By Victoria Pearson Entertainment 15.01.2026

“I Kept Failing at My Goal To Read More – Until I Tried This”

Bibliotherapy promises a more intentional way of reading. As a new mother, it became a way back to myself.

In the months after giving birth to my son in March 2024, I found myself in a strange new relationship with the written word. This was, among the many other changes that hit like a hurricane during postpartum, discombobulating – my career to date was shaped by a love of consuming and producing stories. Reading, which had once been the easiest portal out of myself, suddenly felt like an impossible ask. I couldn’t hold a plot in my head or commit to any great length of text, and I definitely didn’t want to read about early motherhood (or parenthood in general) – not because I was in denial, but because I was already living it, all day, every day, in the most immersive way possible.

That was the context in which I came to bibliotherapy: the practice of using books as a therapeutic tool. Lucy Pearson (no relation to this author), the UK-born, Sydney-based freelance writer, bibliotherapist and library curator, describes the practice as “getting a bit deeper into what the person might be looking to achieve through reading,” rather than simply swapping recommendations the way we swap restaurant tips. In other words, it’s not ‘what do you like?’ so much as ‘what do you need?’

Lucy has always been the kind of person who treats books like oxygen. “I always have at least one in hand,” she tells me during our session. She wasn’t raised in a house of readers, but something in her clicked early, and stories became “a steady presence”. Later, as life got more complicated (as it does), books were there not as distraction, but as a way through. “I used to view books as a way to enter another world, but bibliotherapy is slightly different. It doesn’t distract you from your life, it helps you try to live it better.”

Lucy attained a Book Therapy Certificate of Achievement through the London-based online platform “Book Therapy” – though she explains, “It’s quite important to note that there’s no official body of bibliotherapists” – and started practicing bibliotherapy in 2020 through her local bookshop in Bondi. During lockdown, her Instagram DMs filled with people asking what to read when the world felt frightening and small. Her recommendations weren’t one-size-fits-all. They were mood-aligned: something wise, something comforting, something that could hold a reader without demanding too much.

That sensitivity – to what a person can actually take in – is what drew me in. In our chat, I explained what I’d been too embarrassed to admit to most of my writer friends: I hadn’t finished a book in months. I wanted something lighter weight (but not fluffy!), short, but not slight. I wanted to feel like myself again, but I didn’t want to be preached at, or instructed in how to mother better, or handed a “journey” narrative with a bow on the end. Honestly, I just wanted reading to feel possible.

Lucy offers four types of sessions for her clients: from The Reading Reset, a gentle introduction to bibliotherapy with a one-off consultation and personalized book prescription, to The Constant Reader, which pairs that session with three carefully chosen titles delivered to your door. For those seeking something more immersive, A Year of Guided Reading offers two sessions and a curated selection of books over twelve months, while The Seasonal Reading Subscription provides quarterly consultations and seasonal reading bundles designed to evolve with you throughout the year.

Her sessions begin with a short onboarding questionnaire and conversation about your reading life – what you’ve loved, what you’ve loathed, what you can’t bear right now, what you’re hungry for. As she explains: “When you’re simply recommending a book to someone, you tend to just ask what sort of books they enjoy… With bibliotherapy, it’s getting a bit deeper.”

Lucy caveats emphatically that she’s not a therapist or psychologist – “just a passionate reader who wants to help others read more” – and what she offers is a kind of attunement. And a week after our call, which was cathartic in itself, a small parcel arrived in my mailbox containing three slim novellas – A Year by the Sea (Joan Anderson), The Dry Heart (Natalie Ginzburg), and Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan) – each accompanied by a note about why it had been chosen. The latter I devoured the day it arrived which alone felt like a minor miracle.

I realized quickly that this is the real, lived benefit of bibliotherapy: it restores a pathway when you’ve lost one. It can pull you out of a reading slump, yes, but it can also give language to grief, soften anxiety, ease loneliness, and create a sense of connection – to yourself, or a world bigger than your immediate circumstances. This connection is what Lucy calls “the heart of bibliotherapy”.

Bibliotherapy is also, increasingly, Lucy’s wider practice – she is part reading guide, part cultural curator. Alongside her client sessions, she writes The Literary Edit and curates libraries for homes, hotels, wellness retreats and Airbnbs (a service she launched in 2023 as Libraries Curated by Lucy). Her approach is, crucially, both aesthetic and substantive: she wants shelves that feel “lived-in,” with books you’re not afraid to touch, and choices that have real emotional heft behind them.

For me, bibliotherapy didn’t magically grant me hours of uninterrupted time – nothing can do that in early parenthood. But it did something more realistic, and perhaps more valuable, which was make reading accessible again. It reminded me that I don’t have to conquer a 500-page novel to be in relationship with books. Sometimes the most healing thing is simply to start – with something small, precise, thoughtfully chosen – and let that be enough.