7 Tricks to make you a better book reader (confessions from a former book-hater)

zainab quadri

July 31, 2015 3:41 PM

Thanks to these tricks you should be able to read at least one book every week.

Reading and watching a game

I was never a big fan of reading… I blame it on the education system, of course. (Well, it can’t be my fault, can it?) You see, it’s difficult to enjoy reading when every book your teacher throws at you is of no interest to you whatsoever. So I hated it. It was a chore, not a pleasure.

Then I finished school and went my own path. And soon I discovered that a different breed of books exists too – books that are extremely interesting. In fact, there’s so many of them that I don’t have enough time to enjoy them all.

However, thanks to these tricks as suggested by Brittle Paper, you should be able to read at least one book every week.

1. Skip:

You do not have to read every word in a novel. Tell me, why does it take one author four pages to describe a window and another author just 3 sentences? Clearly, there’s no rule for how much an author can write. So there shouldn’t be a rule for how much you read. Don’t waste time being bored with lengthy description, battle scenes, philosophical reflections, or historical back-story. At times, a novelist will include lengthy songs or poems in a novel. They’re also okay to skip.

2. Bite:

Snatch little chunks of novel-time here and there when you’re on the bus, before you go to bed, when you wake up in the morning, or while waiting at the doctor’s office. Don't wait for that free time that would never come.

3. Love at 100th sight:

I consider myself a die-hard book lover. But very few novels have held my attention in the first 20 pages. With most novels, be prepared for a period of courtship. Give yourself and the novel time to figure out whether you are good together. It’s up to you to decide how long to wait for a novel to charm you—20 pages, 100 pages. But be generous. Give the novel enough time to prove that it deserves your attention.

4. Till Death…:

That’s a no! It’s okay to abandon a novel. Except it’s for a class, never read a novel just to finish it. If after staying with a novel things do not seem to be working, feel free to let it go. There are way too many novels in the world for you to feel bound to read a particular one. Find novels you love. Don’t feel beholden to must-read lists.

5. Wait:

Sometimes, it’s a matter of waiting for a novel to find you. Dont force a book on yourself instead of wait for the right and perfect time for the book to recommend itself to you.

6. Choose Your Device:

I still crave paper comforts—the smell, texture, and weight of a book, but that’s me. Try out different formats and devices—laptop, phone, tablet, kindle— to see which one works for you. Paper or screen, it’s the same story.

7. Cheat:

Reading more than one book at a time is allowed. Right this moment, I’m reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and rereading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Why? Because novels are sometimes tied to my moods. The Bell Jar is for resetting my nerves after hours of laboring in the prison-house of dissertation writing. Esther’s naive and childlike voice is soothing. Tolstoy’s massive tome lets me lose myself in an extended soap-opera-ish tale of war and romance. I read him when I wake up. It has a caffeinating influence.

zainab quadri