Advising Advice: Habitual Reading

This from Twitter:

Now, this is most likely engagement-bait, something to boost this guy’s profile on Twitter and so on. Because why would someone named Alex & Books with an emoji of books require reading habit advice? I don’t even know how you make those lil book emoji guys.

But like a good fish, I’ll take the bait, however I’ll turn the tables by answering ON MY OWN NEWSLETTER, BWAHAHA! That sweet delicious engagement is now mine!

I feel qualified to give some advice here as an English major and librarian and reader of things, and I do want to give advice specifically about the LASTING part, because that’s probably the toughest part and the one almost all of the people who replied to this ignored.

Be bad at it.

I think most people who want to build a reading habit will struggle most at the very start and, like the Postal Service album, Give Up.

One of life’s many unfairities is that the initial phase of things is usually the least fun and the most challenging. Everything works this way except for love. See, I brought up an indie/emo band and now I can’t help but talk about feelings.

As you begin to build a reading habit, remind yourself that it’s okay to not be good at something you don’t do much, something you’re not in practice on, even something you used to be good at.

Maybe you’re a slow reader, maybe you aren’t hitting it every day like you mean to. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

Find someone to talk books to. Failing that, someone to talk books at.

We talk to each other about movies we see, meals we eat, trips we take. I’m going to the Mall of America, expect a report back as to whether they have any bookstores. My mind is telling me no. My body also thinks no, with a side of hunger for French fries, which is usually what my body tells me in any scenario.

Talk about books with people you like talking to. Make it a part of your life.

If nobody is willing to talk with you, find someone who will tolerate hearing about books for a portion of a meal you prepare or pay for.

I have a buddy who loves talking comics, and it’s always exciting to get to talk to him about what I’ve been reading and to hear about what he’s been reading.

I talk to my brother about books, I talk to my mom about books.

Make it a thing that just a little bit of your life revolves around, something that matters when you talk to people you like.

Be critical. In a useful way.

When you hit a book you don’t like, quit it, but also decide why it sucks, go beyond just the simple fact of its sucking.

This isn’t just so you can write hot take book reviews on goodreads, it’s how you avoid making the same mistake again and again.

Learning about your taste and why books don’t work for you will help you avoid books that just aren’t going to help you keep up reading momentum.

It should rarely feel like homework or a chore.

If it sucks, you’re probably not going to do it.

Read things you like.

A good way to judge that is by reading things that you’re excited to get back to, at least to some extent.

People will say you need to expand your horizons or really challenge yourself, but let’s remember the goal here: building a lasting reading habit. Not reading the classics, not necessarily to become a better person through books, just to read more and with more regularity.

Those other things are good and fine. But they’re different goals. I’d recommend different methods for those goals, just the way I’d recommend slightly different training for a competition hot dog eater and an ultramarathoner.

Start small, and don’t feel like you have to grow.

Everything seems to be about growth these days, but your reading habit doesn’t need to grow and grow and grow like a Liver King with an unlimited steroid budget. You can start by reading 10 minutes a day, and if you’re happy, stay at reading 10 minutes a day. You’d still easily put away almost 2000 pages a year, which would probably be something between 5 and 7 books unless you want to Robert Caro it up and spend your reading time on one (very interesting) cinder block of a book.

If you try to grow constantly, you’ll hit a wall before long, possibly a wall you hit because you’re trying to read while driving, a thing a guy I went to college with actually did on his commute to a rural community, a practice that seemed incredibly stupid and also like something someone from a John Irving novel would do.

10 minutes a day, that’s a reading habit, and a sustainable habit is a happy habit. Shit, that’s going to be the title of my self-help book. Nobody steal that!

Take it easy on the challenges.

I know some people want to read every horrifically sad Russian novel committed to print, but, again, that’s a really different goal from building a lasting reading habit.

Challenges can be a way to shake up your reading if you’re a little bored, but they can also be a rut of their own. Will you read some new stuff? Sure. Will you also plow through some books you don’t really care for? 100%.

More than that, though, I think if you want reading to be a regular part of your life, it probably works best to make it a part of your regular life. If you want to be a habitual runner, you can’t just do a weekly 5k, no matter how much you enjoy wearing sponsor logo tees. Instead, your habit will be a lot stronger if you manage to run on normal-ass days, if you get to know the joys of a small dose of monotony and come to appreciate looping the same park three times a week and noticing the changing colors of the leaves, bullshit like that.

Make it simple, routine, maybe even a little boring. Not the actual book selection, just the reading process.

Make books a part of your life.

I like to buy a book whenever I’m on vacation. Find a cool bookstore in a city, and you’ll probably be in a fun neighborhood.

I still have regrets about not buying a glow in the dark cover of Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love in Los Angeles

My favorite place on the planet for many years was one little section of Powells in Portland.

Make it a quest for yourself. I have. I decided to try and buy a book from all 50 states before I’m dead. I know I just said take it easy on the challenges, but…do as I say and as I do. Spend a lot of time interpreting my meaning. It’s worth your time.

Give yourself a break.

Look, whatever it is, we’ll go through peaks and valleys, highs and lows, people who have a modicum of sense and RFK Jrs.

When your reading habit falls off for a bit, give yourself a break. I think a lot of good habits die hard because we miss a day, a day turns into a week, and before long it feels like there’s no point in going back, the streak is broken.

This is terrible, all or nothing thinking. If you break your running streak, and you’re out of the game for 3 months, when you go back, it’ll be easier than when you started up the first time. You’ll probably be back in shape a good deal faster, and with less struggle.

A little downturn, a quick slip, it’s no biggie. If you read 300 days this year out of 365, that’s goddamn great.