Finding Your Way Out of Book Purgatory
Between books is my least favorite place to be
Last Time: Journey to Jupiter (Five Things)
“She was no longer who she used to be, and she wasn't yet whoever she was becoming.”—Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful
If I’m not reading, I’m not writing. This is a truth about myself that I acknowledged years ago, in those inevitable fallow periods between creative projects. Not Writer’s Block, whatever that means, but a creative restlessness that can’t be forced into submission.
Here’s the short version: I haven’t been writing. For the last month. I also haven’t been reading. For me, they go hand in hand in a really crucial way. And when I tell people who know me well that I’m not reading, they look like they want to check my forehead for a fever.
I don’t mean that I don’t have time to read or write. Instead, this is the feeling of picking up a book and not being able to focus enough to read. Or reading fifty pages of book after book before abandoning them all without reason. Last week, with complete apathy, I stopped listening to an audiobook at 85% (cue blood-curdling screams from all of the book-completers of the world).
It’s possible that I channeled this limbo state, what one of my friends calls Book Purgatory, by writing about in-between spaces in my last newsletter, Journey to Jupiter: Five Things.
It’s also possible that the last great book I read, Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful, was so good that it ruined me for all other books, at least for a little while. Book hangovers have been known to happen.
I hesitated writing this post because it seems so minor in the grand scheme of what is going on in the world. In the end, I hope the ability to create and receive art isn’t something we lose.
In case you find yourself ever stuck in Book Purgatory, too, I have a few ideas about how to find your back out.
Note: It’s about to get real self-helpy and woo-woo in here.
Three steps to emerging from your limbo/purgatory/book hangover state
1. Acknowledgement: The Struggle is Real
For many, going a long period without reading may be perfectly normal. A book hangover isn’t all that deep to many people you know and love.
A lot of people apparently are used to going through cycles when they are too busy/anxious/distracted to do the things they love. I should certainly be used to this limbo state. It isn’t out of the question to get bogged down by life (though it is the first time I’ve felt this way in 2023).
But if it bothers you that you aren’t able to read/do the things that make you who you are, those feelings are legit. For me, this acknowledgement of my frustration (even if only to myself while writing my daily Morning Pages) is essential to finding my way out of Book Purgatory.
It comes down to feeling out of alignment. If I’m not able to focus on the things that bring me peace or make me feel like myself, I am off balance. And like any Libra will tell you, you won’t like me when I’m out of balance (said in the voice of The Hulk). It isn’t my best self.
I have been known to fill a Book Purgatory with everything from teaching myself how to crochet to binge watching Love Island—anything to try and even out the scales between my work life and my interests.
If you’re feeling any kind of weirdness around your reading life at the end of the year, you aren’t alone. It’s been a weird and rough year. Be gentle with yourself. Books will always be there waiting for you when you’re ready.
2. Recognition: Book Purgatory eventually ends.
I have to tell myself this. I have to keep reminding myself that any limbo state isn’t a permanent place. I’ll read again, I’ll write again. Sometimes all I can do is wait it out. My current Book Purgatory has lasted about three weeks. And I’ve felt every moment of it.
Yes, a Book Purgatory can last much longer, years for some people, but I have to wonder if those particular circumstances are about more than just not being able to find the next book to read. There is something else going on, something bigger than what I am talking about here.
I’m talking about not being able to read but understanding that it is a temporary state of mind. I will always make time to read, and if I can’t read right now (because Life) that is okay, too.
Times I have found myself in a bigger non-reading place:
After my son was born
While grieving
Before, during, and after a move
During sickness or times of mass tragedy
So, yeah, maybe it’s a wonder any of us can find the emotional bandwidth to read at all.
3. Escape: The Solution Isn’t Another Book.
I mean, the solution is eventually going to be another book, but you can’t force these things. Or maybe you can. As a mood reader, I can’t make myself read something if I’m not feeling it.
The first key is to find the root of the problem and work through it. The root of my current Book Purgatory might be my utter exhaustion because I’m at that place in the semester, close to the end but not close enough. It might be that I have other things on my mind that are distracting me more than usual. Honestly, after finishing Hello Beautiful, I got in my head so much about my own writing project (should I change the point of view, should I reinvent a new structure?) that I think it stalled both my reading and writing simultaneously.
On a new episode of my favorite podcast, The Stacks, Jesmyn Ward said she doesn’t read literary fiction while she’s drafting because it gets in her head. See?! It isn’t just me. Good art can really do a number on an artist if they aren’t in the right head space.
All of this to say that you’re unlikely to escape Book Purgatory if you don’t first figure out what got you there. And that is unique to you.
What are you reading now?
I am clearly not currently reading anything (though I will soon share my favorite books of the year). Instead, let me share a few favorite Substack newsletters that everyone should be reading, you know, if you aren’t in “reading limbo.”
(I am a Bookshop.org affiliate and if you purchase books through my store or the above links, I may earn a small commission. It hasn’t happened yet, but maybe one day it will).
When this happens to me, I need to go hiking or traveling.
Time and again, inspiration has proven itself to rear its lively head at the right time. As Mr. Tom Petty aptly said, “The waiting is the hardest part.”May your imprisonment end soon and someone’s joyous words to find you waiting with christmas-like impatience.