person lying on couch reading a book

How to Get Back Into Reading when Life Keeps Getting in the Way

ByFestival Media

Somewhere between the job, the family, and the phone that never stops pinging, a lot of us stopped reading. Not deliberately. It just happened. The bedside pile gathered dust, the bookmarks stayed put, and “I used to read all the time” became something we say with a slightly guilty laugh.

Here’s the good news: working out how to get back into reading is far easier than most people think. You don’t need more willpower or more spare time. You need a different approach — one that treats reading as a pleasure to return to, not a chore to schedule.

Start Smaller Than You Think

The biggest mistake returning readers make is aiming too high. You haven’t finished a book in two years, so you pick up a 600-page prize-winner because it feels like the “proper” way to come back. Three chapters in, it stalls, and sits on the pile unopened.

Start with ten minutes. Genuinely — ten minutes with a cup of tea, after dinner or before bed. Research on habit formation suggests new habits take a couple of months to stick, so the aim in the early weeks isn’t volume. It’s showing up. A chapter a night beats a heroic weekend binge you never repeat.

And if the book isn’t working for you? Put it down. Life is too short, and abandoning a book that isn’t earning its place is a reader’s skill, not a reader’s failure.

Choose Pleasure Over Prestige

Read what you actually want to read, not what you think you should. If that’s rural romance, crime set in the tropics, or a memoir that makes you cry on the ferry — wonderful. The fastest way back into reading is a book you can’t wait to pick up again.

Re-reading counts too. Returning to a book you loved at twenty is one of the most reliable ways to fall back in love with reading itself, because you already know the water’s fine. Audiobooks count as well — comprehension research shows listening holds up well against reading on the page, and a good narrator can carry you through the school run or the washing up.

The point is momentum. Once you remember what it feels like to be properly lost in a story, the habit largely takes care of itself.

Make Reading Fit Your Actual Life

Most advice about reading more assumes a life with quiet evenings and long weekends. Real life is messier, so build around what’s already there:

  • Pair reading with an existing ritual. Morning coffee, the public transport commute, the fifteen minutes while dinner’s in the oven.
  • Keep a book within arm’s reach. One in the bag, one by the bed. The phone wins by proximity — so change the proximity.
  • Swap one scroll for one chapter. Not all of them. Just one. That single trade is usually worth a book a month.
  • Track it loosely. A simple list of books finished this year is quietly motivating. No spreadsheets required.

None of this is complicated. That’s rather the point — the barrier was never ability, just arrangement.

The Book Is Waiting

Here’s the thing about how to get back into reading: the door was never locked. Ten minutes a night and a book you actually enjoy that’s the whole method. No guilt about the years you missed, no pressure to catch up on every prize list. Just you, a story, and a bit of protected time.

And if you’d like to jump-start the habit with a full day among readers, writers and thinkers, join us at the 2026 Whitsundays Writers Festival this September. Tickets and the full programme are at whitsundayswriters.com. Your comeback book might be waiting at Stories by the Sea.