I'm a lot busier now compared to when I was in school and have found that listening to audiobooks has been the way I consume 95% of the reading I do now that I'm adulting. Even if it's not the "correct way" I'd like to read, I go through books a lot faster than I would is I didn't use audiobooks. Lower the barrier to entry for yourself. How you best do that depends very much on you and your circumstances, so try out different things and see what sticks.

Go down a few notches in terms of what I think I should read. For me, go back to comic books and work my way back up. Or SF short stories. Usually my spark dies from forcing myself to read things because I 'should'. Or I'm not balancing the challending ones with accessible ones.

I dunno what kind of books you like, but I was in the same boat and tried to go back to the type of books I previously enjoyed (high fantasy), but found I no longer had the mental energy for it. The thing that got me back was switching to a genre with a lighter tone. Something easy to read, or fast to read (or both). I call them "popcorn" books. Recently was in a minor slump, and started Dungeon Crawler Carl and that got me back, for example. Even Novellas are great. The Danielle Cain books by Margaret Killjoy are awesome short reads. Also, it is fine to pick something up, decide you don't like it, and move on. I never got the finish even if i hate it mentality

I would start with something easy to read, crime fiction or romance or something similar, whatever you used to like back when you read more. Or reread a book that you liked a lot. Then get some good recommendations for new books and pick out whatever gets you hooked. Once you've started a good book you will want to know how it ends, so starting is the hard part. Basically I try to have a book nearby at all times. Then, when I want pick up my phone out of habit, I try to pick up the book instead. Read a few pages instead of scrolling. Also try to read before going to sleep. This is what works best for me.

I prefer the Kobo to physical books, mostly because I have nowhere to put physical books, and I would lose a library book.

Libraries got me back into reading. Strolling through shelfs and randomly discovering books is fun. And they offer eBooks as well.

what does everyone else do when they’re struggling to read?

I know the struggle. It's almost impossible for me to read at home, because of all the other entertainment options that steer my attention away from books. The best place for me to read a book is on a train. Poor mobile internet connection, not much else to do, earplugs + eReader.

Healthy expectations also help. I don't expect me to read for hours. I'm very happy if I can focus on a book for 30 minutes at a time. If it's a good book, I know I'll pick it up again later.

Building the habit is the important thing for me. I’ve gone through different parts of my life that I’ve read and not read, and the main factor is whether I’ve built the habit. 

This usually involves one of two things for me. Either setting aside time to build the habit; or making it as easy as possible to read and making that one of my main hobbies. 

When I was in my late 20s, I wanted to start reading more technical books. Partly because I find them interesting, and partly to help with my job. So I set aside 25 minutes at the same time before bed every evening, Sunday-Thursday. I read a lot of books that way, 25 minutes a day. I think I doubled it to 50 minutes at some point and also read non-technical things as well. I did that for years. 

When I was a teen, I read On Writing by Stephen King. In it, he says in order to be a good writer, you have to be a voracious reader. So he says to take a book with you everywhere you can. Waiting rooms, grocery store lines, whatever. 

I always struggled to carry a book around with me everywhere unless I had a bag. But with my phone and other reading devices, I started realizing I could replace some of my scrolling or news searching with book reading. 

I have an app on my phone, and I read every day because I’ve built the habit. 

I get as absorbed in books as I used to, but I’m getting older and I have other things to do, and sometimes it’s nice to take a little break anyway.

I keep track of how many days I’ve read, and today was 774 days in a row. I don’t read quickly, but I read plenty of high-quality books. 

Patience + persistence = progress.

When I was getting back into reading I used an eBook app with vertical scrolling on my phone for a year or two before digging up my old kindle.

The only thing that has ever brought me back to reading after a hiatus has been the prospect of a really good book. Since I was a child I have lived by the same rule. A book gets 3 chapters to get good or I put it down and find something else to read or do. I used to go long spells of not reading followed by periods I can only describe as binge reading when I would devour every book in sight and then I would eventually end up with a book that sucked and that would knock me out of my groove and reset the cycle. Nowadays I listen to audiobooks 50 hours a week while I work. Finding new books to listen to is almost a second job at this point. I can’t even remember the last time I read a book I had to hold in my hands.

Normally, I would point out that there are more books than a person can read in one lifetime and an immeasurable amount of short fiction you can read for free on the internet. However, since you are looking for Pokémon fan fic you are probably S.O.L. Good luck on finding something you enjoy.

Have you tried audio books?

Some people exercise while they listen. Stephen Fry claims to have lost fifty kilos by walking and listening to great books.

You gotta force it at first, and you gotta set aside the time, as older adults we don’t find time, we have to make it. Find a place you can make it a routine, set aside 30 minutes on a day a week. Then increase as you can.

I do sometimes wonder what we’re all going to do if somehow everything works out okay and no-one was planning for that

It feels bleak out there, and Murphy's stories reflect that atmosphere of cruelty. But they also document a moment when more and more young trans people are taking the plunge, forming real-life communities, making art, and helping each other survive. There's a push/pull between those two truths in Shut Up, I Love You, and Murphy explores both the power and the limits of caring for each other in a hateful world—the act of holding hands at the bottom of a ditch, to use an image she mentioned at a Q&A in Brooklyn last week. "I kept trying to come back to, 'Someone should actually believe in the future,'" Murphy told me in August, while I was visiting Chicago.

I'd open Property-Based Testing in Rocq first: it sits less comfortably with the proof-assistant material and more comfortably with the testing you do day to day. Does it build its own generator library from scratch or lean on an existing one?

I almost exclusively read nonfiction. If I wanted to read fiction I'd browse the internet.

The Brothers Karamazov

Agree with the others that Tolstoy is the obvious recommendation. Both Anna Karenina and War and Peace are excellent, I'd probably start with Anna Karenina.

I recently read an incredibly funny translation of Notes From Underground, also by Dostoyevsky. Highly recommend if you're into narratorial ranting a la Grendel. George Saunders has a lovely book on writing, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, which also serves as a very accessible collection of some great Russian shorts (it's titled after a scene from "Gooseberries").

The Gray House by Miriam Petrosyan is what made me fall in love with russian literature. Also loved Pale Fire by Nabokov, a little less difficult of a read than Lolita because of the subject matter and also has a (hilariously) self rightious protagonist.

The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov

I'm partial to Gogol -- The Nose and The Overcoat are the first stories of his that come to mind. Also, I'd strongly recommend Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, though that's considerably later than what you're currently reading. It's definitely worth giving Evgenii Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, though no English translation really hits like the original Russian since it's in verse, but it has such an outsized impact on Russian literature you kinda of have to read it. Hero of Our Time by Lermontov is in a similar vein, if you find you like it. I'll also give a shout to my boy Anton Chekov -- the two that loom largest in the canon are probably Uncle Vanya and the Cherry Orchard, but I would start with the Seagull.

It's been decades but Anna Karenina is still in my top five favorite books.

Maybe Tolstoy?

I really enjoyed Roadside Picnic.

I heavily recommend The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat. From Wikipedia:

Persian novella by Sadegh Hedayat that is about an isolated, unnamed narrator who recounts his obsessive love for an enigmatic woman and his gradual descent into psychological fragmentation, conveyed through a dark, hallucinatory narrative in which reality, memory, and nightmare become indistinguishable.

There's a collection of short stories by Edogawa Ranpo called Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1956) that might be up your alley based on the key words. He's often compared favorably to Edgar Allen Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I've been trying to come out of a reading slump by returning to some old favorites!

I've already read most Sherlock Holmes stories, but I haven't gotten to every single one in His Last Bow or The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, so I've borrowed a complete collection and promptly gotten sidetracked by rereading The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I also finally got around to reading the Anne of Green Gables series, and absolutely adored the first few books. The older and more restrained Anne gets, the less engaging I find them, but it's a very comfortable series and I was gifted all eight paperbacks, so I soldier on through book seven. Anybody else in the community doing some recent reading?