I won’t be the first to say that reading in summer is not easy. Maybe you feel differently, and if so I would love to hear how you manage it, but when it comes to summer reading I lose all speed and resilience. What used to be my reading pace is now a distant memory and I find myself in the same space hours later, barely ahead in a book I was eager to get through.

I am currently contemplating this issue over Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. I love the cosy fantasy, light academia vibes of the novel, and the fairytale elements – quite literary fairytale as this is a book about faeries and the stories that hide the truths of their kind – give it a naturecore essence too. If you are a witchy reader, or looking for some cottagecore/naturecore reads to fill your afternoon with, I would definitely consider Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries. But I digress, I started it sometime around midday and my pace has been dismal by my standards, a third of the rate it usually is.

This isn’t to say if you are a slow reader you are a bad one. I want to make that abundantly clear. This is simply a perception of my own reading norms and how the heat, humidity, and general summery energy is making reading a little bit of a slog. Mabe a slog is too harsh a term, but picture this: you expect to have you rjourney be about three to four hours, and instead you are crawling through the first third of the book in that same amount of time. This isn’t a poor reflection of the book as I am interested and intrigued by this story world. Instead, it is a curious investigation (or the beginnings on one, at least, into how I read. What makes it harder for me to get through a book? What is my standard rate of reading? I thought I had a decent idea of my routine reading pace, but perhaps I should do a month experiment to see how long it takes me to read 100 pages on average.

Now, is it a bad thing that I read slower in summer? No, not really. Does it mean I have to reconsider my tbr stacks, especially my library tbr, and account for the fact I will have to reduce my monthly reads to combat the longer time taken to read books? Probably. I tend to give myself days off reading to refresh and do other things, but as the next three or four weeks are my designated break from academia, I would like to get books reads and ticked off my physical tbr and library tbrs. Maybe I reorder my reading days and days off, or let go of structure all together and just read when I read and relax when I relax. I will say it is a little disappointing initially to think I will get a book read in four hours and find out I am not only much slower than anticipated, but that I have to stop and do other things like write up a review of a book I haven’t touched yet or leave the house from some mother-daughter time. Breaks are good, of course, but they are something I have to get used to with this slower reading pace.

What is your “usual” reading pace? Is it affected by the summer heat? I know the opposite can be true for a lot of people, with the autumn and winter chill increasing one’s reading pace and monthly books read. If you find you actually read more in summer, whether that be because it is your holiday from work and stress or you simply enjoy more “summery” reads and therefore get the reading bug whent he sun comes out, let me know!