Only readers who have fallen behind can feel a certain kind of guilt. It resides in the nightstand drawer, sandwiched between a half-used lip balm and a phone charger; it’s the bookmark frozen on page 40 of the book you started in January. You intended to complete it. You still intend to. Evenings, however, become scroll sessions, and the book waits, patient but a little accusing.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not going through a character breakdown. You’re talking about a generation of people who read a lot as children and then gradually, almost imperceptibly, stopped. This is something that has become almost commonplace. It’s not really busyness or stupidity that is to blame. It’s more that something much more engineered for engagement has subtly retrained attention, the deep, meandering kind that fiction demands. The phone prevails due to its speed rather than its superiority. You have to slow down when reading books. Actually, that’s the main idea.Instead of being just another task on the list, reading should feel like a haven.
The notion that reading is a performance is the first thing to let go of. The habit has undergone an odd transformation due to social media: it is now a metric, a personality signal, and a competition. This year, how many books did you finish? Did you reach your goal on Goodreads? The entire business can be ruined by the pressure to read impressive things quickly. It’s possible that the very goal-setting culture intended to promote reading has turned it into adult homework.
Daphne, a 34-year-old London teacher, talks about experiencing a sort of low-grade dread as she enters a bookstore. “I used to spend hours in there,” she recalls. “Now I’d pick something up, worry it was the wrong choice, put it back, and leave with nothing.” It had been two years since she had finished a book. When a friend lent her a thriller with short chapters and an unrelenting plot, she began again, almost by accident. In four days, she completed it. “I’d forgotten that reading could feel like that,” she responds.
That experience reveals something really helpful: the re-entry book is crucial. A 600-page literary novel hardly ever helps reluctant readers who are returning after a slump. That route returns to the drawer on the nightstand. Books with momentum—thrillers, mysteries, and gripping modern fiction that make you genuinely want to finish a chapter—are the ones that succeed. In this context, Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is frequently cited. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. The Martian by Andy Weir. These are not rewards for consolation. These are skillfully written books that respect the reader’s time and instantly capture their interest.
Another option is to go backward instead of forward, like rereading a book you’ve already enjoyed. It seems illogical. Shouldn’t you be growing and learning? But going back to a story you already know has an almost contemplative quality. The fear of a new world, new names, and new regulations completely vanishes. All that’s left is the enjoyment of the prose, the characters you’ve already come to terms with, and the inevitable conclusion you somehow don’t mind. That comfort has genuine value for a reader who is trying to recall why they ever loved this.
The question about the environment is more useful than it may seem. Most people have unintentionally removed the frictionless access that reading demands. The phone is always lit and on the coffee table. The book is located in a different room. Even though the distance is small, it is sufficient. Reducing the activation energy of a desired behavior, or making it slightly easier to perform, has a significant impact on whether people actually engage in it, according to researchers studying habit formation. Place the book on the cushion. Store the phone in a drawer. It works, and the reasoning is almost embarrassingly straightforward.
In these discussions, audiobooks are not given the respect they deserve. The idea that listening isn’t really reading—that it doesn’t count, somehow—remains prevalent and somewhat snobbish. It seems worthwhile to pursue this further. Even if a story is heard, it is still absorbed. An extraordinary quality can be added to a text by narrators. Additionally, because audiobooks don’t require you to stop doing everything else, they address the single biggest obstacle for time-pressed people. Dead time can be transformed into something that stimulates the imagination by listening while preparing dinner or walking to work. That is not a compromise. That’s just witty.
Graphic novels are an underappreciated bridge for readers who truly struggle to re-engage with dense prose. Frequently disregarded as lightweight, the form reveals more about the dismisser than the medium. Books that are rich, intricate, and emotionally taxing include Persepolis, Maus, and Saga. Additionally, they move at a speed that maintains brain activity without requiring the kind of sustained effort that a reader who has fallen behind may not yet have rebuilt. Consider them more as a truly unique vehicle for the same destination than as training wheels.
Perhaps the most liberating idea in this entire discussion is the 50-page rule, which allows you to stop reading a book that doesn’t pique your interest. One of the best ways to completely stop reading is to force yourself to read a book you detest out of obligation. Guilt about not finishing is not a moral stance, but rather a learned reaction. The evidence indicates that dropping a book guilt-free actually increases the amount of reading people do overall because they spend more time finding the right thing and less time suffering through the wrong one. However, it’s still unclear why so many people carry it so heavily.
Begin modestly. Although this advice seems condescending, it isn’t. Reading for five minutes is not insignificant; it sends a signal to the brain that we should start doing this. Here, the two-minute rule—loosely adapted from habit psychology—works: set a timer, read until it sounds, and then determine whether to proceed. The answer is usually in the affirmative. The hardest part was only getting started.
Observing all of this, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that those who identify as lapsed readers hardly ever claim to dislike stories. They adore narratives. They discuss plot twists with real animation, watch television shows, and listen to podcasts. The stories were never the problem. It was the wrong books at the wrong time, the conflict, and the guilt. When enough of those barriers are removed, an intriguing phenomenon occurs: the reader returns. They usually recall the exact reason they left the phone in the other room within a few pages.
Alyssa Bennett as editor at vclib.org, oversees editorial coverage of literary criticism, cultural analysis, political commentary. Alyssa brings rigorous research discipline, in-depth knowledge, experience, and an approachable editorial voice to subjects that most readers find thought-provoking and culturally significant. Her career spans the intersection of literary journalism, political writing, and educational publishing.