I don’t know quite how to articulate this so I’ll explain my experience. I’m a 40 year old cis woman. For the past couple of years I’ve been experiencing more intense feelings of sadness in the run up to my period. I am currently reading Hello, Beautiful by Ann Napolitano. I read the first 50% of this book during the above phase and felt that I was loving the book so much. I felt teary and emotional throughout, linking my troubled relationship with my family, and my current feelings of invisibility, to William. Then when my mental health started to improve, my emotions towards the book are cooling (currently 69%) I’m starting to get annoyed by the lack of character interpretation; everything is given to you on a plate and is explained in great detail. I appreciated that a lot at first, but now it’s getting repetitive. I started to wonder if my strong emotions towards the book at first was a consequence of my hormones. And I also started to wonder if this has happened before but not realised. I wonder if this has been discussed before and if I’ve missed out on liking a book because of my mindset at the time, or liked it more because of it. I’m rambling at this point and I have no one else to discuss this with. Anyone else experienced this?
by Koholinthibiscus
2 Comments
Thanks for bringing up this topic. I think this may account for why some of the books I loved so much that were read in a single day were so lame when I read them again. Most of the ones that I’ve had that experience with were very emotional. Upon rereading they seemed maudlin and sappy.
I have not personally noticed this for my cycle specifically because I never felt like my period really affected my mental state much (it’s just bad month round lol), but I think just in general it’s very normal that how you feel about a book or anything really is affected by your emotions and well-being.