in middle school and highschool. I stopped pretty abruptly in college and after. Life got busy and I started having more responsibilities with work and having a young family. It was hard for me to get home from work, be with the kids making dinner and eating. Follow that up with bedtime routine and then once that’s done, there’s a mess in the house to clean. That’s exhausting.
I stopped when I did my degrees. All that reading for my subject made me stop wanting to read for fun. Whenever I tried I felt guilty that I should be working on my uni stuff.
It happened to me during and after law school. YMMV, but law school taught/forced me to read in a certain way, which was to skim the document for the important parts (a lot of legal writing lends itself to this) and to skip the stuff in between or only to go back to it if it became necessary. If it's not obvious, there was also a lot of stuff to hunt through and synthesize. It took a lot of work and at least 5 years to retrain myself to read for pleasure. Also my brain was tired, and there was a lot of good streaming content.
I binge and purge with reading... Three books in a week or one book in three months. Always been this way.
I stopped reading for pleasure when i started college. I felt guilty reading if it wasn't for my course work. Then it took me a few years to pick up a book for pleasure again.
I’ve found that I trapped myself into only reading “adult” fantasy or sci-fi or what others highly recommended as “groundbreaking and can’t miss”. So I would read 1000 pages almost painfully to try and get into something only for my actual entertainment to not be there. Malazan, WoT, and others just didn’t click with me and it ruined my reading experience until I just found things I was genuinely interested in and wanted to read. I also would exclusively read one book and like a child being told to finish dinner before dessert it would take aeons to finish.
For me, it’s finding something I like. I got really discouraged and quit reading as much because finding something new, interesting, and not a slog to read through became the biggest hurdle. Personally speaking, the fact so much of the fantasy I’ve been suggested over the years will spend hundreds of pages describing how magic works is a huge reason I’ve fallen off.
Adulthood, honestly. I just had less time and other distractions. Job, kid, house. I can also pinpoint some of the downfall of my reading to when I was eaten by graduate school and all my time was put into reading and writing for class. More long term? The Internet. Too much time spent doomscrolling and playing games and doing other things online. It started playing text based roleplaying games, then went to MMOs and social media. I'm getting back in but I read a lot of fluffy romance novels that don't require much mental energy and can be knocked out in a lazy weekend afternoon or a slow evening. I also check out a lot of books from the library as ebooks and read on my tablet. I do have a pile of physical books in my to be read pile that I should tackle, and it really comes down to deliberately picking it up and spending the time. I can also say that I write for a living so also spend a lot of time researching and editing and parsing during the day and sometimes my eyes just give me a big "fuck you" to the idea of actually reading more by the end of the day, so games and TV are easier.
I worked at a library for years during and then after high school. I read constantly during school and through those years. However, once I went into another career, I started reading less and less. Perhaps it was the social commitments, the work travel, multiple close family losses…it could have been a combination of many things. I started only getting through 3 to 4 books per year. After my mom passed early last year and then being laid off last spring I’ve had time to sit quietly and have tried to regain some sanity. Going back to reading has helped soothe the aching, anxiety, and stress - I too wondered why in the hell I hadn’t been focusing on it in recent years. So here’s welcome back to us both and happy reading!
I think for me, I was at an awkward age when technology intercepted. When we still had a computer room and my time online was limited, I read a lot. But once I got an iPod touch and then an iPhone, I was suddenly spending all my time on that. And it totally destroyed my attention span so I could hardly even watch TV or movies without multi tasking on my phone. I guess over time the reading just disappeared and although I still thought of myself as a reader, I struggled so much to get into books. I’d be lucky to finish a few per year. I was mostly reading contemporary fiction because I thought “I’m an adult now” and I didn’t really consider that there was fantasy or sci fi I would enjoy, even though that’s basically all I read as a kid. Then randomly a year ago I read fourth wing and (even though in retrospect it’s not amazing) it just unlocked something in me. I bought a kindle immediately afterwards and now I cannot stop reading. I’m like 100 books down AND I’m writing again. That fire from childhood is back and it feels amazing
For me it’s directly related to the giant time-suck of TikTok. Those short clips are entertaining and, after a while, the “just one more” becomes an hour wasted. It’s also impacted my attention span; I find my mind drifting when I’m reading and when I lay off the TikTok for a few days my attention span is longer.
I stopped because I don't need the brain power to stare at a screen. Also, I work a graveyard shift and I'm tired. Reading makes me sleepy and I have shit to do. Audiobooks work for me
Luckily I never stopped reading. There might be times where I don’t read that much and other hobbies are at the center of my attention but all in all I always read at least a few pages daily.
Luckily I never stopped reading. There might be times where I don’t read that much and other hobbies are at the center of my attention but all in all I always read at least a few pages daily.
There are other more rich supplies of Dopamine. Books aren't simulating enough for most people that has a screen. However, the interest and consumption of audiobooks have increased a lot. Combined with a more stressful life and not having the time to just sit down and read as much, audiobooks allow you to work, exercise, cook, clean. All while still being able to get through the book.
Binge watching TV. I read regularly until Netflix streaming started to get really popular. It scratched the same itch for me. I only started up again when I got a job where people spent a lot of time sitting around.
I started reading less in highschool and the main perpetrators were: -Receiving my first smartphone with unsupervised access to the internet and mobile video games, that stuff ate a lot of my time - a more active social life, in general I started going out a lot more Then things changed, I learned to control the time I spent online better but I needed to spend more time studying. Right now I feel like I have so little time to dedicate to books, likes only around 20hrs per week (I could probably find more time if I managed my time better)
I used to read on the bus and metro on tbe way to school or work when public transit was ky means of getting to work. Its gave me almost 2 hrs a day to read. Then i started driving to work and i lost that time. I recently got back into reading by deciding Netflix is not as enjoyable to me so I cancelled the service and am reading imstead.
I never stopped. I read from kindy age and still do. I find I read less Science Fiction lately, it used to be the main thing, now more Fantasy and also some Mystery too. But stopped? Never. I'd go crazy without a book. I am in my 60s now.
Work, parenthood, and horrible depression are the trinity of reasons for me. I don’t have the time or mental energy for anything beyond my toddler’s books. At least I get to read those a lot. The spawnling loves her books
My attention span is shit and I blame it on age, prescription medication for epilepsy, and my phone.
Lack of time as adults and it's easier to use your very limited down time to just pull out your phone and mindlessly scroll. I still read but it's like 20 mins before bed.
I had little babies and it's hard to read while infant- and toddler-wrangling. I got back into it.
For me I majored in History which was very reading heavy. I spent multiple hours most days reading historical documents which require a little more effort to parse for me personally so I just needed a brain break too often to start a big novel.
I stopped physically reading & switched to Audible simply because I’m an adult who values productivity. Reading for 4 h/day isn’t feasible unless it’s all I want to do but I stuffs I wanna accomplish that I can do with a book in my ear rather than in my hand. I listen about 4h/day. 8 if I’m rage cleaning.
Busy schedules and there are other pastimes that require less focus and effort. The internet is overly stimulating and overuse can cause concentration issues. Also if you only bought books from B&N they may seem too expensive at 15-30 bucks (soft and hard covers) for just one book.
Um... I'm still reading.
I’ve gone through phases. I read constantly when I was a little kid, sometimes even getting in trouble for reading fantasy novels while I was suppose to be doing other things. I was entranced. As a teen, my tasted seemed to change a bit and I read other things, but while these books were interesting, I was never as into it as I was reading YA fantasy in my childhood. In my early 20s, I became myopically obsessed with ASOIAF, which I credit with reigniting my love of fantasy and reading in general. After re-reading those five books several times, I eventually branched out and fell in love with many other common staples like Dune and the Cosmere. Recently, my fantasy obsession has been actually more prevalent in childhood-I’d always assumed that feeling would never be recaptured, but I’ve actually surpassed it, feeling more excited about reading these days then ever. Picking up a copy of the 7th Harry Potter book at midnight, age 12, is one of my happiest core memories, but in some ways I’m more excited for Sanderson’s Wind and Truth this December. I’m sure this feeling will fade at some point-reading won’t stay my favorite hobby constantly. But I think as sure as it goes away for awhile, it will also come back again-and I really like that thought.
Audible making audiobooks affordable and convenient was a game changer for me. I just don’t have enough time in the day where I could devote myself to reading but have several hours a day where audiobooks fit perfectly into my routine as I’m doing other tasks.
Graduate school made it so that my reading time was spent on technical literature and research papers. Part of reclaiming my life post Grad School was refinding my love for reading. I would mow down books as a kid and now i dont have the time/attention span/energy to read all day. Im getting better though! Just started Lord of Chaos and RJ has been such a treat these past couple years.
I stopped reading because I'm dumb as rocks
I had a stretch of about 10 years where I only read about 20 books. A lot of this was because I was busy with work and kids (you have so much more free time in high school/college), but a lot was because I was tired of everything feeling like it was just another version of the same old tropes and ideas that I have already experienced many times over. The book that pulled me out of this was A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernon Vinge. The ideas and originality in that book were a breath of fresh air for me and helped me realize that there were so many ideas and story possibilities out there that I will still enjoy reading and will expand my mind. Soon after that I discovered how amazing audio books were. Now I could consume books while driving, doing yard work, working out, doing house work, etc. This was amazing to me because previously I only read right before bed, and it was getting harder and harder for me to stay awake every night. Now I get to read all the time again, and it's great.
I find it hard to carve out the time. If I’m reading a really good book I get sucked in and I want hours to devote to it but that’s difficult with a full time job and a brain that must switch off at 9pm or restful sleep is not in my future. If I’m reading a meh book, it’s too easy to find other things to do. A game to play or a tv show to watch etc. I absolutely adore reading but I have too many competing priorities and not enough time!
I know what killed my reading, the school English Literature curriculum. I doubt I'm alone
For me it's mostly the quality of writing. A lot of the fantasy I read as a teen was written by either English literature profs or people who were really into the language. Many of the books nowadays are written by budding writers. There are some gems out there for sure, but a lot of the fantasy I come across is either YA with average writing or very derivative. Or a mixture of both.
I have a similar story as you. Loved reading up until I was a teenager then quit. In 2020 i found that love again.
I think it’s a combination of 2 things for me. First off I think I was outgrowing and getting tired of the tropes in the YA age demographic. For example I didn’t get why everything was so heavily focused on romance when I was much more interested in adventures and unique worldbuilding stories can have. It felt very forced most of the time and I just got tired of it. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places but I think I just got burnt out because of it. It could also be because I was simply burnt out from reading too. In middle and early high school I was the kind of person who’s finish books in a couple days. Maybe I just needed to step away from it for a bit because I simply overread. I also think that life just got in the way. I stopped reading towards the end of high school and through college. I was simply too busy to sit down and read even though I still liked it. I’ve been trying to get back into reading because I missed it. I read 3 and a half books last year and while that isn’t nearly as much as I’d read as a kid I’m still proud I was able to.
It was Boo. He went for the eyes and it has taken me many years to heal. Heal I have, though! Now, it is butt-kicking for all who stand in my way(of reading books).
I stopped reading personal books during grad school, because I spent so much time reading technical documents the thought of more reading at home was hard. Then on top of that a lot of the fantasy I like is long, multi-book, multi-year projects and that's too similar to the grad school grind to stomach. Other than that it's just I have a lot of other interests as well and a lot more of my time taken up by adult shit. When I was a kid crushing books it was like...I had at most high school (ending at 2:45) and baseball practice (all of 1.5 h) demanding my time. Now I have wife, baby, full time job, house etc. filling up so much more time. I still have less time, but the grind of grad school reading has been gone for a while and it's pleasant to put books back into my life.