lou's library

The lack of posts in the recent weeks and months is a pretty accurate reflection of the lack of reading that has happened in my life recently. For the first time in years, there are multiple days a week during which I do not pick up a book once. What might be perfectly normal for some (perhaps most) people, is very unusual for me. I am not writing this in a ‘I’m not like other girls’ way, but simply as a fact that has set several thinking processes in motion for me. This is me trying to make sense of them.

I have identified as a reader since I was a child, and ever since my teens, it has been a really important part of my life. Books used to be what the majority of my pocket money would be spent on, I studied English and German literature at university, I’ve been writing this book blog for the past two years, and up until recently, a big chunk of my free time was spent reading. And I loved it. But reading, most of the time, is a solitary experience. And while I do frequently buddy read books with a friend and have been part of a book club before, I found myself craving more community, so joined a theatre group and it’s fair to say that staging this play has taken over my life and the vast majority of my free time.

As a result, something had to give and that was reading. Normally, I would read for an hour before work, but now I instead catch up on sleep that I lost because of late rehearsals. The same is true for the evenings, which I previously spent unwinding with a book and now are full of admin, test runs, and line runs. And I love it! I’ve met so many great people and am learning a bunch, and it’s a creative outlet that is helping me use a different part of my brain. But I do miss reading.

None of this is tragic, seeing how we are now in the last month of rehearsals, which means that by the end of May, I will have my evenings back to myself. But it’s been enlightening to listen to my inner monologue over the past months, as I struggled to squeeze little intervals of reading into my pretty hectic days. For while I desperately wanted to finish a thriller I was reading, because it was just that addictive, I also worried about the small number of books I had read so far in 2026.

This fixation on numbers is something I have been actively trying to unlearn for years, but never quite succeeded. I stopped setting myself a concrete reading goal, but I still kept track on my StoryGraph account and my internal critic judged the amount of books I read every month quite harshly. And so when I started reading less in February, at first I felt bad. I felt less of a reader, which felt strange and unsettling. But then, as rehearsals became more intense, and I became part of this group of dedicated people, I found myself caring less and less about numbers.

It’s definitely been a process and I am not completely rid of my obsession with the amount of books I read yet, but I have not checked my StoryGraph stats once in the past couple of months. At first I thought it was down to not wanting to see the low number, but then I realised it’s because I do not care. No, I am not reading much at the moment. But I am reading. I have not stopped entirely, and while I ideally would love to squeeze more pages into my daily life, that simply is not possible right now. And for now, the trade off is worth it. Because I might not get to read a lot, but I get to do something equally creative and fun, and that is what I have wanted.

If we didn’t live in a capitalist hellscape, I would get to do both. Alas, the horrors persist and so must we. But I want to aim for less perfectionism when it comes to my hobbies. I am a reader, whether I read ten books a month or one. I love sitting down with a book for a good couple of hours and properly immerse myself in it, but if all I can manage right now is to read five pages in the morning before running out of the door to go to work, then so be it. The slower pace has actually made me more excited to read slowly, take my time with the words, think about what I am reading, digest it properly. If I am no longer chasing numbers, that creates space for depth.

So perhaps, all of this is a good thing. There will come a time where I will fly through three books a week again, where I will want to do nothing but escape into literary worlds. I have no doubts about that. But discovering a new hobby, and with it a new side to myself, has been inspiring and fun. As an introvert who can sometimes retreat into herself and her own head too much, reading has always come naturally to me. Sometimes, it is good to spend energy on doing things that take more effort. My books aren’t going anywhere, but are rather waiting patiently for me to turn to them when the time is ripe. I am slowing down, and making space for something new. Now, whenever I do get a moment to sit down and read, I am excited and grateful and enjoying it more than before. It felt counterintuitive at first, but sometimes that’s what you must do to find new appreciation for an old love.