Stuck in a reading rut? Try something different.

It happens to the best of us. The love of reading is still there but nothing feels “right”. You wonder if you are being too picky.  You start to doubt whether you even know yourself or your reading tastes anymore.  These are just a few signs that it might be time to shake up your reading life and try something new.  Take some inspiration from younger readers.

You may have seen some young readers in your life clutching what looks like a novel but upon further examination reveals itself to be….a comic book.  A really long comic book.  But it isn’t exactly a comic book.  This type of book is more commonly known as the graphic novel.  Don’t discount this newer type of book because of the cartoons.  There are so many types of stories available to you under the graphic novel umbrella - they aren’t just for kids.  

One of the best known earlier graphic novels is the Pulitzer Prize winning Maus, a Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History. In Maus, Spiegelman uses the graphic novel format to share his estranged father’s story as a survivor of the Holocaust.  But Maus has a twist that you could only find in the graphic novel format - the Nazi’s are portrayed as cats and the Jewish characters are portrayed as mice.  This is just one of the many examples of powerful stories you can find when you read a graphic novel.  

Another format to try are novels in verse.  Again, the variety of stories being written using this format are growing every year.  While many novels in verse are written for the middle grade or young adult audience, don’t let the target age of these books stop you from giving them a try.  Not only are novels in verse beautifully written, they also have fewer words on each page which makes for a fast read - the perfect combination to get you out of your reading rut.