Although the outbreak of COVID-19 certainly freed up more reading time for me overall, I started this year with the intention of not focusing on meeting a number count. While I have read 50 books a year on average for the last four years, I wanted to break that threshold as a personal goal. However, after failing my last two annual reading challenges where I increased my goal to 60 (54/60 in 2018 and 47/60 in 2019), I felt like I needed to re-evaluate my reading goals in the first place.
While I love using the Goodreads challenge as a way to easily log books I've read over the years, the focus on hitting a sheer number of books/year felt superficial. There were times where I've trudged through books I didn't enjoy just to say that I "finished" them to count towards my running total; other times, I would finish a long, complex nonfiction book (like Howard Zinn's A People's History) and feel like it didn't "count" as much as it should have, because it was weighted the same as the light, breezy novels I could finish in a sitting.
I was also more conscious of when my reading pace would ebb and flow. The more I struggled my way through a book I wasn't enjoying, the less I wanted to read at all. I was consistently going through months-long reading slumps every year, and while sometimes it aligned with whatever else was going on in my life at the time, they were also in part due to discouragement by books I didn't like. Conversely, whenever I read a book so engrossing I couldn't put it down, I felt inspired to look for more titles or start new books and would get through two or three titles in a week.
For 2020, I made it my goal to only read books that I was excited about. I also expanded the genres and types of books that I would read, which allowed me to both vary up the texture of my reading as well as set up a more steady stream of new books in my to-read queue. Finally, I started actively seeking out and reading more recommendations from friends so I had the conversation about those books afterwards to look forward to.
Ironically, these changes resulted in my most productive year in reading in recent memory. Since I've been tracking my reading and subsequent habits fairly meticulously for five years or so now, I figured I'd write up some of my "strategies":
1. Read multiple books simultaneously
I am always actively reading at least two books at once. Part of this is simply because I almost always have multiple library loans out at any given time; since I am constantly operating on a 21 day loan period, the impending deadlines give me a sense of urgency to finish books before they're due.
While I used to read only one book at a time, I adapted to reading multiple books at once because my focus levels vary throughout the day. I'm more of a morning person, so I have a greater ability to focus in the morning and early afternoon before my mind slows down considerably by evening. This way, I can maximize my attention span and get more out of my daily reading.
I am better able to process denser text earlier in the day, so I'll read expertise-building nonfiction (recent subjects include: foreign policy, US history, economics, the environment) or certain works of fiction (the ones I've read this year in this category were in translation: Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Albert Camus' The Plague) in the morning or during my lunch break at work. I save lighter reads―memoirs, contemporary novels, pop nonfiction, essay collections, basically anything that is easy to pick up again and get right into―for after work hours on weekdays or evenings on weekends.
2. Read different genres
The other main reason I adapted to reading multiple books at once was because I started reading more nonfiction and I found that I got more out of my nonfiction reads when I didn't try to read them all at once. By reading a chapter or two at a time, I was better able to absorb more content within those couple of chapters in the short term and later convert that into long term memory.
This strategy is important to me because it helps me qualify the two main reasons why I read in the first place: knowledge building and pleasure. Obviously there is a lot of crossover between the two, but for functional purposes this distinction helps me approach different books in different ways. Although on average I've been reading around 50 books a year for the last few years, I rarely read at the pace of 1 book/week because I am constantly switching up genres. (My reading patterns are more like: finish 3 books in one week, and then go 2-3 weeks without finishing another book.)
I admit that switching between genres (such as going from urban fantasy to cultural criticism essays to contemporary fiction for my "for fun" category, and French existentialism to global catastrophic risk to surveillance capitalism for my "knowledge building" category) can actually slow your overall pace down because you have to code-switch frequently and build fluency across genres; there is always new jargon and style to learn, and getting used to the difference in pacing can take time. So if your priority is to increase the overall number of books you read per year, and you also happen to like reading a specific kind of book, you could probably maximize your overall total by reading similar books and build fluency in that area.
For me though, the genre-hopping is part of the fun of reading a few dozen books a year. While I know what I like, I want to challenge myself to discover new things and perspectives I didn't know about. I usually ask my friends what they're reading or if they have any recommendations. I'll also sometimes pick up one of my boyfriend's books lying around our apartment when I'm looking for something new.
3. Use the public library system or support indie bookstores
For someone who loves books a lot, I really don't own many physical copies of them. Owning physical books is a commitment, and I am not in the right place in my life for that yet; I've moved across the country a number of times in the last few years and will soon be moving overseas later this year, and as much as I would like to have copies of my favorite books with me in every new place I call home, it isn't very practical to take all those books with me wherever I go next.
Growing up, my mum would take me to my hometown public library at least twice a week because it was on the way home from school. To this day its website remains one of my top visited sites (thanks to their extensive collection of ebooks on Overdrive) even when I can't regularly visit my hometown branch in person anymore. Even if you aren't able to regularly visit your local library in person, I highly recommend checking out ebooks for titles you're interested in.
Although I've had to wait longer periods of time after hot new book releases (looking at you, Becoming by Michelle Obama), using the hold system naturally queues up my to-read list so I have a steady stream of new books to read. I find that even when I buy books I'm excited about I tend to prioritize library loans first; they're due in three weeks, while the books I buy are mine forever. I've been reading Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World for over a year now because I own it and only pick it up during lulls in library loans.
If you do prefer buying books though, please support your local, independent bookstores! Like public libraries, a lot of great local bookstores are community-oriented, host a variety of events with authors on book tours, and curate their collections beyond just the top bestsellers. When I was still working at my office, I would frequently visit Kramerbooks & Afterwords in DC for new titles to reserve at DC Public Library.
If you're in the United States and want to order books online, I recommend Bookshop, which donates a portion of its sales to the local brick-and-mortar bookstore of your choice or splits the profit across a pool of indie booksellers.
4. Read everywhere
I don't really have a time of day that I set aside to read; I just read whenever I can and feel like reading. I will read first thing in the morning, while eating meals if I'm eating alone, whenever I'm not busy with something else at home, while doing other things at home if my hands aren't too busy (waiting for water to boil while cooking; having pages open while folding laundry), and until I fall asleep at night.
The last one was a habit I developed in college: because I always had at least one roommate sharing the same bedroom with me, I could never keep a lamp on to read physical books in bed. I ended up getting an iPad so I could read backlit ebooks with black backgrounds and grey text. (My eyes have probably suffered over the years as a result.) As much as I enjoy reading physical books, ebooks are just so much more convenient for my lifestyle.
One place I do not read is on public transportation. Although I obviously don't have a commute at the moment, I am very jealous of everyone who doesn't experience major motion sickness while reading on trains and buses.
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I'll try to write up a year-end post on my favorites in a few months, so for now I'll leave you with a quick snapshot of my favorites from my 2020 read list so far (no particular order):
- Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
- How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard
- The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- The White Album by Joan Didion
- Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk
- The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin
- War on Peace: The End of American Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence by Ronan Farrow
I'm always looking for new books to read! Let me know what books you've enjoyed recently.
xoxo, vivian
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