<book> How To Read More. </book>
I was trying not to drop books while I was waiting in the queue at Waterstones bookshop. The queue was going slow. When I finally got to the counter, I slammed the books down so badly that everything on table jumped up from the weight of my books.
But there was one more title I wanted to get. It was William Zinsser’s classical guide for writers called “On Writing Well”. I asked the man who was scanning the bar codes of my books to help me find that one. That irritated people waiting behind me in the queue even more.
Little I knew that book was going to change my reading habit completely.
I sat down in my chair and started reading it. It was so brilliantly written. Every word was in the right place. That book was an art itself. In only few days I finished it. I would have finished it earlier if work wouldn’t distract me.
“On Writing Well” is a brilliant guide for the people who want to start writing and need to know the basic writing techniques. Zinsser eloquently shows his passion for the writing craft on each page, paragraph and sentence of his book. While you read the book, his passion of writing is quickly transferred to you. But there was something more that Zinsser’s book gave me — he taught me how to read more.
I buy lots of books. I mostly read non-fiction books related to politics and current events. They all are so interesting.However some of these books are also so badly written. They can be well-researched and be written by respected intellectuals from the world’s best universities such as Oxford or Harvard, but they can be unnecessarily badly written.
“Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.” — says Zinsser in his book.
So many times I picked up a book in excitement and as I started to read, I instantly began to stumble on everything that Zinsser mentioned in the quote above.
I remember I was reading a book on Artificial Intelligence — the topic that’s so exciting — and I had to take a break from it every ten minutes. The sentences in that book were so unnecessarily complicated as if the writer over complicated it on purpose.
After reading “On Writing Well”, I began to pay attention not only at the content of the book, but also on the way the book is written. If it was badly written, but said something interesting — it would definitely lose its place in my To-Read-List.
Since I’ve started following that hidden advice by William Zinsser, I started reading more — a lot more.
It was in October 2015, when I finished “On Writing Well” and today — three months later” — I finished more that thirty books. In precisely three months, or 90 days, I managed to finish reading a book every three days! This really shocks me.
I’ve never done anything like this. The balance on my bookshelves between ‘the books I’ve not read’ and ‘the books I’ve read’ has changed significantly in the benefit of the latter. But Zinsser’s advice is not the only secret of fast-reading I follow today.
The other advice that I apply to my daily life comes from Ryan Holiday the author of “The Obstacle is the Way” and “Trust Me I’m Lying”. Ryan is a very inspiring young man. I discovered him from an interview he has given for a web show called London Real, where he eloquently described the key concepts of Stoic philosophy.
Ryan says that there are no shortcuts in reading. All these Speed-reading courses are irrelevant. And as Woody Allen has said:
I took a speed reading course and read “War and Peace” in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
I always read the book with a pencil. I make notes on the sides. I highlight quotes I think can be useful in my next blog post. I make notes in my moleskine notebook of ideas I want to write in the future. All of this cannot be possible if you are reading 1000 words per minute (as these speed reading courses promise). I doubt that the techniques these courses teach are true.
You have to make ‘reading’ a habit — a part of your day. I fill up the empty gaps of my day by reading. When I have a break at work — I read. When I commute — I read. That’s how I managed to read more.
What do you do when you have some free time, let’s say twenty minutes? Four months ago, I was going on YouTube, Amazon Video, or Netflix and was watching shows there.
Now. I replaced watching with reading. And I recommend you to try that as well.
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“Blueprint for Revolution” by Srdja Popovic is one of those 30 books I read recently.
Check out my post about it here.
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