Dear Wags,

I’ve just climbed out of a reading slump. 

I can’t blame the lull on a lack of material. Every day, new titles arrive on my doorstep. If I don’t pick a tome out of that pile, I can download e-galleys, or sort through PDFs from publishers. My shelves, tangible and digital, groan with books. 

Yet there are still days when I can’t find a thing to read. Nothing hooks me.

I get this cupboards-are-bare sensation about once a year. Big, juicy biography? Forget it. Highly anticipated literary novel? Meh. A tender memoir promising to thaw my frosty heart? Please. When this exhaustion hits, I dump the written word and binge TV shows, make playlists, and shop for fountain pens and lip balms. 

You can have too much of a good thing, even books. I’ve watched those Korean mukhbang videos, in which people devour huge amounts of food in a sitting. It’s enough to put you off a full plate for a bit. When it comes to reading, I require the occasional fast.

After spending a little time staring into glorious blank space, I find myself toting a small stack of books around the house. I haul this cargo from my office to the bedroom, from the bedroom to the porch, and from the porch to the living room. Totems of the routine I’ve ditched call me back. Eventually, I open one of those volumes. When I hit a snag, I’ll try another, and another, until I’ve finished the bunch.

And just like that, I’m sucked back in. I head to the stacks and browse through titles I’ve missed release dates for. I scour the months ahead for new releases. Somehow, I can’t wait to pick up the same books that bored me to tears only a few weeks before.

That’s how I know my hiatus is temporary. I have brilliant colleagues who’ve suffered real burnout, the kind that made them put away their pens (but were they fountain pens?) and find work that has nothing to do with books. You can ruin a simple human pleasure by turning it into a grind. If that happens, there’s no dishonor in surrender.

When I get over a slump, I’m relieved to discover I still love what I do. I’ve come to accept these periods of abeyance as integral to my long romance with books, not a departure from it. In any solid marriage, passion ebbs and flows. Which is my way of saying, if you need a break from something—even the worthiest book—take it.

We’ll be waiting right here for you when you get back.

Yours ever,

BKP

All the World Beside by Garrard Conley

Conley, whose memoir Boy Erased reflected on growing up as the gay son of a Baptist preacher, returns with a powerful period romance. The lovers happen to be a pair of Puritan men living in 18th century New England. The Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield can’t deny his love for Dr. Arthur Lyman, but the lies they tell threaten their families and the parochial community of Cana, Mass. When the Great Awakening (think of Jonathan Edwards and his “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” sermon) rolls into town, everyone involved is forced to make devastating choices.

On Giving Up by Adam Phillips

British psychoanalyst Phillips wants us to think deeply about what constitutes a sacrifice. Why do we endlessly try and fail to give things up? What is the difference between quitting drinking or social media and throwing in the towel on life? Phillips emphasizes the transformative power of sacrifice, and how it makes us feel a little more in control of destiny. It may be that we deny ourselves small things in order to ward off yawning existential despair. This book is filled with provocative and elastic questions, but no pat answers. It’s both confounding and wise.

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

Lampo, who speaks in a rich Irish patois, is a failure to launch. He’s thirtyish, still living with mom, and unemployed. Most of the time, he kills time hanging with his equally wayward pal, Gelon. These aimless bros aren’t characters in the modern world; debut novelist Lennon has plopped them in the Sicilian port of Syracuse during the Peloponnesian Wars. Gelon, a Euripides stan, decides to stage Medea using starving Athenian POWs. He plans to entice them with food and drink, but Lampo’s profligacy threatens even a few crusts of bread. It all makes for an imperfect but rollicking “Let’s put on a show!” yarn. Inventiveness and cheek triumph over a few rough patches. Lennon will surely iron those out in his next novel.