+1 Book: Couch to 1 Book
plus a potpourri of helpful tips
You know what’s really missing in the library world?
We don’t give people a roadmap that gets them reading more.
We just say stuff like, “You probably picked up the wrong book,” or “Read 15 minutes a day this summer and get a flying disc!” (because the term “Frisbee” is copyrighted, so we have to use “flying disc,” even though that somehow makes a pretty basic item sound like the most boring, crappiest prize ever, like it’ll probably have the quadratic equation on it so you can LEARN while you play).
If my goal is to get people who haven’t read a book in some time to read ONE book this year, shouldn’t I be giving them a helpful, reasonable, time-tested method to help them do so?
Once Again, I Am Urging You To Listen To Me Talk About Jogging
We’re trying to get you into book-reading shape, and I’m going to compare this to getting in marathon shape.
Running a marathon is NOT easy, but it’s attainable for most relatively-fit folks around middle age, even if they haven’t done a lot of athletics.
And here’s the thing: If we talk about reading a whole book, all at once, it’s a little bit like we’re telling you, the runner, to go from nothing to a marathon, and where we fall flat as readers and educators is in talking about the steps in between.
When you look at marathon training and marathon advice, there is WAY more out there about the training aspect than there is about the race itself.
Because by the time you get to the starting line, if you’ve done the training, you’ll be good.
So why don’t we talk about reading that way? Why do we talk about it like the only way to run the marathon is to step up to the line, totally untrained, and just go for it, without giving any steps in between?
Couch to 5K
Couch to 5K is one of the most common plans runners refer beginners to. It’s basic, it’s simple, and maybe most relevant to us today, it’s not overkill.
A typical Couch to 5K plan looks like this:
Now, let’s highlight a few things that might surprise the unfamiliar:
You’re only running 3 days per week for the duration of the program, there are lots of rest days.
You don’t necessarily run a 5K at any point in here, you run for time, not distance.
All of your workouts are intervals, meaning they alternate running and walking. ALL of them.
It’s only 6 weeks long, that’s all a reasonably healthy person needs to finish a 5K.
Remember, the goal here is to FINISH. Not to win, not to destroy the course record, but to finish and still be pretty much alive.
So let’s apply this to your reading for the next 6 weeks.
Couch to 1 Book
It’s kind of stupid to call this Couch to 1 Book seeing as you can accomplish this while sitting on the couch, in fact, it may be preferable.
But I’m riding on the popularity of something else, here. Books and reading need to jump on coattails now and again.
First, get yourself a kitchen timer.
There are many cute options:
Such as “Skeptical Fox Reading a Book and Wondering Why He Embarked On This Stupid Idiot’s Couch to 1 Book Plan.”
Or “Donut That Fades Away Over Time, Reminding Us All That Nothing Good Can Stay.”
Okay, now that you’ve selected a timer, let’s get down to business.
Week 1:
Couch to 5K would have you running and walking a total of 20 minutes on day one. So that’s what we’re going to do.
You might feel the temptation to read a little more, and I encourage you to stick to the plan. This is how lots of runners feel, too, like they can do more, especially at the outset, but the idea here is not to maximize, push it to the limit, hearts on fire and all that, the point is to get used to getting up and moving around.
Did you know that being sore is NOT a good sign when you take up jogging? That it means you overdid it and need to back down? So, by that same token, being NOT sore is good?
Day 2, a little more challenging, 30 minutes total. Again, refer to the times for Couch to 5K.
Day 3 is identical to day 2.
And that’s it, we finished week 1 with a total of 80 minutes of reading.
Continue to Week 2 in Couch to 5K, and translate those times to reading.
Stick to the Plan
Beginning runners always try and fuck with the program a bit because it’s like, “Well, what if I did XYZ instead of ABC, what would the effects be?” And my response is always the same: Fuck around and find out.
It’s possible that some alterations are better than the original plan, but if you stick to Couch to 5K, if you’re able to do those workouts, I guarantee you’ll manage on race day. With your alternative plan, I make no such guarantees.
In terms of reading, I’d like you to stick to it as closely as you can with two possible exceptions:
Exception 1: If it’s just too difficult to get a full 30-minute reading period in one day, I understand, and it’s acceptable to break it up into 2, 15-minute chunks IN THE SAME DAY. But it must be the same day, and I really don’t want you breaking it down any further than halves if at all possible.
Exception 2: If this is WAY too much reading time for you, cut the entire program in half. Do half the minutes each day, all the way up to the end. If you absolutely dread your reading times and just hate, hate, hate this whole endeavor, cut the time in half, see if that helps.
But other than that, I want you to try and do this the way you’d do it for Couch to 5K: use the rest days, space things out. If you’re feeling restless on your rest days, think about other activities you could do on those rest days that would facilitate and make it easier for you to read on your reading days. Is there meal prep you could do, laundry, other bullshit like that that’ll make it so when it’s a reading day, you can get it done?
What We’re Building To
By the penultimate week, you’ll read almost 2 hours in one week.
Total reading time in 6 weeks will be between 8 and 9 hours, which is pretty likely to get you through a book, even a longish one.
And even if it doesn’t, we still have Race Day (we’ll get to that in a sec)!
Think about that for a minute. That’s about 90 minutes of reading per week, which is nothing to sneeze at, cough at, blow your nose towards. If you can read 90 minutes per week, you’ll be doing pretty darn great. It’s 90 minutes more than you were reading before, right?
And that’s kind of the whole point, the whole not-magic magic of Couch to 5K: It’s not really meant to make you an elite athlete, it’s not even meant to necessarily have you doing the optimal amount of exercise in a given week. It’s predicated on the idea that doing a small amount is loads better than doing nothing.
The false choice a lot of people think they have is to do an optimal amount of something, to be an elite, or to do nothing, but we really should talk a lot more about the HUGE benefits of doing just a little bit.
Race Day!
Do race day where it lands in the Couch to 5K program.
For you, this is a 1-hour, uninterrupted reading session.
Yes, this is a jump, but I’m not as concerned with that in terms of reading because it’s not like you’re going to physically injure yourself. Unless you’re reading one of those Omnibus editions. Those suckers are heavy as hell.
Race Day SHOULD feel like an accomplishment. It SHOULD be a bit of a stretch. You should start it out just a bit nervous that you’re not going to make it.
You WILL make it, you CAN do this. You’ve trained, you’re ready.
Post-Race Celebration
You did it! You’re done!
My advice is that you wrap yourself in a space blanket, drink a beverage you wouldn’t normally drink at 9 AM (race finishes are a not-so-secret way to justify drinking a beer at like 7:45 in the goddamn morning), and give yourself a rest, take a week off of reading. Even if you don’t necessarily want to, just give yourself a few days of low-to-no pressure to read.
What’s Next?
This is where a lot of runners get hung up on the need to progress. If they ran a 5K, 10K must be next, eh?
But it’s not. It doesn’t have to be.
If Couch to 5K worked for you, if you enjoyed it, if it was tolerable and fit into your schedule, run it again.
If Couch to 1 Book worked for you, if you enjoyed it, if it was tolerable and fit into your schedule, run it again.
There’s no necessity behind continuously ramping things up, here. Reading a book every 6 weeks or so is, honestly, excellent. If you did this all year, you’d be in the top 25% of readers in the U.S. This is the equivalent of running a 30-minute 5K, which ain’t shabby.
But more to the point, what we’re aiming for here is to get you not in Olympic reading shape, not to be the top reader of all time. It’s the running equivalent of doing enough so that you reduce your chances of keeling over at age 55. Which in this case I guess would mean making it so you’re not a total dolt.
Okay, this next section was meant to be its own entry, but I think it’s time to wrap up this series, so I’ve stapled it on the end here with digital staples. Please enjoy this Potpourri of Tips to Not Not Read.
Part 1: Escaping the Phone
This is going to be the crux of all of this. The most time-sucking implement you own is, for sure, your phone.
If there’s something you’re doing now that can be replaced with reading, I’m betting the most likely candidate is fucking around in your phone.
And something I want to be clear about is that this is NOT your fault.
Smartphones and devices have been specifically, carefully engineered to overcome your willpower. They are designed to be enticing. They are very intentionally created so that you will have a reason to pull it out every 10 minutes. Waiting for a text, “Wait, I never get calls, who could that be?”, checking for an email update on something, notification a package has been dropped off, what time is it?
So I want to tell you that I’m not looking down on you or saying you’re bad for being in your phone all the goddamn time, it’s natural in its artificiality. It’s a designer using their skills to make it seem like looking at your phone is natural and a necessity.
Some of my ideas about phones might sound like I’m patronizing you, like I don’t believe in your ability to stay away from the phone, but it’s not really about that, it’s about the fact that, well, we sort of DO need phones to do a lot of stuff, so it’s very natural to also use it to do a lot of stuff you DON’T need to do.
Escaping the phone is not easy. It’s not like escaping from your living room, it’s like escaping a super prison that even manages to hold both Stallone AND Schwarzenegger AT THE SAME TIME!
How can you escape the phone?
Faraday Pouch
You can get these online very easily. Basically, they are like those Yondr pouches you get at concerts that everyone flips the fuck out about because they grew up too late to know the joys of going to a show and not experiencing it through a very small rectangle and recording portions of it with a microphone that’s meant to pick up and clarify human voices, meaning the off-key singing of the drunken oaf next to you is the loudest thing in the mix (sorry about that, if it helps, I’m not better at singing while sober).
The idea behind doing this is that you will physically cut off all communications with your phone. Now, this is something that’s manageable by turning your phone all the way off and/or by managing settings like push notifications and Do Not Disturb and so on, but I think the Faraday pouch method is undefeated because of its raw simplicity. You open the pouch, you put the phone inside, you close the pouch. You don’t have to do a single other thing. And, see, I think that’s key, because when you go into your phone to change the settings or whatever, then you do something else real quick, do this or that, and boom, you’re in your phone.
Putting it in this pouch gives you a very simple, mechanical, non-phone-oriented way of putting your phone into “Leave me the fuck alone” mode.
Relocate your Phone
Once you’ve pouched it up, go ahead and put it somewhere inconvenient in your house. If you’ve got a garage, throw it out there. If you’ve got multiple floors, put it on a floor above where you’ll be reading.
What’s funny is, when you do this, you realize how much time you spend in your phone because you’re constantly jonesing for it, but resisting the urge because of the physical barrier. Which is maybe a statement on laziness as much as anything, but, hey, if we’re going to be lazy and addicted to our phones, might as well weaponize one thing to solve the other.
Unplug the Router
You might not be able to get away with this one depending on whether you’re the only person in the house or not.
If you are the only one, I’m sorry you’re a loser (JK, living alone rules!), and this is easy. Again, it’s not like it’s destroying the ability to get online, but you throw up another barrier.
If you aren’t the only one, here’s my suggestion: Pitch to your family that you have weekly times when the internet is out of service, by design. You don’t have to force everyone else down the dark path of reading, just make it so that we’re not doing internet shit.
By the by, this doesn’t even mean people can’t use electronics. You can watch your backlog of stuff you have queued up, just download it to the app first. You can read your Hoopla and Libby comics, just download them for offline reading first.
It really does enhance focus, I recommend it.
If you have roommates, probably don’t do this. I mean, I see where you’re coming from, hell, it was my idea in the first place, but it’s not reasonable to expect your roommates to schedule weekly time to be offline. Unless you want to be the subject of a Reddit AITA where people are violently opposed to you, probably skip this part in a roommate scenario.
Get a watch, get a CD player, get dumb devices
If you’re going to want to listen to music while you read, get a non-connected way to do that. If you need a watch, get one.
A Word on the Necessity of Phones
Your grandma is in the hospital. You have kids. You have a buddy who’s going through a hard time. You have work obligations.
I’m not going to argue with you about this bullshit, but I am going to say this:
I encourage you to reflect on how many times, in the span of your life thus far, you’ve received a phone call or a text that was fairly unexpected and prompted you to swift action that allowed you to make a bad situation significantly better. Something where being on the phone in someone’s hour of need averted a tragedy. Something where getting to the phone even an hour later would be one of your biggest life regrets.
And I encourage you to consider that while you’re checking your phone almost constantly on the off chance that something important comes through, you are missing a little something every time you do so.
What I’m saying is, the chances of you receiving that phone call that lets you rush to someone’s death bed in their final moments are very, very, very, very low, and the chances that you’re chipping away at the nice moments in your life by constantly checking your phone are 100%.
Let me put this in very concrete terms: Is it possible that I would, because I don’t spend time with my phone on the weekends much, miss that my mother is dying in the hospital? Yes, this is hypothetically possible. But, by that same token, isn’t it possible that by being with my phone all the time, I’m missing out on spending more focused, higher-quality time with my mom? Yes, also very possible.
Part 2: Creating Opportunity
This section is about techniques to help you create bits of time throughout the day to read.
Have your book with you all the time
Carry it around. Make it your constant companion. Take your selected book with you all the time. Everywhere.
Controversial, expert level version: Cut about 10 pages out of your book, fold them up, and put them in your pocket, your bag, whatever. This makes it even easier to have your book with you all the time, and when you get just a few moments, break out those pages, unfold them, and read. I know, some folks don’t want to cut up a book this way, but if it makes you feel better, I did this with my LIBRARY SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS to make it easier to get some reading done.
I mean, I know a lot of us think of books as sacred objects, and at the same time, a book is more useful, more respected, when it’s read than when it goes unread. So if you have to tear it up a bit in order to help you get it read, I think you’re doing something better than the person who has a pristine book they’ve never opened.
Make your book your breaktime activity.
One way to think about this, if there are times during the day you’d normally break out your phone for a quick session bejewewling shit or farming a ville or clashing a clan or going a Pokémon or surfing a subway or whatever you kids are doing these days, have your book with you, and go to that instead.
Read during your work breaks. Read during your lunch. Read in that little bit of time before bed. Toilet, duh.
Start reading in those little times, and at first it’ll feel like a chore, but you might start to associate reading with relaxing, enjoyable parts of the day, and that just might make things a whole lot more pleasant.
Trap Yourself
This is an old writing trick: Take yourself to a place where your book is your only and best option.
This doesn’t have to be unpleasant, you can go to a bar or a coffee shop or whatever. Just make it somewhere that you’re not going to want to leave right away.
Breweries are a great option for this, IMO. If you go and have a beer, it’s not like you’re slamming it and jumping back in your car. So you have a nice, leisurely drink while you read, and then you give yourself a good hour to sober up, and by then, you’ve put in 90 minutes of book time.
Part 3: Other Advice for New Trainees
Short Stories
Guys, this is easy: You get a book of fuckin’ short stories, read that. It DEFINITELY counts as a book, but short stories give some advantages for the novice trainee.
For one, you don’t have to remember quite as much over a longer period of time. It might take you longer to read a book than someone who is a constant reader, so we need to think about this like a long haul proposition.
It’s not the best plan to try and keep a huge cast of characters and various plot points in your head for several months.
But a book of short stories lets you read over a longer period without requiring you to remember so much.
Now, I’m going to give you a hot tip on short story collections: Read a collection that’s all written by ONE person.
A lot of folks will read anthologies about a subject because the subject sounds interesting, and this is a mistake for the novice. A more advanced reader, looking to find new authors, can crack an anthology as a good way to be exposed to a lot of different authors, but that’s not who we’re talking about right now.
Anthologies written by a lot of people are uneven. Some of the stories rule, and some are dogshit. That’s just the way it is, you can’t get 20 people in a room, even 20 very talented people, and expect them to produce something that’s overall very pleasing.
Comedy
I recommend John Swartzwelder books, especially if you are someone who enjoyed some of the earlier seasons of The Simpsons.
Comedy reads differently than other genres.
I want to make a special note here: I genuinely mean COMEDY, not humor. Humor is a badly-defined genre that I often see books lumped into because someone didn’t know where else to put them. You can read a collection of essays filed in the “humor” section that doesn’t have a single banana peel slipped on.
And I don’t mean comedy as in a play where not everyone dies at the end, comedy as opposed to tragedy.
I mean comedy that actually makes you laugh.
Seriously, comedy is often a faster read, and it’s something we don’t necessarily get exposed to in school.
Length
Don’t pick a book that’s over 200 pages. I’m serious, you’ll be so much better off if you stick to just below 200.
And be wary when you look at lists of “short reads,” because these are often put together by well-meaning but unhelpful book people and librarians for whom 250 pages IS short. But don’t let them fool you, that’s not short. They are objectively wrong about this, I will die on this hill, a 250-page book is not short.
Side note to my fellow book people: Stop doing this shit. We can debate back and forth what constitutes a “short” book, but consider the purpose of the list you’re making. A list of short books should consist of books that are specifically, notably short. Their shortness should be beneath debate. Their shortness is the whole point!
“Novellas” might be a useful search term for you. A novella is just a novel, but on the shorter side. There’s no official designation for what’s a novel and what’s a novella, and both are “books,” so don’t worry about it.
Ignore Chapter Lengths
Some books are good at having chapters that are super short and absorbable, but chapters really don’t mean “This is how much you need to read in a sitting.”
It’s okay to stop mid-chapter.
Snacks
I have nothing to say here beyond the headline. I’m not going to explain snacks to you.