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You could also resolve to get through 10 or 25 or 100 pages per day, or set a goal of reading one book per week or a certain number per year. I thrive when I have specific benchmarks to work toward, so I aim to read 50 pages a day. Embark on a quest to read every book featured on this year’s New York Times hardcover nonfiction best sellers list, for example, or to read something published each year from the time you were born. “We sometimes tell ourselves stories about our reading lives that aren’t necessarily true. Short works like these aren’t as daunting as longer tomes and can motivate you to find a reading routine that will work best for you, Moreno says. “You don’t have to be like, ‘I’m going to read War and Peace,’” says Chasity Moreno, who works in the New York Public Library’s Reader Services department.
How to Read More
To me, it feels like going to going figuring out what kind of food you want to eat for dinner. For author Emma Straub, the question of what to read next is one of reading’s great joys. Booktoker Zang calls the beginning of the book the "beginning borings." She challenges herself to make it through until she feels invested — or she doesn’t. But it’s worth finding the niches that get you excited, at least to get into the habit. "A lot of people who don’t read or want to read see reading as something that needs to be intellectually stimulating — and it doesn’t," Zang says. Think about the parts of your routine that are now automatic.
This may take the form of an in-person book club, an online community like Zang’s, the bookish corners of TikTok, Instagram and other social media platforms or a simple running conversation with the readers in your life. If you find yourself stalling, though, with all the choices, start keeping a running list of books to read based on recommendations from booksellers; people you trust; publications and more. “I love that moment, when I finish a book and realize it’s time to choose the next one. After the first week, move up to ten minutes a day.
Uncover a suitable space for reading to make it feel more like joy than a job. Consider these tips, based on my back-and-forth experience and a trickle of data, if you long to read more this year. I’ve fallen in love with reading again (and a few books, too), and you can too. I’d either buy books that sat untouched on my nightstand for ages or get discouraged by a book I didn’t connect with, letting months go by without picking up another. Her superpower is matching people up with the perfect book.
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Any other suggestions for how to read more? Years ago, I wrote a post about how to read more books and I still stand by all my recommendations in that post! "This article really helped. The pictures made it easy to understand and it was explained easily." English teacher Tristen Bonacci, MEd, says to “read every single day” to build the habit, even if you’re only reading a little bit. Or maybe you want to get into reading but don’t know where to begin.
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Or, if books feel like too much, you can turn to short-story collections or long-form journalism. And when you do, think of it less like a to-do list and more like a treasure trove. Consider signing up for newsletters with book recommendations and glancing at book lists that interest you to keep that list growing. Reading will come far more naturally if you focus on what you enjoy and close the cover on what you don’t. And if you pick a book you don’t enjoy, try not to be hard on yourself.
I also don’t speed read fiction. For example, Alistair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is super hard to understand when you’re Find MS Interactive reading it at a snail’s pace; it’d be impossible to comprehend if you sped through it. They make extensive use of headings, bolded first sentences, and bulleted lists. For that reason, I don’t like speed reading. While it is possible, with lots of practice, to increase reading speed while maintaining decent comprehension, there’s inevitably going to be some comprehension loss the faster you go. As mentioned above, when people ask me how I read so many books, they often assume I’m speed reading.
"Set a reading timer for five minutes per day. Read anything, but it has to be on paper," she says. On her online book group, Zang, 23, sees many other readers go through a similar transition. If you’re speed reading Dickens or Austen (yes, there’s a place for Jane Austen in a man’s library), you’re going to miss out on prose that should be relished.
Start small
Libby is an online book database that connects to your local library’s catalogue, allowing you to download books directly to your smartphone or e-reader. If you’re an avid audiobook listener, Audible also offers a monthly subscription. I love the feel of a crisp new hardcover, but I don’t love dropping the $30 at traditional retailers. One of my favorite corners of Instagram is #Bookstagram, where readers post aesthetically pleasing photos of their favorite books.
- Below, I’ve shared 12 of my favorite ways to read often and a lot – including a completely free (and legitimate) way to access e-books, among them new releases.
- I never get in any good, focused reading when I read on my phone.
- There were times, too, when I didn’t feel the call to read at all.
- Research shows more than four in 10 U.S. adults read as part of their bedtime routine — averaging 36 minutes of reading time each night four (or more) nights each week.
- English teacher Tristen Bonacci, MEd, says to “read every single day” to build the habit, even if you’re only reading a little bit.
Follow them, and you might be reading more books in a month and year than ever before. To answer that ever-pressing question, we spoke to authors, bookstagrammers and TODAY’s Book Lover in Chief, Jenna Bush Hager herself, for tips. Before she was 19, Shelby Zang didn’t consider herself a reader. First, with fiction, there’s a lot of nuance in the story that can be lost if you skim it.