Rut?! What's a Rut?! My TBR list is so incredibly long and filled with things that I want to read that I don't think I know the definition of "reading rut" anymore!

My secret? The wonderful world of book blogging! I read 80+ blogs each day, most book related. (You can see my blog list on the right sidebar of my own blog.) It never fails that at least one of them adds to my TBR list each day. I've learned about so many books that I never would have heard of otherwise.

I am lucky enough to have three siblings, each of whom has a unique taste in reading material. My older sister passes on interesting blogs and nonfiction legal material (Gideon's Trumpet in particular was a good read). My middle brother gives me more nonfiction, texts like Co-Opetition and Freakonomics. Finally, my youngest brother and I share a taste for science fiction and fantasy-- I gave him Ender's Game and he suggested A Song of Ice and Fire. Thanks to these three I have an endless list of greatly varied books to read in the future, and I trust each of them to recommend only the best.

When I'm in a rut, I step away from full-length books... and get a collection of short stories that I can pick and choose. A good 10 minutes on a juicy short story helps remind me how good a longer one would be.

My trusty rut-buster is re-reading a favorite. The Confederacy of Dunces could pull anyone out of the deepest funk.

I agree with Dave's suggesting of re-reading favorites. Wandering the bookstore and/or the library also helps; usually I can find something I'm mildly interested in. And finally, though this may sound counterintuitive, picking up an absolutely awful grocery-store paperback will bring me out of a rut almost every time. They're quick, easy reads and are often so terribly written that whatever I pick up next is almost sure to please.

The Guardian's book blog (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/books) picked up on this theme today, and here's a suggestion from rayz:
I had the problem of not being able to read anything for 6 months last year (from August to Jan actually). I couldn't concentrate on anything at all and completely wasn't interested either. But then I really started to miss reading and so decided I would ease my way into the habit of doing so by reading things that were undemanding and less time consuming. So I read children's books that I had grown up with but hadn't touched since school age. I went to the local library and got a few out - I managed to finish a book a day. Books by Diana Wynne Jones, Helen Cresswell, John Masefield, Dodie Smith, Susan Cooper, Anne Fine, Jenny Nimmo and it was great. Not only did it help me to get into the rhythm of reading again it was also really nice to rediscover all these old gems from when when I was growing up in the 90s.