“How do I get over a reading slump?” is probably the most common question I see on PageBound. And it got me thinking — do we see a slump as a failure? As an annoying hurdle in our reading journey that needs to be pushed through as quickly as possible? What would happen if we changed the way we looked at reading slumps altogether?

I’m not saying the way you deal with a slump is wrong. Everyone has their own way of interacting with it. I’ve definitely exhausted myself trying to find that one book during a slump — the book that will reignite my love for reading and pull me back in. But maybe a slump isn’t always something to fix. Maybe it’s a break we actually need. Reading takes intellectual and emotional labour. Sometimes, we just don’t have enough of either to give. As readers, we escape into different worlds, try to understand different dynamics, motivations, and characters. We analyse, annotate, and form opinions about world-building, themes, and authorial intent. Even when reading feels comforting, it still asks something of us. And maybe a slump is just our brain saying: hey, let’s pause for a bit. Let's take a break.

So instead of immediately trying to “get over” a reading slump, what if we sat with it? What if we stayed away from books for a while? Learned a new hobby. Redecorated our room. Created a mural. Tried our hand at digital art. Let the slump pass on its own — until one day your feet carry you into a bookshop and your hands reach for a book without pressure or guilt.

It might be worth trying, don’t you think?

What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to agree or disagree or come up with new methods on embracing or breaking a slump.

If you could convince me to NOT read one book you've read recently what would it be.

So this would be a book you've read that maybe you have a petty or not so petty vendetta against and then name a book you would recommend in its place with similar story or point.

Mine would be Psycho Shifters by Jasmine Mas. Full of truly cringe, terrible writing and brimming with classic misogyny along with a story full of outrageous plotlines (not in a fun way. in an infuriating way) that I feel like even the author couldn't keep straight, I could recommend 100 books with both psychos and shifters but done way better.

My recs instead:

Fawn by LV Lane for multiple shifters in a fantasy world.

Their Lethal Pet by Lexi C Foss-for a fighter FMC in a urban dystopian world with multiple shifter partners

So I’ve been thinking about a recent trend: the growing pressure we place on marginalised authors to educate us — to teach us empathy.

We often say we want to “read diversely”, but what does it actually mean to read diversely? More often than not, I’m seeing people pick up books by marginalised authors expecting them to centre horrifying lived experiences. This isn’t inherently a bad thing. Books allow us to explore certainly realities and nuances in a safe space but it also means that publishers and editors notice this trend and begin to modify their expectations accordingly. It creates a feedback loops. They notice what sells and reinforce it. The result, I feel, is that marginalised authors are expected to be educators first and storytellers second.

I see this frequently on Instagram and tiktok posted on Instagram—criticisms of books for not having enough “authenticity” or “representation”. But who gets to decide what these words mean for a marginalised author? It often feels like unpaid labour — the pressure to conduct thorough and extensive research, ensure historical accuracy, and carefully manage emotional responsibility so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of us as readers. This is labour we rarely see demanded of white authors. White authors are free to write almost any story they choose, whereas marginalised authors are expected to lace their novels with colonisation, historical trauma, and victimhood in order to be taken seriously. It's something that Yellowface also brings up. That Marginalised authors are put in a box of selling Marginalised stories. As if they cannot write anything else.

My question is—why can’t white authors be expected to research and write about white people’s horrifying impact as colonisers? Why is this work so often outsourced to those who already carry the weight of that history?

That’s why I’m genuinely excited for an upcoming Sleeping Beauty retelling by a Cindy Pham who is a POC author. It isn’t what publishers typically push marginalised authors to produce, and it feels refreshing. It’s a reminder that marginalised authors should be allowed range like joy, fantasy, romance, and whimsy (although if I remember correctly, Cindy’s work will deal with mental health topics) without having to justify their work through suffering of their people.

To be clear, I’m not saying marginalised authors shouldn’t write stories about oppression or trauma. I’m saying that we, as readers, often expect them to. We want novels to teach us something, and while that is not a bad thing, it can be restrictive. If we truly want to learn about oppression and empathy, we should also be picking up non-fiction books too people! As for novels, remember that we as readers are free to make meaning of fiction in any way we want even if the author didn't explicitly intend to write a novel with that particular meaning. Reading with empathy, learning empathy, and learning about oppression and suffering is an onus that eventually falls on us as adults with a rational working mind.

For context, I’m a POC.

I’m curious to hear what you think about this. Feel free to agree, disagree or add more layers to this conversation.

I recently finished the memory police and a good portion of the comments were very positive but I got a little annoyed at how familiar some of the less positive comments felt. They were all about how slow or confusing the book was, and I mention this here and not the forum because I’ve also seen it with a ton of other books recently (handmaidens tale, the house of sprits, ten thousand doors of January, the vanishing birds and the book eaters among others).

So hot take 1, a slow book does not necessarily mean a bad book because pacing is dependent on the kind of story the author wants to tell. When the point is to show the passage of time or build up an atmosphere it’s actually better.

Hot take 2, soft world building is often better than hard world building because you don’t have to know everything about everything in order to understand the plot or sympathize with the characters. In fact confusion in small doses can be good because it forces you to learn.

Idk if I’m alone here? Just had get that out.

i need to ask, how much of the corner do you fold down? is it the same for every book? is it different? what parameters do you try to follow? do you dog ear library books? because i just found the left over crease from what used to be a dog ear'd page in a library book, and the crease is crossing the text. now, maybe i just don't get it, but that feels a little bit like heresy. in a way. if you get what i mean.

So I have 1 week off from school left and I really need to lock in reading Caraval. I've tried doing a random wheel with numbers of pages to read each day(I have to spin it everyday for a different one) but I literally have like 0 motivation. Every time I try read I just want to go on my phone and scroll.

Does anyone know how to overcome this laziness I would call it?

So I’ve been thinking about a recent trend: the growing pressure we place on marginalised authors to educate us — to teach us empathy.

We often say we want to “read diversely”, but what does it actually mean to read diversely? More often than not, I’m seeing people pick up books by marginalised authors expecting them to centre horrifying lived experiences. This isn’t inherently a bad thing. Books allow us to explore certainly realities and nuances in a safe space but it also means that publishers and editors notice this trend and begin to modify their expectations accordingly. It creates a feedback loops. They notice what sells and reinforce it. The result, I feel, is that marginalised authors are expected to be educators first and storytellers second.

I see this frequently on Instagram and tiktok posted on Instagram—criticisms of books for not having enough “authenticity” or “representation”. But who gets to decide what these words mean for a marginalised author? It often feels like unpaid labour — the pressure to conduct thorough and extensive research, ensure historical accuracy, and carefully manage emotional responsibility so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of us as readers. This is labour we rarely see demanded of white authors. White authors are free to write almost any story they choose, whereas marginalised authors are expected to lace their novels with colonisation, historical trauma, and victimhood in order to be taken seriously. It's something that Yellowface also brings up. That Marginalised authors are put in a box of selling Marginalised stories. As if they cannot write anything else.

My question is—why can’t white authors be expected to research and write about white people’s horrifying impact as colonisers? Why is this work so often outsourced to those who already carry the weight of that history?

That’s why I’m genuinely excited for an upcoming Sleeping Beauty retelling by a Cindy Pham who is a POC author. It isn’t what publishers typically push marginalised authors to produce, and it feels refreshing. It’s a reminder that marginalised authors should be allowed range like joy, fantasy, romance, and whimsy (although if I remember correctly, Cindy’s work will deal with mental health topics) without having to justify their work through suffering of their people.

To be clear, I’m not saying marginalised authors shouldn’t write stories about oppression or trauma. I’m saying that we, as readers, often expect them to. We want novels to teach us something, and while that is not a bad thing, it can be restrictive. If we truly want to learn about oppression and empathy, we should also be picking up non-fiction books too people! As for novels, remember that we as readers are free to make meaning of fiction in any way we want even if the author didn't explicitly intend to write a novel with that particular meaning. Reading with empathy, learning empathy, and learning about oppression and suffering is an onus that eventually falls on us as adults with a rational working mind.

For context, I’m a POC.

I’m curious to hear what you think about this. Feel free to agree, disagree or add more layers to this conversation.