How to read 35, 50 or 100 books a year: Give up on the boring ones

I read a lot of books. During this decade I've finished more than 100 in a year at least twice. Sometimes when people find this out, I get polite chatter about how I find the time, not unlike the kind of talk a person who trains for marathons might get.

But once in a while a person wistfully tells me they'd like to read more and asks me how they can.

This story is for you, Wistful People.

I'm talking here about reading for pleasure and personal enrichment. Freely chosen. If you want to read Plato and Kant, I'm cheering for you, but I am not going to tell you that you should.

The question of how to read more has been on my mind ever since a former colleague with several small children brought the subject up. Back when I was the sleep-deprived parent of preschoolers, I didn't get as much reading time as I wanted, but I certainly enjoyed the reading I could do, not to mention many hours of reading to them – I can still recite most of "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb." 

My short answer to the wistful question? Make reading more convenient and more pleasurable, so you'll chose to read more often. To that end, here are some of my techniques as well as tips and tricks I've learned from power readers that I respect.

Read 5 books this year, you're in the top half

Just to be clear, I'm talking about reading more books. I doubt you're trying to find more time to read emails.

According to a Pew Research Center report in 2018, Americans read an average of 12 books per year. But that figure is skewed by heavy readers. The median American adult – the person in the exact middle of all Americans  – reads four books a year. If you read only one book during the past year, you're still ahead of the 24% who did not read any books.

These figures include books in any format: print, ebook or audiobook.

If you need a little encouragement, sign up for Milwaukee Public Library's Book by Book: Adult Summer Reading program. If you read or listen to five books by Aug. 30, you can enter a raffle to win a prize.

To increase their reading, some people set a target: 20 books a year, or 35, or 50. You can track your progress in a notebook or Word document, or on a website such as Goodreads (owned by Amazon, in case that matters to you).

If you want more direction (and a higher degree of difficulty), consider Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge, revised annually. The 2019 challenge presents a checklist of 24 types of books to read this year to "help you break out of your reading bubble and expand your worldview," including "a book by or about someone who identifies as neurodiverse" (I recommend Elizabeth Moon's novel "The Speed of Dark") and "an #ownvoices book set in Oceania" (Book Riot's suggestions include New Zealand writer Witi Ihimaera's novel "The Whale Rider," the basis for the movie of the same name).

Personally, I don't want to be directed too much in my pleasure reading. As soon as something feels assigned or required, even if only by myself to myself, I start to resist reading it. 

I recommend the time-tested fannish approach: If you love a book you read, keep reading books by that author until you lose interest. That approach has taken me through most of the works of Octavia Butler (I began with "Wild Seed"), Nancy Kress and James White. A current fave is Martha Wells; I started with her "Murderbot Diaries" novella "All Systems Red."

You could also follow your other passions into the reading world. "Hamilton" fan? Read historian Joanne Freeman's "The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War," which includes the story of a fatal congressional duel. Into hip-hop? Delve into Questlove's "Creative Quest," a freestyling exploration of creativity and collaboration. 

Print books or ebooks? Why not both?

Some people refuse to read ebooks. And they are not always the people you might stereotypically imagine. 

My daughter, who's 24, won't touch one. To her, screens are for work, print is for pleasure. 

How you read is a personal decision. I've read both ways for decades (including "Star Trek" novels on my old PalmPilot, cinching my nerd credentials).

Reading both print and ebooks helps me read more. While there's overlap, I tend to read different kinds of books in each format.  

I've owned several Kindles, but today I read ebooks mostly through the app on my phone. In this mode I prefer fiction and nonfiction with a strong narrative: science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, biography and history. 

I prefer print for intensely literary works, denser prose and writing with special formatting, including poetry. Russell Hoban's "Riddley Walker" is one of my favorite novels, but I don't want to read its post-apocalyptic rearrangement of English on a screen. 

Finding the right format for reading is not merely a print vs. ebook (or audiobook) question. It can be subtler. 

Inspired by recent Sarah Bakewell and Michael Perry books, I resolved to read the essays of Michel de Montaigne, the 16th-century French writer and philosopher considered the granddaddy of the personal essay. But after plodding desultorily through a hundred pages, I put it aside.

My failure was partly due to format: a 1,300+ page paperback of long sentences in tiny type with footnotes.

I should have taken a cue from the late A. David Schwartz, owner of Milwaukee's fondly remembered Schwartz Bookshops.

When Schwartz was receiving chemotherapy for cancer, he decided to reread Leo Tolstoy's classic novel "War and Peace." He found a small octavo edition of the novel in four volumes, making it possible to hold a volume in a single hand while reading. He told me he would not have been able to hold a one-volume edition of the novel, nearly 1,300 pages in the current Vintage Classics paperback.

"I read it throughout the hospital and people would come and say, 'War and Peace?' I thought it was a much larger book," he told me, laughing.

Any time is good for reading, especially morning

My Montaigne flop was also a case of bad timing. I was trying to read those long sentences in small type as a bedtime book, lying down.

It would have been smarter to read that book first thing in the morning, or at some other time when my brain was fresher and I could concentrate.

Many of us read at night as a wind-down ritual and a reward. But if you want to read more, make time to read earlier in the day as well. 

Several years ago, I fulfilled a longstanding desire by reading the Bible from cover to cover. Two things made this possible: finding an ebook edition (New International Version) broken into 365 chunks for daily reading, but uncluttered by preaching and commentary; and reading first thing in the morning with an alert brain, especially when it came to slogging through passages of laws and genealogies.

When lunch is solitary, that can be a good time for reading. The 15 minutes I might have after eating lunch sometimes leads me to a choice: Twitter or book? That can be a deliciously difficult decision: Do I read Jami Attenberg's Twitter feed, or a Jami Attenberg novel? But other times, that's like the choice between Cheetos and carrot sticks.   

Understand how the time you have available intersects with your preferences and interests. On family vacations with young children it was hard for me read novels, because I didn't have long enough stretches of reading to gain momentum. But I have fond memories of one otherwise very active Florida trip, when I dug into Billy Collins' "The Art of Drowning" and Charles Harper Webb's "Reading the Water." Reading their poems in short bursts was a perfect way to recharge my sun-fried brain.

Keep books around, all the time

Make sure you have a book at hand when you have an opportunity to read.

"Carry a book at all times," creativity guru Austin Kleon says in a recent post. (His books, such as "Steal Like an Artist," are short, visual and easy to read.) When you have a short break, a long line or an unexpected delay, you have something to read.

Also, note Kleon's corollary to that axiom: "Always have a book queued next in line for when you finish the current book you're reading." 

Years ago, former Milwaukee poet laureate Susan Firer told me she always keeps a book in her car for just those opportunities. (Her books, such as her collection "Milwaukee Does Strange Things to People," would be good car books.) 

If you want to start the car or purse book habit with something small but sturdy and elegant, pick up one of the Picador Modern Classics, such as Hilary Mantel's memoir "Giving Up the Ghost" or Jeffrey Eugenides' novel "The Virgin Suicides." They're hardcovers similar in size to Moleskine notebooks. 

Even if you only read print books, put an ebook on your phone for times when you're unexpectedly stranded. 

You don't have to spend money to increase your reading. Use your library card, or get one if you don't already have one. Make library trips a regular thing. Put them on your calendar. When we were little, my mother took my siblings and I to the local branch regularly, building the habit of reading as pleasure. (I can't remember who my first- or second-grade teachers were, but I can name and describe the librarian who led weekly story hour at our branch.)

Librarians are happy to suggest books for you to read. If you're too shy to converse with one, many libraries offer lists of themed recommendations.

With a library card from MPL and many other southeastern Wisconsin public libraries, you can also borrow audiobooks and ebooks through the Libby app for phones and tablets. (Libby is much easier to use than the previous Overdrive app.)

Keep a list of books you want to read on your phone, or in your purse or wallet. Because I am not good at doing this, I have suffered the consequences many times, standing in a bookstore or library (or in front of a Little Free Library), trying to remember which of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels I haven't read yet, or the name of the John Sandford mystery about dognapping that I've wanted to read (it's "Deadline"). 

One more piece of advice from Kleon for people who want to read more books: "Quit reading books you don't like. … Every hour you spend inching through a boring book is an hour you could've spent plowing through a brilliant one." 

Reading more books is like exercising more. Both call for persistent effort and a little planning to overcome inertia and set more passive activities aside for a while. But both can pay off in making you a stronger human being.

Contact Jim Higgins at jim.higgins@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jhiggy.

RELATED:10 tips for reading more books and enjoying them more

Books mentioned in this story

"Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" by Al Perkins

"The Speed of Dark" by Elizabeth Moon

"The Whale Rider" by Witi Ihimaera

"Wild Seed" by Octavia E. Butler

"All Systems Red" by Martha Wells

"The Field of Blood" by Joanne Freeman

"Creative Quest" by Questlove

"Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban

"The Complete Essays" by Michel de Montagine

"War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy

The Bible (New International Version)

"The Art of Drowning" by Billy Collins

"Reading the Water" by Charles Harper Webb

"Steal Like an Artist" by Austin Kleon

"Milwaukee Does Strange Things to People" by Susan Firer

"Giving Up the Ghost" by Hilary Mantel

"The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides

"Deadline" by John Sandford