Alternate Subtitle: The Best Advice I Could Give You About Reading Lots of Books.
via a Tom Gauld Book1
Ever so often, after one of my reading updates on social media, some of my young friends ask me how I get so much reading done.
So, I decided to answer it here for posterity and then just point folk here.
- You are not me.
a. I am a book worm.
b. I am much older than you, with lots more practice. - You most probably want to rush through a hard, technical book.
a. I find them as hard as you.
b. I read them at, as slow a pace as you.
c. I interleave the hard stuff, with a lot of easy, “I-Love-This” fiction - Speed Reading is Bullshit!
Once you read a lot of books, you can pattern match and speed up or slow down, through whole blocks and paras and chapters and pages. - Reading for studying’s sake is work and unavoidable and not quite related to reading for reading’s sake.
a. These I pucker up and do anyway, just like taking bad medicine.
The only things that matter, when it comes to reading are …
- Be consistent. Read a little bit, daily.
The trick to reading a lot, is to read a little every day. - And the trick to reading a little every day is to, make it a habit.
- Be curious. Read whatever you want. Read whenever you want. Read wherever you want.
- Quit Books.
You don’t have to finish it. You don’t have to slog through it.
Set it down. Come back to it, tomorrow … or in a few decades.
Or just throw it out and forget all about it. - And if reading really becomes a sort of calling for you, then learn how to do it properly.2
That’s about it for now. If I remember something more, I’ll come back and tack it on here.
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P.P.S. Feed my insatiable reading habit.