Update: I've recently read you’ve been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress). by Ismatu Gwendolyn, who stresses the importance of reading a million times ever than I ever could. Please give it a read.

So you used to be a reader.

You remember those days where you were hiding books under your desk as the teacher prattled on to your less literate classmates about a topic you already understood. You were the middle school Battle of the Books champion – churning through books like an otter churns water. 200 pages in an afternoon? No problem.

But now you can’t. You haven’t picked up a book in years. Your old reputation has long left you. You dream of the idea of sitting down at a peaceful indie cafe, sipping your preferred drink while reading your new book from the bookstore – but you never do it. You actually don’t know any indie cafes nearby, and if you do, you’ve gone on your phone or computer instead.

Why?

It’s not your imagination that reading is harder now if you haven’t picked up anything (except maybe fanfiction) in years. For one thing, your middle school brain couldn’t grasp half the implications that your adult brain can. Go back to find a book you read in middle school – one that you haven’t memorized. The flaws become more pronounced the older you get. The shitty YA you loved when you were 10, or 14, or 17, is now just… shitty YA. 

What do you even do then? How do you bridge the gap when you haven’t read in years?

And why haven’t you read in years, anyway? Maybe it’s because we live in an attention economy where your attention is degraded, to the point that concepts like “dopamine detoxes” exist. Maybe it’s because if attention is a resource, then just like any other resource that provides capital, capitalism will extract it to the greatest possible point- regardless of anything else.

And that is why you see flashing advertisements in your break room, or constant popup ads wherever you go on the internet, or billboards on the highway, or painted on the sides of buses, or on the floors of your hallways… 

Believe it or not, it’s actually very difficult to go against psychological conditioning. You may resist it at every moment, but the resistance always costs you something. Fighting “the man” is a good fight, and more than that it’s an important fight, but it must be done persistently and continuously. Rage and fear can only sustain you for so long – you must find a way to sustain yourself perpetually in this war you wage.

But you must wage it. To surrender is death, and a life forever lived in exhaustion, overstimulation, and injustice. 

If reading started and ended with shitty YA, it wouldn’t be so crucial as an act of resistance to read. But it doesn’t. Reading is possibly the most essential skill to learning difficult topics, and to increase your knowledge on things. In our misinformation-filled ecosystem, being able to read the whole context of a situation, instead of just a short soundbite, is critical. If you have any desire to participate in politics, especially activism, you need to understand the history and stories behind what you believe, or you will be just as quick to change your beliefs and adopt new ones as whatever the next trend online is. 

But how do you start from ground zero? How do you begin to read when our world encourages anything but?

I have compiled a list of things that help me, and things that I hope can help you.

Please note: It is better to try both reading more and increasing your attention span at the same time. Do not use “increasing your attention span” as a reason to procrastinate reading. You should start as soon as possible.

If you have a busy schedule, working 40 hour shifts with family to care for, or college classes on top of your job, or live in an abusive environment, this may take you longer than someone with lots of free time. Do not punish yourself for small amounts of progress. 

INCREASING ATTENTION SPAN:

• Delete social media. This is difficult if you have a lot of friends or feel as if you’ll miss out on information from social media. Remember that you will learn more from reading than from the same recycled discourse. Your friends will understand, although it may be more difficult to keep in contact with some of them. I also understand that, while sometimes social media is the best source of misinformation, it can also be the best source of uncensored true information if your state media is silencing or censoring the truth. Remember to fact check carefully if this is the case, utilize the Internet Archive, and take precautions against misinformation
•  Delete youtube. Get Newpipe for Android or Freetube for PC. If you have apple I can’t help you unless your phone is jailbroken. I highly recommend these because they do not have an algorithm, but if you are reliant on your algorithm but would still like to use youtube ad-free on android then you can use Revanced.
• Use an ad-blocker if you don’t already.
• Look away and/or mute ads you see in your day-to-day life. If your streaming service has ads, try piracy.
• Take time to plan your days/week out.
• Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to your day-to-day surroundings. It’s often used as part of DBT and is often a starting point
• Start medication for your disorders if you have any. ADHD, depression, anxiety, and more can all mess with your concentration. If you cannot access healthcare for any reason, St. John’s Wart can alleviate mild to moderate depression and caffeine can help mild ADHD symptoms, but be cautious.
• Have some activity outside at least once a day (if you can’t leave your home, at least outside of your room). 
• These will help alleviate some of the damage to your attention span done by the attention economy, but not all of it. 

HOW TO START READING AGAIN:

ACCESSING BOOKS:

• Libby/One-drive allows people to read ebooks from their local library (might be USA only?)
• Libgen allows people to download books for free if you can’t access your local library. You can download an e-pub reader for your phone off most appstores, or get a FOSS one for your computer. But honestly, I just use 
• Going in-person to the library is best to get books, but not everyone can do that. Many school libraries exist if you have access to a school.
• https://www.thriftbooks.com/ is good for cheap books online, https://bookshop.org/ is good for supporting local bookstores.

WHAT TO READ:

What a struggle! If you’re just dabbling in reading again, I recommend Libby or Libgen for e-books, and to check out/download whatever catches your eye. You can look up genres or themes you might want to check out, and often lists will appear. Maybe you’re interested in pirates, or samurai, or cowboys- they’re all from the same era after all. Or apocalyptic stories. Or cyberpunk. You can search for all of these tropes, and very likely, there’s a story that you’ll love.

If you’re more interested in dabbling in non-fiction, then think about what interests you. Very likely, there is a book on it. 

READING BOOKS:

• Do not punish yourself for only reading a chapter, or even a page. You can read as much or as little as you want. You can skip around. You can stop and start. You can re-read your favorite parts as many times as you would like. You can check out and return books you only ever read a couple pages of. “Reading rules” only exist for people who want to follow them.

• Graphic novels exist, and they’re great! I say this as someone who doesn’t enjoy most comics or manga.

• Start at your reading level, or slightly below it. You’ll want to practice finishing a whole novel before diving into ones above your reading comprehension.

• Never read non-fiction before but suddenly it catches your eye? If your not used to it, start with modern, contemporary non-fiction. You can read books on basically every subject- biology, psychology, astronomy, history, health, cooking, wilderness survival, metaphysics, anything you can think of. 

• If you usually scroll on social media before bed, try reading an e-book instead.

• Try listening to audiobooks! A lot can be found on youtube or on libgen.

• If your reading a classical novel that has text difficult for you to understand, I recommend finding a video (or textual) summary to follow along with your reading. You can watch the whole thing or only watch parts as you read it. Sometimes spoilers can become motivation to find out how something happens.

• Be gentle on yourself for being confused! Learn how to pursue anyways! Remember, there are no rules. You can skip ahead or reread a paragraph as long as you want, 

• Bring a physical book with you on long car/bus/train rides, at jobs you don’t do much work at, and anywhere else you might spend a long time doing little other than sitting and waiting. I recommend books you have already started, as there will be incentive of curiosity to find out what happens next.

• You can read booktok books! If that’s where you start, that’s where you start. I recommend reading outside of that eventually, but sometimes the fan-fiction tropes is what people are familiar with.

• Join a bookclub, if you can.

• Be patient. Reading is a long game. As with any skill, you will get better at it the more you do it.

Book Recommendations (based on what I’ve recently read and enjoyed):

Classical Lesbian Vampirism? Try Carmilla https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10007

Classical Gay Vampirism? Bram Stroker was a repressed gay man who wrote Dracula https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/345 

Malaria Conspiracy? Secret history? Post-colonial themes? Try The Calcutta Chromosome.

Transmasc YA? Apocalypse? Body horror? How about “Hell Followed with Us?” 

Graphic Novels? You can start with the infamous Maus, or even Abina and the Important Men.

MORE RECS TO COME