How We Find Our Way Back to Reading

What kind of reader are you? That’s the question posed by Goodreads’ new “Personality Picks” feature, a useful taxonomy so lovingly specific, it reads like a horoscope for the bookish set. Are you an Eternal Optimist Reader, reaching for stories where goodness ultimately triumphs? A Vibes Reader, guided less by plot than by atmosphere and emotional temperature? The “I Just Listened to an NPR Segment About That” Reader, forever chasing the buzzy, the timely, the culturally inevitable?

The categories are playful, as they’re meant to be, and they represent, as the Goodreads editorial team puts it, “an experimental new sorting technique” for turning “a big pile of books into lots of littler piles of books.” Anyone can scroll through the list (136 recommendations for “nearly every type of reader”) and search for themselves in the descriptions, feeling the small thrill of recognition when a category clicks.

But lurking beneath the playfulness is a more urgent question, one the Personality Picks can’t necessarily answer by its own strength. What if you’re not a Vibes Reader or an Eternal Optimist or an NPR follower? What if, instead, you’re the person who hasn’t finished a book since high school? The person who loved reading as a child and then, somewhere along the way, stopped? The person who looks at the 136 recommendations and feels not excitement but a low-grade overwhelm, because the list seems a little…daunting?

This is the gateway problem. It’s more common, and more solvable, than the publishing industry has ever tried to render.

The School-Shaped Wound

In a 2023 piece for Vox, Constance Grady set out to answer a question that hovers at the edges of bookish discourse: How does an adult who doesn’t read—who has perhaps never read a book cover to cover—begin?

“A question I occasionally come across browsing through the bookish internet,” Grady writes. “I haven’t read a book since high school. I’m thinking of trying one. Where do I start?”

The question’s phrasing is telling. It’s not “I haven’t found the right book” or “I’m between reads.” It’s, “I haven’t read a book since high school,” as if the two events are causally linked, as if high school itself is the thing that stopped the reading.

This suspicion finds confirmation in nearly every source that touches the topic. On a Reddit thread from 2013 (still active, still accumulating comments), one user puts it bluntly. “In school you are being made to read what people think you should read. Tom Sawyer, Mockingbird, etc.” Another elaborates: “The American school systems certainly sucks when it comes to giving people passion about reading.” A third, responding years later: “I’m nine years late but I love and hate this comment. Good job.”

Emily Pullen, manager of reader services at the New York Public Library, told Vox that she often asks patrons in this situation to diagnose the source of their resistance. “Ask yourself what it is you didn’t like. Was it just that it was required and therefore you didn’t want to do it? Is it because it was boring, it was too slow, it was too academic?” The goal, she explains, is to figure out “what it is that someone didn’t like about a book” so you can start figuring out what they might like instead.

This is the school-shaped wound. The well-intentioned effort to expose students to “great literature” often succeeds only in teaching them that reading is something done under compulsion, for later assessment. The Reddit user who says “I haven’t read a book since high school” is describing a system that worked exactly as designed.

The Permission Structure

If the diagnosis is proving to be consistent across sources, so too then, is the cure. It arrives not as a single prescription but as new system for people who’ve never let go of their AP Literature framework. Instead of arriving at the moment with a presupposed list of must-reads with the fear of failing to loom over one’s head until complete, new adult readers need only to give themselves the permission they’ve always secretly craved. Permission to read anything, permission to stop, and permission to read differently.

Permission to read anything.

You do not have to read “important” books. The Tea and Ink Society, a blog dedicated to helping lapsed readers return, recommends starting with YA novels or thrillers, genres “engineered to hook your interest almost instantly.” The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, Agatha Christie, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. “Momentum is key to getting out of a reading rut,” the author writes, “and it’s hard to find momentum in a slow-build reading experience like a Dickens novel.”

The Everygirl concurs, with a bookstagrammer quoted as saying, “I encourage people to read outside their comfort zone or pick up books they don’t know if they’ll like. Read as often as you can and as broadly as you can, and I hope it brings you as much joy as it brought me!”

This is the liberation at the heart of the permission structure. As adults, it’s difficult for us to realize that no one is keeping score. There is no gradebook, no taste police, no list of books you must read before you can call yourself a reader. As Victoria Wood of @bibliolifestyle told The Everygirl, “When it comes to reading for pleasure, there are no rules. Reading isn’t a race and it’s not a competitive sport.”

Permission to stop.

The most repeated piece of advice in the Reddit thread is also the simplest. You don’t have to finish books. “If you don’t like something, put it away, maybe pick it up later if you want, but don’t feel obligated to finish anything,” one user writes. “Go find something you love. Something you can’t wait to come back to. A book that, when you’re reading it, your life is measured in two ways: times reading book and other.”

Another user describes this as “a weird compulsion” that afflicts many former students—the sense that once started, a book must be completed, even at the cost of enjoyment. “I keep telling myself that one day I will go back and read my unfinished books, which makes me feel better, but I’m not sure that I ever will.”

A Facebook comment in a book group puts it even more succinctly: “If you start a book and don’t like it, choose a different book. There is no reason to force yourself to read a book that doesn’t hold your interest. Find something that captures your interest.”

Book Riot, in a comprehensive 2025 guide to beginning reading as an adult by Anne Mai Yee Jansen, gives this advice its own acronym: DNF, for Did Not Finish. “If you’re not enjoying it, do you need to finish it? Sometimes, reading is a trial-and-error process, so give yourself permission to stop reading if a book isn’t working for you. Maybe in high school, it was important to push yourself to finish a book you didn’t like, but nobody’s grading you now.”

Permission to read differently.

Audiobooks count. Graphic novels count. Short stories count. Listening while driving, while doing dishes, while walking the dog—that counts too.

Marvin DeBose, manager of the Haverford branch of Philadelphia’s Free Library, told Vox that he often points inexperienced readers toward graphic novels, specifically G. Neri’s Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty. “It’s an easy read and correlates to some of the stuff that’s going on now. I use it all the time and I’m batting a hundred percent.”

Lala Rodgers, a branch manager for the Chicago Public Library, recommends audiobooks. “They might be able to listen and read along while they’re listening. It might be more engaging. I’m a big audiobook person myself.”

The Reading Agency, a UK-based organization promoting literacy, explicitly states on its website, “Audiobooks can be an ideal route into reading, particularly if you find it difficult to focus on words on a page, or are looking for something to listen to while doing other things. Podcast fans, audiobooks are for you!”

It’s such a simple framework, but we have to remind ourselves that however we get the story, WE ARE READING.

The Translation Problem

But permission alone is not enough. Even with the freedom to stop, to choose anything, to read in any format, the aspiring reader still faces a practical question: What should I read?

Here the librarians offer a strategy so elegant it seems almost obvious: translate from what you already love.

“What I do first is try to find out their interests,” Marvin DeBose told Vox. “What I found out is that if you find a book about something that interests you, that will mean you’ll read more.”

This does not have to mean nonfiction, though it can. It can also mean thinking about what you like in other media. “More often than not these days, TV shows are based on books,” says Emily Pullen. “So you can read the books that are in that series, whether it’s Bridgerton or Game of Thrones. Or if you don’t want to read Bridgerton specifically, you can try a book by the same author, and that might be a way to start realizing that good storytelling is good storytelling.”

DeBose adds, “If you can find a movie that they’re interested in, a movie that they saw in the past and you can tie in to a book, then that’s a great source right there.”

Pullen also suggests looking to podcasts: “If you listen to podcasts, find out if the hosts have published books, because even though it’s a longer form, the voice often will feel immediately familiar. It will be a softer way to build up the muscles back into reading.”

Reading isn’t a separate skill but a continuation of appetites you already have. The true crime podcast listener is already a reader, she just doesn’t know it yet. The Bridgerton viewer is already a consumer of narrative, the books are just a different delivery system. The task is not to acquire a taste for literature but to recognize that the taste is already there, waiting to be translated into a new form.

The TBR Paradox

There is one more obstacle that awaits the returning reader, and it is perhaps the most insidious of all: the list.

Once you start paying attention to books, once you follow a few recommendations, join a bookish social media community, begin browsing lists like the Goodreads Personality Picks, the volume of what you could read rapidly becomes overwhelming. The To Be Read list, or TBR, grows faster than it can possibly be consumed. And for someone just finding their way back to reading, that long list can feel less like a promise than a burden.

The Tea and Ink Society identified this phenomenon and gave it a name: the TBR Paradox.

“Initially, I was petrified by all the books I felt I needed to read,” the author writes. “My TBR list was long, and I almost felt there was no point in tackling it, because I’d never get to everything anyway. Plus, my TBR kept getting longer as I learned of new titles and authors.”

But then something unexpected happened. “The more books I read and the more often I read them, the less daunting my TBR became…even though I was constantly adding to it!”

The explanation is psychological. When you read only five books a year, each choice feels momentous. “There’s a lot riding on your choice when you know it’s one of only five titles you’ll encounter that year. You feel like each book has to be the most interesting, best choice possible.”

But when you read dozens of books a year, the stakes lower. “You might read a few duds each year, but no worries. You’ll read plenty of stellar books to make up for it. Your TBR will keep growing, but it won’t overwhelm you because you can look back on all the books you’ve read and see that you’re constantly making progress.”

The paradox suggests that the anxiety around reading is partly a function of scarcity mindset. When books are rare events in your life, each choice carries the weight of representation. When they become regular companions, the pressure lifts. The long list becomes not a burden but a promise, a guarantee that there will always be more, that the well will never run dry.

The Social Scaffold

One final piece of advice that appears across nearly every source, and is perhaps the most counterintuitive in a discourse about individual pleasure: reading is better with other people.

The Reading Agency cites a striking statistic. 94% of reading group members report that they read more widely and feel more connected to others because of their participation. “We know that reading groups and book clubs are a great way to make friends, feel connected and empowered to try books you’d never have come across otherwise.”

Book Riot recommends joining a book club for precisely this reason. “They’re a great way to challenge yourself to read a wider variety of books and if you’re socially motivated, then they can work to incentivize you, too.”

The Everygirl piece that quoted bookstagrammers and booktokers, emphasizes the connective power of online reading communities. As reading has become a part of the author’s day-to-day routine, she writes, “it has not only taught me a lot but also allowed me to make connections with many wonderful book lovers through Bookstagram, BookTok, and local book clubs.”

This is the social scaffold. It’s the recognition that the solitary act of reading is paradoxically sustained by community. We read alone, but we find our way to books (and back to books) through others. A recommendation from a friend, a viral TikTok, a library book club, a Reddit thread where strangers argue about whether you have to finish what you start, these are the structures that hold us up when our own motivation wanes.

What We’re Really Looking For

Going back, now, to the Goodreads Personality Picks, look closely at the types and you’ll notice something. They aren’t really about genres at all.

The Vibes Reader isn’t defined by a preference for mystery or romance or science fiction. She’s defined by a mode of attention or the way of relating to text that prioritizes atmosphere over plot, emotional temperature over narrative momentum. The Snug-at-Home Reader is defined by context. She reads in a certain place, under certain conditions, seeking a certain feeling. The “I Just Listened to an NPR Segment About That” Reader is defined by timing. She reads what’s current, what’s being discussed, what connects her to the larger cultural conversation. These aren’t categories of taste. They’re categories of our desire.

The Vibes Reader wants immersion. The Snug-at-Home Reader wants comfort. The NPR Reader wants connection. These desires, once recognized, point toward something the school-shaped wound taught us to forget. That reading isn’t about performing cultural competence or accumulating literary merit badges. It’s about finding, again and again, the particular experience that only a book can provide. There is no wrong way to read. There is no gatekeeper. The books we actually want to read are waiting and they’ll most likely always be there, for the day we get around to them.

The gateway problem, it turns out, isn’t really a problem at all if you decide to think of it as a door. The only thing required to open it is the willingness to turn the handle—to pick up a book, any book, and see what happens next.