Here’s something I hear a lot: “I wish I had more time to read.”
The funny thing is that this statement has nothing to do with time constraints associated with reading. People who read do it because they value it and make time for it in their lives. It’s not like it takes any more time than binge-watching True Detective (Nothing against the show BTW. I hear it’s great), and with devices like Kindles and Nooks it’s easier than ever to read no matter how hectic your life is. No, this statement is a confession of guilt — guilt over having a six-figure student loan bill yet never reading anything more substantial than a Buzzfeed listicle on a given day, along with an insecurity that maybe we’re not as curious or intellectually rigorous as we’d like to appear.
The irony of the situation is that your reasons for wanting to read are the very same obstacles preventing you from doing so. It’s time to take your ego out of the whole activity and start seeing it as just another enjoyable thing to do. All it’s doing is preventing you from one of the most effective means of transmitting knowledge, wisdom, and entertainment humankind has ever come up with. Yet, somehow reading as a habit has fallen into the same camp as fad diets and exercise programs — a product of a capricious generation plagued by decision fatigue.
Let’s shift our perspective a few degrees. It’s time to de-mystify what books represent. You’re no more or less special for having read a book, no matter how canonical. The fruits of reading, like most things, is directly correlated to your input. Just because you read Moby Dick doesn’t mean you got dick out of it. The important thing is that we begin to look at reading as an activity and not as an accomplishment. No one’s waiting to pat you on the back when you finish — but then again — no one’s going to chastise you if you don’t either.
1. No need to finish.
Let me tell you a little secret that no one ever told you. It may be one of the most liberating things you’ll hear today. You don’t have to finish books. There’s no law that says reading the first sentence of anything commits you to finishing the entirety of the work, no matter how uninterested or distracted you become. I quit reading things all the time. I never consider them failures. Sometimes, I’ll get 300 pages into a book and suddenly get fed up with the pacing or lack of character development. I started my favorite book of all time, Dune, twice before I actually sat down to read it all the way through. Don’t read for bragging rights.
Of course, I’m sure quitting books is where you’ve failed before. That’s probably why you have the anxiety you do. You just feel you’re doomed to never finishing a book (or anything) — sentenced to a bookshelf of books you’ve only ever read the introductions to.
So let’s redefine reading. Reading a book is not finishing it from cover to cover. When I say I’ve read a book, I mean I’ve read enough of it to derive useful information about a topic, or self-knowledge about my reaction to how the information was presented. Have your own reasons for reading a book other than being able to say, “I’ve finished it.”
2. The 50 page rule.
Here’s another useful trick I like to tell people: when you start a book, make sure in your first session you read at least 50 pages. I’ll usually wait to start a book when I know I have that much time to sink into it. 50 pages is usually enough to get a foothold in the author’s style of writing, the characters, setting, and time period. You basically need to establish a kernel of space for the book to exist in your mind. Otherwise, the longer the book exists as just “something you’re going to get into”, the more performance anxiety you build up and the less likely you are to continue reading.
It also removes that aura of what reading is supposed to look like. I don’t know what people expect to happen when they discover how enjoyable reading is. Do they imagine a tobacco pipe suddenly appears in hand, and a random bloodhound comes to sit at their feet, all the while a fire blazes in hearth nearby??? Reading is a mental activity. It looks like a catatonic state. Just sit down and do it for 50 pages.
3. Don’t read in bed.
Your bed is for sleep and sex. For many, this is a regular reading spot. Maybe you’ve been watching too many movies where the husband (played by Cary Grant) puts on pinstripe pajamas, crawls into bed, puts on tortoise shell reading glasses, and opens a leather-bound tome for ten minutes before dozing off. When you get in bed, your body starts preparing for sleep. Any reading you do during this time is a compromise of both activities. Ideally, your body should be so trained that when you get into bed at night, you should be asleep within 5 minutes of hitting the pillow. You’ll never achieve that level of adherence mixing those two activities up. Soon, you’ll associate reading with having to re-read the last two pages of where you left off before. No one likes redoing work. You’re essentially flushing that fledgling reading habit of yours down the tube.
4. Last chapters first.
If you’re reading non-fiction (this doesn’t work with fiction for obvious reasons), read the last chapter first. This does a couple of things. First of all, if you have to put the book down and move on for any reason, at least you’ve understood the author’s thesis statement regarding the topic. Second, it hones your mind to the theories and conclusions being provided. You already know what the end result of what all this information amounts to, at least in the abstract. Now when you go to read through the chapters you’ll be an active participant in the conversation and not passively going along for the ride. I rarely read non-fiction in order. I usually skip around and pick out the most interesting morsels first. If it’s an author I’m not familiar with, it gives me a chance to acquaint myself with his or her writing style. Some authors are unnecessarily verbose and often repeat themselves, or sometimes their sentence structure is less direct than I’d like it to be. In those cases, I just develop a shorthand way of skimming through their texts
5. Scuff’em up.
Buy paperbacks and throw them around, scuff them up, get food on them, accidentally crush pages now and then. If you’re too attached to the condition of the actual book, reading starts to take on the subtext of caring for an heirloom. Save your first edition Oliver Twist for reading at home in your favorite chair, or just do what most people do and lock it up in a glass-paneled bookcase.
I write all over my books — taking notes with my trusty Steadtler pigment liner .03 (yup, that’s ink!). My books look like they’ve been read. More importantly, they look like they’ve been read by someone who got a lot out of them. This, if anything, will obliterate any lingering pretension left in the act of reading.
Go grab a book off the shelf that you’ve been meaning to read and try out the tricks above. Reading is as common and unsanctified as brushing your teeth. Why make it any more special than that?
Originally published at www.chetbaby.com on April 13, 2015.
