I spent several of the past years in a deep depression, where I found it difficult to concentrate enough to read. I did audiobooks through 2020, listening to stuff I'd already read (the audiobook of A Confederacy of Dunces was particularly entertaining) and then in November, I had someone recommend the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells to me. I consumed all five books within several weeks and since then, I have been reading several novels a week! It was funny how it just flipped a switch. I immediately re-read every Murderbot book, I fell in SO much love with this series.

Part of what helped was 1) getting some great recommendations from women on spinster for women-written sci fi and 2) then for some reason I got sort of hyperfixated on Halo (yes the FPS video game franchise, yes I know that's funny). I'd played the games before but then re-played them in January and something clicked this time around. I had a bunch of questions my SO couldn't answer about the story, so I went searching. And it turns out there is a whole rich Halo mythos/lore and I got absolutely sucked into this really intricate science fiction world, and have been reading all of the novels/short story compilations/novellas I can get my hands on. They're fast, easy reads of varying degrees of quality (shockingly all the ones written by women are the best- hmmmm), but I feel like most importantly, it's gotten me reading again- which even if it's just fun silly trash, feels great. I used to struggle to recall words, but now my vocabulary is returning to me, and I swear my brain is working better. I don't want to say it "cured" my depression- but it's given me a really great tool for helping focus my attention and mitigate some of the depression. I just had to stop putting so much pressure on myself to only read things that have won a bunch of awards, and go for stuff that moved me or was exciting or that captured my imagination.

So I'm curious- what are some of your favorite "guilty pleasures"? The books you read and re-read that are the equivalent of junk food for your brain. The series you know is not great but still makes you happy. The book that's objectively bad but you just love it so much?