How to Read More by Finding Great Books

In 2016, I roughly doubled the number of books I read, from thirteen to twenty-five. Twenty-five isn’t a big number by any means, but it’s progress, and perfectly attainable for anyone. So if your goal is to read more in 2017, here are a few things I learned last year that might be helpful.

Give yourself permission to read what you want

This sounds simple, but it’s so easy to forget. For years I tried to read the books I thought I should read: non-fiction business books, dense literature, or whatever appeared on somebody’s Medium post about the top 10 books to read if you want to succeed in life.

That just doesn’t work. Yes, sometimes there are books that you should push through. Yes, there are absolutely books that are “hard” that are worth it in the end — literature especially. But when you’re reading for fun, give yourself permission to read books that you can’t put down (and put down the ones you can).

Find great books

Two tips:

1. Go to your local bookstore and read the first ten pages of the first book that looks interesting. If you get to page fifteen before realizing you’ve passed page ten, then you’ve found the one.
2. When someone who knows you well recommends a book, read it (even if it doesn’t sound interesting). Mind you, this is in the form of “Hey Thain, I think you’d really like this book” not “Hey Thain, this is my all-time favorite book, you should check it out). In my experience, the former has a high success rate, while the later can be hit-or-miss.

Read more

Once you’ve found great books that you love reading, all you have to do is read more. Really, that’s it. Just spend more time reading. That might be disappointing advice, but sometimes there are no silver bullets.

If you can, find time in your routine to read at the same time every day. For me, it’s riding the bus to and from work. That gives me about twenty-five minutes each way to keep the pages turning.

The good news is, once you start finding great books, finding time to read gets a whole lot easier.

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