how to read 100 books a year
some tips culled from a lifetime of reading
I love early January. Chilly weather aside, it’s a time of new notebooks and planners, when we make resolutions about who we can be, and as opposed to the soft, lovable, cheese-filled toad one was at the end of December.
I especially love how many people make reading resolutions. Book print sales were down 2.6% in 2023, despite Prince Harry’s Spare, Britney’s The Woman in Me, and other blockbusters. Even more eye-watering: 46% of US adults did not finish a single book last year and 5% read just one (the poll by The Economist/YouGov can be found here). Thus, my heart is utterly warmed by someone telling me that they want to read one book each month, or fifty books for the whole year—whatever.
So in the spirit of reading resolutions and keeping the publishing industry afloat, I thought I’d share the reading practices that I have found most conducive to reading quickly, widely, and enjoyably.
Keep a reading list. I started to notice my reading habits once I started to keep a list. I began with a Word doc in 2007, noting the title, the author, and any lines that I really loved. I’ve kept a similar Word doc every year since, and it’s a lovely—and useful—record of where I’ve been. Too, once I realized I was reading 80-90 books each year, I felt compelled to push to 100: my current benchmark.
Read more than one book at once. I like to hop between different stories as and when they move me. I also love doing this because reading different books simultaneously will elicit surprising shared themes. Right now, I’m reading five books, including The Art Thief; The Fetishist, a fascinating book that I will probably discuss next week; A Philosophy of Walking; The Selfishness of Others; and Werner Herzog’s memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All. My “currently reading” list can be found here.
Have a “place” for different books. Of the above, The Art Thief and Herzog’s memoir are my Audible reads. (Herzog reading Herzog!!!) The Fetishist is the book I toss in my bag and read on my commute. A Philosophy of Walking and The Selfishness of Others are both on my nightstand, which means I’ve been reading them for two or three months at this point and now that I think about it.
Go easy on yourself. I have accepted, with both A Philosophy of Walking and The Selfishness of Others, that these books are ruminative and slow-going. And that is fine.
For maximum reading, be dissociative or work in publishing. This is partly a joke related to a Hidden Brain podcast a friend recommended about addiction and how humans experience pleasure. However, I do want to stress that I am obsessed with books and have been since I was a child—when it was not cool—so while I am pleased that it is considered a Worthy Habit for Adults, I would do it anyway. The one year that I read 362 books was a terrible, very depressing year for me, and books were an escape. Also, I work in publishing; reading is a requirement, as is having an opinion about the book that everyone else is reading.
Happy reading in 2024—and remember that if you finish two books, you will almost certainly be in the top half of American adults!
I will leave you with an amazing quote by the great and famously grumpy Doris Lessing:
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag—and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty—and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.