by Lee Cross
I hear all the time, “I wish I read more,” perhaps you’ve said those very words yourself. Well if you’re serious, if you REALLY do want to get into reading, here’s a few tips I’ve picked up over twenty years as a prolific reader:
1 – Find the right book
Simple, right? Well so you’d think, but too many people get caught up trying to read books they feel they should read.
I get that, I totally do. Catch-22, 1984, Trainspotting, LOTR, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Master and Margarita… some of the greatest books ever written, and all works of fiction that I personally think should be taught in school (I’m not touching non-fiction FYI, that’s a whole other slice of fish), but none of them are good places to start reading.
If you are trying to get into reading, start with books you want to read.
I’m serious, be it 50 Shades of the Da Vinci Code or The Hunt for the Patriot Games… or the trashiest, junk filled, teen fantasy, vampire romance novel you can find – be true to yourself, and start at the beginning.
This is the first and most important tip I can offer; trust me, there is a book out there for everyone. I blogged about my friend Philly before, who spent most of his adult life not reading much further than the words “Jack” and “Daniels” but Enders Game was the book for him.
For me it was Matilda by Roald Dahl (even when I was little I dreamed of running away, and finding my Miss Honey), for you it could be….
2 – Tell your friends you are reading (or reading more)
Create social pressure on yourself to keep reading
Out loud and proud, let the world know, tell everyone you think that will listen.
The three most common responses:
– Wow! That’s great! [a normal person]
– Wow, that’s great! What are you reading? [a casual / occasional reader]
– What are you reading? [a bookworm]
Create social pressure on yourself to keep reading.
The Telly Addict will expect you to fail (stuff them), the occasional reader hopes you’ll succeed, and the bookworm is only truly interested in what you are reading – still, all three groups will make a point of asking you how the book is going, which in turn will keep you reading, just to make sure you have a story to tell if nothing else.
3 – Don’t use a bookmark – turn the page corners
Record your progress
“Blasphemy!” I hear you cry and, yeah, I feel that way too, but I’m a 1000+ books down the path.
When I started out though, I’d always turn the page corners. It was a great way of measuring my progress, looking at those indentations on the closed book, to see how much I read at such and such a time; and provided encouragement as I begun to understand my ability to read, with prolonged focus, was noticeably increasing.
[It’s a side issue but nowadays I get the sexiest feeling from looking at a basically unmarked book on my shelves, and knowing that I read it in one sitting]
4 – Don’t be afraid to rough up your books
Books are always beautiful, but not because they may look beautiful
They’re vessels ultimately, not bloody ornaments; turn the corners, break the spines, squeeze them into your pockets, carry them around with you anywhere and everywhere…
You should see my copy of Plato’s Symposium; it’s held together by tape, its stained from a cocktail I spilt on it years ago while I was bartending (it was a quiet bar, and I had reading to do), and covered in my own notes – have any of those things in any way diminished the book, or it’s value and worth?
5 – Schedule time for reading
Plan to read (and stick to it)
Telly-Addicts, Facebookers, Twitterpotamus’s (I just made that up, but I’m sure it must be a thing), you can’t just be a reader in the modern world; you have to make time for it.
It doesn’t have to be much (say 45mins to 1hour), it doesn’t have to be daily (every couple of days is fine) but you do have to do it – set aside a little time every second-day to read, and maybe double that on days when you’re not gainfully employed.
Pick a specific time too; there’s no sense in trying to compete with the television schedule, audio-visual stimulation is addictive, you’ll only pine without it (until you break the addiction of course).
6 – Pace Yourself
Don’t rush, read the words in your own good time
Some people can read 50 pages, or more, in an hour… so what? (In the interests of disclosure, I boast about this too… it’s a bit of dick thing to do, but see tip-two, “loud and proud” – always).
Don’t trouble yourself with how quickly you read, “I’m a slow reader”, I hear a lot. No, you are not, “you are a reader”, read the book, understand it, enjoy it, FINISH IT… And, boom, you’re in the club too.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes you, and it will never matter – one page/chapter/book at a time.
7 – Short Chapters
Develop your ‘how-to-read-it side’ organically (would you jump in the deep end before you learned how to swim?)
Books with short, vastly numerous chapters, are easier to read – simple as – and they’re what you need to seek out initially, if you want to improve your ability (see also, increase your desire) to read.
The reasons are equally simple, there’s plenty of breaks in the story. You can step in and step out whenever you like; it’s a lot easier to start at the head of new chapter, than it is in the middle of the mix; and everything is more defined.
Books like Gravity’s Rainbow or Jerusalem, are incredible pieces of writing but are on the verge of being totally inaccessible (I’m no novice reader, and both those books took me more than 100hrs to read), mostly because of their spiralling and vast chapters.
8 – Stick to one genre (*at first)
Don’t just understand what you like, come to understand why you like it
Fantasy, Horror, Crime, Teen, Magical Realism, Translated, Romance, Sci-Fi, Classic… many, many, other genres.
Tip one was pick the right book; well you need to keep picking the right book as you expand your reading into the unknown, and the best way to do it is by sticking to the one genre at first.
It doesn’t matter which one you happen to like, develop your understanding of that particular style before expanding into reading something new and, however subtly, quite different. It’s the best way I know of coming to understand story structure and the how, or why, a plot develops as it does.
Once you have that understanding, step outside your comfort zone and try something new… as you really get into reading, you’ll come to understand the differences, and have a better appreciation of what you enjoy, which will help you pick even better books in the future.
9 – Read actual books, and not off digital devices
One book at a time
“Heard this one before Lee, reading E-Books goes against the spirit of reading”, well possibly, who knows (who cares?), but that’s not what I’m not getting at.
My point is choice. People tend to download multiple books at the same time, especially when they are trying to get into reading.
It makes sense; they’re easy to download, it’s cost effective to do so, you can keep your whole library mobile, and they don’t take up any space at all – But having too many books to read can be a real hindrance to actually getting a book read.
If you’re trying to get into a particular book and you’re having trouble getting over that hump into ‘the middle’, the last thing you need is a literal button to push, that will make one book disappear, to be replaced by another.
10 – Fall in love with reading
Never get tired of reading “page-1”
Reading is an acquired skill, we weren’t born with the ability or desire to do it. Learning to love reading is the final step of the journey to becoming a true bookworm, and it’s a step fewer and fewer people take – probably because it’s hard and takes dedication.
Well I speak as someone who does love, book after book, year after year – and like all the best love stories, it’s a journey filled with obstacles and low points but ultimately, it’s always worth it.
Literati Pulp 
I agree that you should start with books that you want to read because that’s what’s going to hold your attention and what will draw you into a certain genres that you can then Branch off from but to read something based on somebody else’s opinion especially if you don’t like the genre like I’m not plugging this at all but my mom wrote a book about World war II using historical fiction and the characters are named after our cats both of whom have since passed on and crossed the Rainbow Bridge but I hate reading dry historical novels even if they are fictionalized especially about World war II when there’s nothing else character developmentally going on. It does not intrigue me enough to even open my own mother’s book.
I read recently on an education website: for children with ADHD or other neurodivergences, the art of reading and displacing yourself from reality voluntarily isn’t Fun enough to hold our attention if that makes sense and I’m trying to describe it as somebody that went through this and didn’t know the glory that is the red wall series until I met the authority I hated reading books before that because they never held my attention for long enough.
But to be physically transported or what felt like physically transported into mossflower woods and the Abbey through 26 alternating letters and 10 digits?l
This man created an entire world, and I’m going to say he painted words, because it just made you live it. It’s indicative of his absolute gift for words, his sense of timing, that he started the series by telling the adventures of Matthias, Constance, Jesse, the Abbott, the shrews, Basil, and of course Clooney the scourge, such a way that the Liverpool School of the blind he was delivering milk to the children could see it! And even when he was just telling us and I could see him telling us the adventures of the wooden creatures of mossflower woods but it was like something drifted over my eyes and a screen kind of came over it so it’s like a horse wearing blinders but it’s got my animated video of red wall happening at the same time he’s telling it. That is how you want to get introduced to reading not through a school assignment because someone thinks that test scores are more important than the joy of learning just to learn something and I’m talking absolute on bridal Joy I bought these books when I found that there was a new one even if I wasn’t in the same country I bought three of them from Dublin I bought two of them when I was on the German exchange in Stuttgart took me forever to find the English copies and now apparently I lent them to somebody and about four or five of my Red Bull series it included a first edition Moss flower hardcover mad Mayo’s gone the graphic novel and the movie are gone but I introduced my daughter to it when she was about 9 but I let her make up her own mind I didn’t although it would have been a good introduction like bath time I never even thought of that cuz I hate being around somebody else in a bathtub even my own kid but the experience I had and yes I am a big fan girl of just the introduction and then I got hit by the fandom bug for red Walt was just perfect for a kid who felt like she didn’t fit anywhere.
The other contender is The Saga of Pippi longstocking because she was unapologetically herself she was able to take care of herself but on her own terms you know like she got around to cleaning but she made it fun she put brushes on the ends of her shoes she stayed close to her dad by wearing his old footwork has stops incidentally I did the same thing when I was pregnant because my feet grew about three sizes and I’m not buying new shoes if I don’t have to they have since gone back down but that was 13 years ago but the joy of reading and being able to be transported away from the chaos that is your own brain but using your own brain to escape is just something that is so profound but you don’t think about it until you are responding to one of these and I found you through answering 12 different questions about red wall and then I found the top six Red Ball books and autism and ADHD mixed with coffee and my meds haven’t kicked in yet I think my comment is longer than your article…
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