I love love love getting lost in other universes. But lately, my attention span has started to get really bad. It took me a year to slog through crazy rich asians. How long does it take to regain interest into books?? I just find all the main characters so annoying and so hard to root for lmao help
Maybe try another genre, one that you haven't read before. That way you won't know what to expect and the tropes you got used to will be absent. For example, if you used to read SciFi, try urban fantasy. Or if you want to be even more radical, go for memoirs/nonfiction. You'd be amazed what's out there.
How about giving audiobooks a try? Listening to some stories being read to you could probably get you back into reading again. It’s also a lot easier when you get to listen to something in your own time. You could probably put one on before to help you relax at night or over the weekend when you got some time for yourself. You could try listening to a mystery or a crime story or something. That might keep you in some suspense
+1 for switching genres. I was mostly reading detective books and sci-fi before my love of reading dried up. Then I discovered transgressive fiction and haven't looked back since.
I think switching genres is a good suggestion. I’ve been a pretty steady hard sci-fi reader for decades. Then my reading waned. There were excuses, of course: work, lots of fun stuff on TV, etc. But the fact was that I wasn’t interested in reading much. Then my neighbor gave me a copy of The Oregon Trail, a memoir of a guy who, in 2012, bought a covered wagon and three mules and, with his brother, set off to retrace (as much as feasible) the Oregon Trail. Totally out of my zone, great book. Then I picked up Lonesome Dove. OK story, lots of writing issues to trigger my editor’s brain, but a different genre than I normally read. Now I’m itching to find something else to read, but I’m also itching to write more, which had been stalled as well. Sometimes it just takes a little kick from the side to put things right.