Reading or studying a book.

I realised that reading ten pages of this book took me about an hour. Reading some fiction novel, I could digest about 50 pages an hour. There might be a difference not between the books but rather my approach to them.

As many others, I’ve struggled with reading. Both in terms of actually carving out the time needed to read, but also in terms of picking books. I’ve told myself the story of when you pick a book up, any book, you’ll need to finish it. Front to back. No matter what. That hasn’t been very helpful.

What the story of reading books like that does to us is limiting the amount and quality of books that we’ll read and in extension, limiting the amount of information and knowledge well consume. It can create a lot of anxiety and stress regarding reading as an activity, because no-one likes to read a book they don’t enjoy, and no-one likes the feeling of being a bad person which can be ever so present if you chase yourself for not finishing a book.

What I’ve done is that I’ve put up a couple of principles regarding reading. They’ve helped me in terms of being a better, healthier reader. And to enjoy reading all sorts of books.

First of all, I’ve decided that I consume books in at least two ways. I can read a book, and I can study a book. The difference in practice is that when reading a book, I start at the start and I go on chronologically until I feel like I’m done with it. Often times, that’s at the end of the book. When I’m studying a book, I set out with the intention of understanding the concept that the author is trying to communicate. I’ve realised that I’m not much for factual knowledge — especially when it comes to books — I’d rather understand the concept and move on. So when I study a book, I allow myself to be all over the place with it, until I feel like I’ve had enough. Sometimes that’s a chapter in. Sometimes I’ll read the whole thing.

Secondly, I allow myself to mark a book read on Goodreads even though I might not have read every page of it, if I feel done with it. A big motivation when it comes to reading the past year has been to look at my progress at Goodreads. I don’t thing I’ve ever read this many books in a year before, closing in on 30. But what I realised was that when I started reading something I didn’t enjoy, I stopped reading completely. There’s no point of being hung up on something because of the structure of a website. Just mark the book read and move on to something that excites you. With that being said, don’t lose your grit. No book is exciting all the way through, and almost all books take some grit to even get in to. Just don’t spend unnecessary willpower.

Read every day. Even though it might be for five minutes before bed, it shows that the activity is valuable to you, which it really is to me. Giving in to the daily grind of things, there’ll be times where I don’t have my reading routine of reading an hour in the morning. But carving out five minutes to open a book is a must in order to not forget the activity fully.

Talking about my reading has been immensely important to me. Just to reflect upon what I’ve read, trying the new perspectives that I’ve gained and so on. It’s been quite easy for me to do this as I’ve got my vlog, but I think it could be of importance to anyone who’s reading. It’s rewarding to talk about the content, and you seem to learn it in a completely different way than you’d otherwise do.

All of these things might be super clear to you. I’d like to end with the question: How do you read your books?