by If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably committed yourself to the noble task of becoming an avid, voracious reader. And, amid falling short of that goal once or twice (or twenty times), you’ve had to reassure yourself that last time was different. Last time, there was school. Last time, there was work. Last time, that big, unexpected, thing happened that prevented you from sticking to your goal of reading. This time… This time is different. This time you will read a book a month. A book a week! This time is the time. Until, of course, “this time” becomes the new excuse-replete “last time,” and the cycle begins anew. And yet, even I have managed to stick to (and far surpass) my reading goals with little more than some simple tips and shifts in thinking which I’m happy to share throughout the course of my series on becoming an avid reader.
Or maybe you’re nothing like me! Maybe getting lost in a book to the point where you close the back cover, look up, and notice that it’s 2:39 AM, and that “one more chapter” became “might as well finish it,” after five or six rounds of “one more chapter.” If you can chomp through a whole book in a couple of bites, or swallow it whole with little effort, first of all, congratulations. Secondly, as someone who had to “find the time” for reading for ages until it finally became habitual again, I resent you tremendously. But last, and most importantly, I believe what I have to say will be helpful for you as well. Because in our quests to become avid readers we must do one very crucial thing – a task that even those who don’t have to get themselves to read in order to get themselves to read must accomplish: staying on target.
There’s no shortage of book recommendations out there, and they tend to be, even from the best sources, consistently inconsistent. That friend who got you into that one series that you just couldn’t put down and which blew your mind. Well, they might indeed be a great source of book recommendations for years to come. Then again, they might impress upon you the supposed need to read a series that doesn’t at all sound promising and which, in the end, is a little thing we library-frequenters, bookstore-browsers, and e-reader-aficionados like to call… bad. Just like that friend, even your favorite publication, critic, website, or blog is unlikely to bestow upon you a perfect recommendation time and time again. Why? Well, because everyone is different. I might love a good jaunt through Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters while the next person is just as likely to consider it a ceaseless slog through run-ons and asides and subthoughts and undramatic explications. But that’s a good thing! How boring would it be if the last book you got lost in was instead unable to grip you just because Bob in Fresno put it down uninterested after only a few pages? How boring would even the inverse be? If everything you liked was considered and weighed exactly the same way by everyone else as it was for you. There would be nothing to talk about, nothing to debate, no reason to express an opinion at all!
Luckily, we find ourselves in a universe with individual tastes. Unfortunately, that also means that my point about recommendations being inconsistent still stands. There simply isn’t a way to be absolutely sure that you’re going to like a book from the outset. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with the very important goal of accepting that fact. Sometimes, what strikes someone else just isn’t going to speak to you. Sometimes, you’ll remain unsold about a book even if it’s a best seller. Sometimes, it just won’t be for you. And that’s okay.
One of the big reasons that I have, in the past, fallen out of my reading routines, is due alone to the fact that the book I just put down wasn’t… magical. It’s easy when a book or series enchants you. It’s easy when it does the legwork for you. It’s easy when it grips your palms, doesn’t let go, and drags you across its pages all the way to the last. Then, when you run into a book that doesn’t grab you by the shoulders and demand to be read, a whole other set of things become easy: It’s easy not to find time in your schedule. It’s easy to put it off until a “later” that may never come. It’s easy to focus instead on tasks that ask less of you and which lend themselves to multitasking, like throwing on a TV show or scrolling through content on your phone. Or both. It’s easy to convince yourself that reading isn’t an optimal use of your time when you run into a book that, frankly, isn’t an optimal use of your time.
The solution? Put it down, and grab something else from the pile. Maybe you’ll come back to it. Maybe you won’t. Or maybe you’re a completionist and just can’t bare the thought of leaving a book unfinished (I have occasional but serious bouts of completionism, so I can’t blame you). Or maybe it is assigned reading. Or maybe someone is eagerly awaiting your review of the book. Or maybe, whatever the reason might be, you just gotta. You might even learn something even reading a book that isn’t particularly thrilling for you. But if you are facing such a book, you have to remain optimistic and remember that the next book could be far better. Might even be far more likely to be far better, depending on how well (or, rather, how poorly) you connected with the previous one. The important thing is that you don’t give up on the broader goal to be the reader you want to be. Frankly, if you’re out there reading about how best to go about reading, you’ve already expressed some level of commitment to the idea. Now all you have to do is stick to it.
Throughout this series, I will get into more tips about selecting books and also, more broadly, how to become an avid reader. But for now I’ll leave you with this: the best book you will ever read, your favorite book of all time, could be the next one. Even if the book you’re reading now elicits all of the fun and excitement of a lengthy dental procedure. Rinse. Spit. Bite a finger if you have to. Whatever you need to do, just remember to hold out hope that your next destination will lead to a far more engaging adventure.
