Breaking a Brutal Reading Slump with a Visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books

April is my month of Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Photo by author

I have been unable to read fiction for months. No novel or short story — including those published on this site, I’m sorry to say — has held my attention past the first few paragraphs since well before the start of the year. I don’t know if it’s the current chaos in America, seven straight weeks under fluorescent lights as my dad moves from one hospital room to another, or God punishing me for any number of sins, but I am in the most brutal reading slump I’ve ever experienced.

This has, unsurprisingly, had the effect of plunging me into a fiction writing slump; the two go hand-in-hand, as Stephen King once famously said. And while I could continue to bang out articles about Springsteen and censorship if I never read a novel again, what’s the point? I only started writing those in the first place as a way to take a break from writing fiction. But first things first: the reading slump.

I have tried any number of solutions. Switching to audiobooks had helped break past slumps but proved ineffective this time. Trying a new genre only frustrated me. Even re-reading a favorite book didn’t work, though at first I thought it had. I plowed through 84, Charing Cross Road and A Moveable Feast in one weekend…