The Books I Reach for When I'm Tired of Choosing

There's a particular kind of fatigue that comes from too many options. Not the good kind of overwhelm, the one where you're excited by possibility, but, the kind that makes you freeze. Where your reading flow has stalled out, and suddenly you're staring at a stack of books, a dozen recommendations in your notes app, and a dozen more trending titles on social media you feel like you're supposed to care about.

I know this feeling well. The weight of endless lists. The "have you read this" texts from friends. The books everyone's talking about that start to feel less like choices and more like obligations. Social currency. A way to make sure you're not on the outside, that you're in the know. At some point, reading stops being what it's supposed to be and becomes a project. A goal to check off.

This experience has a name: choice overload, sometimes called decision fatigue. Psychologists have studied how too many options can lead to anxiety, paralysis, and dissatisfaction — even when the options themselves are good. Research suggests that when we're overwhelmed by choices, we're more likely to defer the decision entirely or feel less satisfied with whatever we eventually choose. It's not about the books being bad. It's about the mental load of deciding becoming too much.

And that's when I reach for the familiar.

Not because I'm playing it safe, necessarily. But because there's a relief in knowing what I'm getting. A trusted author. A voice I recognize. A book that doesn't require me to gamble my limited reading time on something that I may end up terminating after 10 pages. I can predict, with reasonable confidence, that it will bring a certain level of comfort. That I'll be held by the author’s style of writing, even if I'm not blown away by the storyline. A book I probably won't regret starting, if I’m lucky.

We have to give ourselves permission to listen to that instinct. To reread something that already moved us. To pick up a short story instead of a novel. To choose poetry when fiction feels too heavy. Or to take a pause altogether and step away from reading entirely until the pressure lifts and the desire returns on its own terms.

There's no shame in that. In returning to what works. In letting go of the pressure to always be reading the next new thing, the buzziest release, the book everyone's dissecting online. Sometimes the best choice is the one that removes the burden of choosing at all.