How to read more books in 2021

Unlike a lot of other book worms, I got into the game pretty late. I was an avid reader growing up, devouring every Goosebumps, Animorphs, and Matt Christopher books that I could get my hands on. But then, something stupid happened around 6th grade and my courtship was over:

Assigned books.

Suddenly, reading wasn’t fun anymore. I was reading books, because I was told to read books. I had to write essays about why I liked them even if I didn’t like or enjoy what I just read. I had to find the symbolism that may or may not have been there (turns out, plenty of wrong answers on this front) and write about them in RN’s. Mix in homework with marching band and that was that. I couldn’t zone out in almost anything, thus TV took over.

This went on until a year after college when my brother gave me the first book in the Dresden Files series. I thought it was awesome. From there, I got myself a Goodreads account and just like that I started reading again.

This time, for fun.

And funny enough, I even went back and read a few of those books from high school and found that I enjoyed half of them as well as I should like and liked less than half of the half as well as they deserved!

I’m sure a lot of people are already STH’s at this post, talking about how they don’t have time to read, let alone WRITE (which is the purpose of this blog really, to help people write more and to kick my own @$$ into gear), but to that I say, you gotta. I’m not talking about reading just for research or just to study for the sake of improving your own writing, no. This post is to help you enjoy books more and to pick up a form of entertainment you might’ve shirked for podcasts and endless tv shows.

Enough jokes. The purpose of this post is to tell you how I reached 65 books in a year and how you can too. So let’s dive in:

1. Embrace audiobooks

When I was talking about writing this post, someone looked at me and said “Yeah, but they’re almost all audiobooks and that doesn’t count.”

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.

This seems like a pretty obvious tip, but it’s worth bringing up, solely because this was how I was really able to elevate my reading count to the next level. I tend to crank up the speed too and really focus when I’m listening [READ: reading]. If I have an audobook going and I have a copy of the book, I’ll read along with the audio and really crush pages at 2x speed.

Of the 65 books I read, probably 55 of them were audio exclusively. So if you’re looking to read more, I’d start there with audiobooks. I use my library, which gets a TON of books every Wednesday.

2. Set aside time to read

Some people do it right before bed, but I love starting my day off with a good book. The first thing I do in the morning is walk the dog. So before I go, I slip an earbud in and boom, I’ll have 30 minutes of a story read before the day even gets going.

I do enjoy a book before bed as well. My nightstand has at least 3-4 books stacked on it and I’ll grab any of em to help get the melatonin started, because hey, nothing puts you to sleep quite like a good read!

3. Always have a book on hand

Too many times I’ve been sitting in a doctor’s office, wandering a grocery store or a̶t̶t̶e̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶f̶u̶n̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ doing the dishes and just WISHING I was reading at that time. Well, no more my friends. I’ve got these aforementioned pretty sweet earbuds and I tend to always have one in where ever I go.

(BTW: If you are interested in excellent, cheap earbuds and want to support this site, please click this hyperlink and I’ll get a little kickback from your purchase)

4. A healthy mix of fiction and non-fiction

Take a look at my Goodreads list (and add me if you want) and you’ll see a ton of different books. Some you probably wouldn’t read or even attempt and a few you might just hate the author of! I genuinely try to NEVER turn down a book a friend gives/recommends/suggests, so that’s why there’s a nice mix of political, biographies, international writers, etc in there.

Don’t be afraid to jump into something weird and unusual, but all the same–

5. Pick something you WANT to read.

Again, seems obvious, but there are just SO MANY FREAKING BOOKS OUT THERE. I tend to gravitate more towards the genre stuff like sci fi and fantasy, but I think every 4th or 5th book I’ll jump outside of my comfort zone and read something I normally wouldn’t.

If you genuinely don’t know what you like, I can’t recommend going to the old Barnes and Noble and judging every book by their cover and starting from there. Or the library, as you can see by my link, these are starting to disappear….SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE.

Ahem, anyway–

Start with a genre or a subject matter that you know you would enjoy and adventure beyond that.

And when you do get that book you enjoy–

6. Read in many different places in many different ways!

Whereas in writing, you want to have a dedicated space for writing, I don’t find that to be the case with reading. Like the comic above shows, there’s a lot of great places to read in your own home or around town. I’ve recently ruined/read a few books in the bath and I think tht might be my new favorite place!

Last but certainly not least—

7. Don’t be afraid to DNF.

Some books just aren’t fun.
Some books are recommended and just stink.
Some books are…well…

Too looonngggg didn’t readddd

(though I am glad I finally read Way of Kings, SUPER GOOD)

There’s a book that is on a lot of reader’s best of list for 2020 and I quit about 77% in. It sucked. It really really sucked. Which was unfortunate, because the author’s first book was great and this one was recommended by a good friend. But man. It just blew. So I moved on!

There’s about a dozen books from this past year that I moved from “Currently Reading” to “Meh, when I feel like it.”

Considering if you read a book a month, every year for the rest of your lives, you might average just under 800 books in a life. So if you’re hating it, toss it and get something else!

Hope these tips helped!

While I read lots of books this year, I probably only read 5 or 6 screenplays and that’s gotta change.

For the next year, I definitely want to get that number up, so I’ll softball myself at 30-50 scripts and see how we do a year from now.

The fact is, if you want to be a writer, you gotta read more. You gotta consume, see what others are consuming, and most importantly STUDY.

We’ll go into this more in a later post, but I love love LOVE research. You gotta study what works, study what doesn’t, take notes, share with friends, find people who loved the books you hated and hated the books you loved and maybe someday, SOMEDAY you’ll have a great book of your own.

Oof, what a rambling ending to this post.

~Nic