According to a recent study by The Reading Agency, around half of UK adults do not read for pleasure. Moreover, around 35% consider themselves ‘lapsed readers’ – that is, people who used to read regularly, but now do not – and 15% self-identify as ‘non-readers.’ To the question, ‘what, if anything, stops you from reading?’, the most common response was, ‘time spent on social media.’
This isn’t an essay about how great reading is and how sad I feel that only half of us (well, half of the 2,008 nationally representative people interviewed by The Reading Society, at least) do it regularly anymore. This also isn’t an essay about how bad social media is. I’m not here to be snobbish. I’m here to help.
The thing is, until relatively recently, I would have counted myself as a ‘lapsed reader.’ I was one of the 35%. After I completed my master’s degree, I read essays and articles and kept up with the news, but for several years, I didn’t read a single novel or substantive book of non-fiction. This was especially embarrassing as both my master’s and my undergraduate degree were in Comparative Literature. I became, in short, a bookish person without the books; the human equivalent of book-print wallpaper. I would sometimes read the Wikipedia pages for the books my friends bought me for Christmas and birthdays, but sometimes I didn’t even manage that. I deeply appreciated the gifts, but I treated the books essentially as ornaments – inert dead things that existed only to fill space on my shelves.
Happily, and in time, this changed. I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy in one sitting, in an unheated flat in Coventry during a murderous cold snap in 2020. And that, to my very great surprise, was all it took. I read all the time, now. I read novels and non-fiction and poetry and plays and short stories and books about science and grammar. Here, then, is my advice for getting back into books. The good news is this: even if you’ve been away for a long time, reading will always welcome you back.
Get rid of your unread books.
You know all those books you bought (or had bought for you) and always meant to read? Get rid of them. Stick them in a Bag For Life and haul them down to your nearest Oxfam. Keeping a stack of books around because you think you might one day read them (or worse, because you think you should read them) is like having a wardrobe full of clothes that you don’t feel confident enough to wear. It will only make you feel sad and inadequate. A big stack of unread books can feel like a long list of responsibilities, and nobody in the entire world completes a long list of responsibilities for fun.
Abandon your previous interests
If you’re trying to get back into reading, it sounds logical to start with books that follow your other (non-bookish) interests. After all, there are hundreds of books about sports and films and music and video games out there – why not start with those? Well, the short answer is because you’re likely to be disappointed. If you’re trying to get into reading, the last think you need is to be reminded of all the other activities you could be doing. To be blunt, if you’re into video games, a book about video games is only going to make you want to play video games.
Even now, I’m not immune to this. I love tennis, and some of the most frustrating and disappointing books I’ve ever read have been about the sport. By contrast, I have never knowingly boogied in my life (not even at a wedding), but Zadie Smith’s Swing Time – a novel about friendship and social class, anchored around the transcendent power of dancing – is one of my favourites. I would never – and I mean never – have picked it up if I’d limited myself to books on subjects I already liked.
Don’t forget poetry
Poetry gets a bad reputation for being obtuse and too complicated for non-experts to understand. This isn’t true. You don’t need to know anything about musical theory to love Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel, and you don’t need to remember a single thing from GCSE English to love poetry. Read with an open heart and don’t worry about getting it ‘wrong.’ You don’t need a literature qualification to be moved by a poem.
The Reading Agency research found that 36% of people aged 16-34 struggle with reading because they ‘can’t find things to read that interest them.’ I think that the fix for this is not just to look for books full of #RelatableContent, but also to look for a voice that captivates you. Poetry is a great place to start with this, as poets are often concerned with looking at ordinary things in different and interesting ways. Not all poems will speak to you, of course, but it’s worth the effort to find the ones that do. When poetry gets you, it really gets you.
Keep a list
In the back flap of my diaries, I keep a list of every book I read during the year. When I was feeling my way back into reading, I found this especially helpful. Platforms like Goodreads can log your reading progress and allow you to write reviews of the books you’ve read, which does the same job in a different way. We all like to feel we’re making progress – whether we’re completing lessons on Duolingo or recording our 5k runs with Strava – and reading is no different. Keeping a record of your reading can help you reflect on what you’ve enjoyed and what you’ve found challenging. It’s also very fun to pull out a numbered list when someone asks what you’ve been reading recently.
Join a library
Surprise! This is an essay about how great libraries are! I cannot say this often enough: join your local library. It’s free (you’ve already paid for it) and it allows you to access books that you might never have considered before. Books are expensive, after all, and spending £10 on a one that you aren’t even sure you’ll enjoy can feel like a gamble. Libraries let you experience all the joy of discovery with none of the risk of buyer’s remorse. Also, libraries are where librarians hang out. And librarians are the friendliest people in the world.
