Sigh.

It happens to every reader, and I never thought I was immune, but it’s been years since I had to say that I’m in a reading slump, but… ugh, I think I’m in one right now.  It’s a strange kind of slump, because I’m reading – and really enjoying – Nick Hornby’s Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade of Soaking in Great Books.  It’s a collection of columns that Hornby wrote about the books he was buying and reading over ten years, and it’s fan-freaking-tastic.  He can make me tear up in one sentence (the way the guy writes about his autistic son… so much love) and crack up in the next (the Polysyllabic Spree, the fifty-five or eighty-seven or sixteen rapturously intelligent and intelligently rapturous young men and women who run The Believer magazine… oh, dear, I want to meet them).  Every night, I’m reading one or two columns and loving them.

But that’s all I can manage.

I’m just… tired.  I started The Golem and the Jinni, which I’ve been wanting to read for ages now, and can’t seem to make myself pick it up.  And it’s great.  It’s fun, well-written, and crazy creative.  But I’m not really feeling any book at the moment, except a book like Ten Years in the Tub, which I can read in small snatches that don’t tax my attention for more than a few minutes.  I think that Library Summer may have just been too much – at least, when heaped on top of a crush of work deadlines, moving house, sickness (Peanut and I both have bad colds – thanks, preschool germs!) and all the other responsibilities for day-to-day life.  Now I’m down to only three books checked out and that feels good, but I’m having a hard time motivating myself to pick them up.

Plus, there are too many other things to do.  The house is a disaster – a sea of boxes.  What would have taken me a week, maybe, to unpack before baby is stretching on into infinity now that I have a rambunctious toddler.  I can’t unpack when Peanut is awake, because if I turn my back on her for one second, she’s rummaging through the cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink.  (I have yet to find childproofing materials that fit my new cabinet doors.)  Or playing her favorite game, “Mommy go dis way!”, in which I have to follow her as she makes loops around the house (and she has a mini tantrum if I’m too slow about it).  I can’t unpack while she’s asleep, because the noise of boxes opening and newsprint crinkling wakes her instantly.  So I’m just trying to get a box here, a box there, done while she is occupied with a book of her own – but with all these still-packed boxes about, it’s hard to justify sitting down to read.  Even a magazine is a tall order these days; it took me three sittings to get through Everyday with Rachael Ray.

I hate being in a reading slump.  I want nothing more than to stretch out on the couch – or in my backyard, even better, enjoying the last warm days before autumn chill really sets in – with a cup of tea and a fantastic, gripping book, and read the afternoon away.  But most of the comforting books I’m craving are still packed in boxes who-knows-where and I just can’t make myself open these library books for more than a few minutes at a time.  I’m burnt out on library books.  I’d rather be playing with Peanut or organizing my kitchen (or reorganizing it after the little hurricane has shuffled all of my spices again) or cooking up freezer meals to have on hand for these busy weeks.  There’s too much to do, too much I neglected when I was deep in Library Summer, and my deep list of tasks is stealing my focus away from my reading material.

I know… excuses, excuses.  The fact is, I just haven’t made time to sit down and read in the last few weeks.  That’s my problem.  But I do think that slumps happen to everyone eventually, and I was due.  So I’m going to weather this one by baking and unpacking and enjoying the fall weather with hubby and Peanut, and the books will be there when I’m ready for them (maybe on shelves, if the unpacking starts to pick up a little).  In the meantime, any recommendations for a great book to get me out of this slump?

Have you ever been in a reading slump?  How’d you get out of it?