Are you having trouble reading?

If you’re feeling anxious and as if you can’t read during this quarantine time, these ideas and tips might be helpful!

1. If you are a parent with young children, pick up a children’s book that you will enjoy reading as well. I love What do you do with an idea? which talks about an unwieldy little idea cracking from its shell. Or check out this list of children’s books that adults will enjoy by Reader’s Digest.
2. Read more than one book at a time until one starts feeling more attractive! Sometimes, we just need to start and give ourselves permission to stop if something feels BORING.
3. Read poetry! It is often short, inspiring, and full of the authentic beauty we all need nowadays. One of my favorite collections is one my sister gave me. It’s the book Felicity by Mary Oliver. This is one of the beautiful gems in this book: Don’t Worry. “Things take the time they take. Don’t worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine? ” Isn’t that beautiful? Even St. Augustine had to become St. Augustine.
4. Match the book to your mood. What do you want to feel? If you are exhausted and tired, something hopeful or plain fun might be the way to go. You might enjoy a travel memoir like Crowdsourcing Paris more than a heavy tome you think you “should” read.
5. Pick up a childhood favorite and create a cocoon to rest in! My childhood favorite is Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. What is yours? Just like we are cooking meals from childhood nowadays, we can also comfort ourselves with favorite reads!
6. Read short books. If you can’t concentrate, read short — either short books or a collection of short stories. For example: I LOVE Roald Dahl’s short stories for adults. While he is known for his children’s books, Dahl is equally amazing at writing for adults. His short stories are works by a master, and by that, I don’t mean that they are boring. I mean that his stories make you feel things almost physically. They are weird, compelling, twisted, insightful, amazing!
7. On that note, try reading horror. Nowadays, it can feel as if we are living in an episode of Black Mirror or in Alice’s topsy-turvy world. What makes our troubles pale in comparison? Horror! Stephen King has a new book out, which is a collection of four novellas If It Bleeds that you might enjoy.
8. Forget about what you “should” read. You love what you love. In his beautiful book on writing, Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury talks about how as a little boy, he tore up his collection of comics when he was made fun of. But soon, better sense prevailed and he rebought them. You love what you love! Just because someone else doesn’t think your tastes are literary or are plain weird, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow them. If it nourishes you, pick it up!
9. And if you still don’t feel like picking up a book, try the laugh-out-loud funny podcast By the Book in which comedian Jolenta Greenberg and culture critic Kristen Meinzer talk about there living by the rules of a different self-help book in each episode. I talked about them in this post on some fantastic podcasts to check out in quarantine.