I’ve been the biggest bookworm all my life. I remember going to the library and coming home with 21 books (which was the maximum number of books the library would let me check out at once). I would finish the books really fast and then run back to get more. When I started university (2018), it became harder and harder for me to stay interested in the books I was reading, even though it was something I would have read in a few days in the past. I was in a reading slump until last summer. Starting to read again and it made me realize how much I love it, so here are a few things that helped me out of my reading slump.
- The pandemic
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During the pandemic, I couldn’t do a lot of things. My life was literally work, then home, and I quickly got bored of watching YouTube videos and Netflix. So, I tried to see if any of my favourite authors had released some new books and I was lucky enough that Kevin Kwan did. Which brings me to my next point.
- Kevin Kwan’s Sex and Vanity
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The author of the very successful Crazy Rich Asians trilogy released another book in 2020 called Sex and Vanity. It tells the story of Lucie Churchill who finds herself torn between two men: her fiancé who fits perfectly in the description of what her WASPY (White Anglo-Saxons, upper-class White American Protestants) family wants for her and George Zao the men she’s trying not to fall in love with. This book got me out of my reading slump because it was so interesting and the world I was brought into got me hooked from the first page. After reading this book I felt the need to read more and more.
- Booktok
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Booktok or Book TikTok is a part of the platform that focuses on books and through it, I was able to discover so many new books that I loved. Just like Sex and Vanity, watching book recommendation videos, aesthetic videos based on the book video gave me the need to read more and more. The TikTok’s are very aesthetically pleasing, some of my favourite creators are @jennajustreads and @munnyreads.
- Bookstagram
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This one is more for the aesthetically pleasing side of things; the pictures of bookshelves make us want to have the same thing. A lot of people showcase their full collection of books. Some of those books are books that I started but never finished. Seeing the collection made me want to go back to the book, see if I like it, and maybe start collecting the series. So far, I’ve only done that with the Percy Jackson series.
- Goodreads
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Goodreads is a cataloging app where you can put all the books you read, you want to read, and that you are currently reading into folders. You can also participate in a reading challenge and this year my goal is to read 20 books or more. You can adjust how many books you want to read; you can do 1, 10, and even a 100. I love using Goodreads because I can see how many books I’ve read, and the reading challenge really motivates me to read more and more.