On Reading More

These days, I have been reading! In every season, reading more seems at the top of my to-do lists. It’s never enough, but it is what it is.

I love this, and here are my own tips I have found helpful.

1. The classic tip is bring a book with you everywhere, which I completely believe in. However, being a slightly disorganized person, my own personal version is: keep books everywhere (this only works if your brain is the kind of brain that can read multiple books at once). I tend to forget things, and it’s a lot easier to read if you’re sitting in the living room with the baby, and oh look, there’s a book on the couch, or you’re out the door to pick up a coffee and oh look, there’s a book in your stroller, etc. etc.

1. b) Keep emergency books in different places: the glove compartment in your car, under your pillow, the bottom of the stroller, your desk at work, secret drawers.

2. Use a binder clip to mark your page. I’m of the dog-ears-are-abhorrent type, although over the last few years having mostly accumulated used books, I’ve grown more accepting of the dog ears already in my books. I’m someone who has hard time keeping track of a paper bookmark,* and having a clip makes it super easy to flip the book open and closed for short bursts of reading (like waiting for a coffee).

Bonus: a physical clip that stays on the page also keeps my book open when I need to lay it flat to read, like with a meal.

3. If you’re lucky enough to have people around you who are committed readers, latch onto them. Meet up with them to talk about books, start a book club, send them a text with what you’re currently reading. You are who you spend your time with. I also hear Instagram is a good place to find readers, but I’m trying to spend less time on my phone.

4. If you’re not lucky enough to be surrounded by literati, start asking people what they’re reading these days. It takes some casual courage because sometimes people aren’t reading anything at all and they feel slightly deer-in-headlights, but you just have to follow it up with some genuine oh yah totally get life is busy! to bypass any awkwardness. Waiting to pick up your kid from school with other parents, your co-workers at lunch, in line to renew your license plate, your kid when he comes home from school, friends, family. You might be surprised by what you find out, and the more you talk about books, the more you get out of the ones you’re reading.

Interesting aside: my 4yo, having heard me ask others this question many times, gets a real kick when I pick him up from school and ask him the same question, like he’s a real human.

4. b) When people tell you about what they’re reading, make an effort to read the books other people recommend to you. It’s the deepest compliment – that you’re willing to spend hours (hours!) of your limited time to read something someone else has recommended for you. The benefits are pretty substantial and hard to replicate otherwise: it helps you build a relationship, it gives you insight into the other person, it gives you something to talk about with that person, it makes the other person feel good. These days, it’s super easy to fake interest – oh, wow, definitely going to add that to my list – or at least show interest without substance, so it’s a great thing when someone actually follows through on a recommendation.

5. Keep track of the books you read. There is honestly nothing more satisfying that seeing your list grow, and looking back at all the books you’ve read, and can be a real motivator when you feel like you’re slogging through a tough read.**

6. Read slowly. There is something very deeply satisfying about being truly absorbed in the words of a book. Obviously there are books that you can just blitz through – beach reads, summer reads, legal thrillers – and these escapism books are necessary through some seasons of life, but best reading I do happens when I’m completely immersed in a story and its language and its nooks and crannies, slowing down to savour each line, re-reading paragraphs to make sure I’ve got every bit. Through some books, slowing down is a painful and necessary trudge to get through dense and stolid text, in which case you can consider moving on, but in other cases, slowing down allows you a deeper, richer read, a completely different journey.

7. These reading lights are excellent. I have several of them in case one’s rechargeable battery is low/some enterprising child has commandeered a few to attach to a fort.

 

Currently reading:

Charles Frazier – Cold Mountain
George Saunders – Lincoln in the Bardo
Ernest Cline – Ready Player One
Ted Bishop – The Social Life of Ink
Jodi Picoult – Salem Falls
Omar El Akkad – American War

 

 

 

*This is apparently also due to that dreaded habit of leaving my books splayed open face down to mark the page.

**I am also in support of giving up on books that aren’t doing it for you (and you may end up picking up again later and find it’s the right time to get through it), but I’m also in support of trying your best (ugh, teachers) in muscling through tough reads and stretching your ability to focus and make sense of challenging sentences and obsolete words. By all means, give it up if you’re not enjoying the challenge, and goodness knows I’m not reading Chaucer on the weekend, but also consider if you’ve got gas in the tank to see it through to the end. That is to say: don’t finish it for the sake of finishing it, but remember your brain is a muscle too – reading gets easier, faster and more complex the more you do it.