I was just wondering if anyone else has this problem or if it is just me?

I’m just not enjoying books like I used to. Any books. I even walk in the bookstore (when I have money, or a gift card…and leave without buying anything which has NEVER happened before). I feel like most of the books I encounter are repetitive or lacking in some major way. Even books I once loved (like Flowers in the Attic and Petals on the Wind) now miss the mark. Young adult series books that everyone else is raving about (Divergent, Legend, etc.) fall flat for me because they feel so same-old, same-old. Old classics make me snooze for the first time ever. The specialized nerdy-girl Doctor Who books my son and I have been reading since Christmas feel poorly written and plotted.

I’ve considered that this may be that I spend so much time with students breaking down books into their respective elements (ha, this is just a fraction of my job…I really wish it was more), that I can no longer appreciate the beauty of the wholes. Or maybe it is NaNoWriMo; since I appreciate how hard it is to write a book, I get frustrated when people write and publish such bad ones.

Maybe it’s just this continuing reading rut. I mean, I failed my Goodreads challenge for 2013, which I NEVER expected to happen. I thought I could count on silly reads or some magical realism to slake my reading ennui. Maybe it’s just that I need some new authors or genres to reel me in again. But, for now at least, I’m just not enjoying much of what I’m reading.

What should I read? What’s going to make me love books again? I got two brand new books THAT I ASKED FOR for Christmas in hardcover and don’t even want to open them: The Golem and the Jinni and The Goldfinch. HELP!