The hol­i­days have always been my favourite time to catch up on all the books I say I am going to read and nev­er even attempt to pick up dur­ing the school year. How­ev­er, in recent years, even that goal has become for­mi­da­ble at times. Study­ing Eng­lish tends to turn read­ing into work, no mat­ter how much we enjoy it, and recent­ly I have found it hard to want to read for fun after hav­ing read 16 books in one semes­ter. Last year that led to watch­ing a lot of movies with very few com­plaints. But this year, school is online and I am addi­tion­al­ly devel­op­ing an aver­sion to my lap­top screen, so back to books it is. I have com­piled a lit­tle list of strate­gies to address what I am call­ing Eng­lish Major Reader’s Block. If you also suf­fer from this afflic­tion, I hope this helps. 

1. Re-read­ing! 

Some­times new infor­ma­tion can be over­whelm­ing. My brain is tired. I can’t learn any­more, but that does not mean I can­not read. When I am feel­ing espe­cial­ly tired, I have found it eas­i­er to return to old favourites and curl up with some­thing cozy and famil­iar rather than try to absorb a new set of char­ac­ters and plots. I rec­om­mend tak­ing a day to reread  Har­ry Pot­ter or Lit­tle Women or what­ev­er makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. 

2. Change up the Genre 

Unless you are tak­ing a spe­cial­ty course in graph­ic nov­els or YA fic­tion, the books that Eng­lish majors tend to read can get a lit­tle repet­i­tive and tend to stick to real­ist nov­els writ­ten between 1800 and 1980. I used to think the hol­i­days were a great time to catch up on the holes in my knowl­edge and cross big titles off of my nev­er end­ing read­ing list, but I have had very lit­tle luck with that. If you are able to read dense Russ­ian real­ism after a semes­ter of lit­er­a­ture, I salute you, but so far I have had no luck with that ambi­tion. That’s why my sec­ond tip is to change gen­res, try fan­ta­sy, sci-fi, graph­ic nov­els, mys­ter­ies, “trashy” romance nov­els or any­thing else that isn’t a part of the tra­di­tion­al lit­er­ary canon. I used to love fan­ta­sy and dystopi­an nov­els, but I have neglect­ed this first love for far too long—this win­ter break I am hap­py to be once again in its sweet albeit some­times dra­mat­ic embrace. 

3. Take it Easy & Don’t Get Ambi­tious 

See my ear­li­er point about dense Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture and extend it to Moby Dick and any­thing writ­ten in Mid­dle Eng­lish. This is not the time to take on ridicu­lous­ly heavy read­ing mate­ri­als or to try and tack­le the whole of The Can­ter­bury Tales. It is okay to read only one book over the hol­i­days if that is what you have time for, or to only read a few chap­ters of one book. Or one poem. Or noth­ing at all. Big ambi­tious read­ing lists are the ene­my over win­ter break and I have found the best thing for my read­ing has been to aban­don them all togeth­er. This isn’t always easy, and I have strug­gled to just read when I want to (if I want to) with­out wor­ry­ing about what I am read­ing or if I am read­ing enough. There is no shame in an easy read. Cur­rent­ly I am read­ing The Knife of Nev­er Let­ting Go by Patrick Ness because I saw the trail­er for the adap­ta­tion star­ring Tom Hol­land. Yes, it is aimed at 13 year olds and one of the three main char­ac­ters is a dog, and, yes, I am very much enjoy­ing it. 

I hope this sil­ly lit­tle list helps you pick up a book, any book at all, over the hol­i­days. I enjoy read­ing, but I also enjoy mak­ing lists and since I can’t make a read­ing list, I have made a how-to-read list instead. In the past few years these strate­gies real­ly have helped me to aban­don my expec­ta­tions for win­ter break and actu­al­ly take advan­tage of the break from com­pul­so­ry read­ing to just enjoy a good book. I hope this helps you and that you have a won­der­ful New Year, book in hand or not.

Madison George-Berlet

This post was pub­lished on the orig­i­nal UVic ESA web­site.