how to read more books

This week the BBC website published an article by Hannah Sander titled How could I read more books? which is a subject we have been debating over lunch at work recently due to self improvement guru Tail Lopez's website as he "evaluates" a LOT of books.

Hannah's article offers two main pieces of advice.  Learn how to speed read from Tony Buzan a self development guru and using the spare small amounts of time in a day to read from literary coach Glynis Kozma.   

Back to Tail Lopez whose list of books read is both interesting and impressive but I spotted that he had read Leo Tolstoys "War and Peace" on 28th November 2015.  "How do you read War and Peace in one day?" I asked my colleagues.  "Surely that's impossible?".

In the debate that followed we concluded that you would of had to used Tony Bozan's speed reading advice to the extreme and likely read the book a few times before so you knew where to hit the after burners.  

I looked very seriously into speed reading a number of years ago and my opinion is that like any other skill, the more you read, the better and faster you become.anyway.  
There are times when going faster than your natural pace makes a lot of sense.  Technical documents are an obvious example but also specific detail in a book which you do not need to remember and you know is not central to the development of the book.
But you are always in danger of skimming over something that later becomes very important and missing the soul of the book.  

Glynis Kozma's advice of finding additional moments to read is a better overall solution. With this in mind here are my tips to reading more books :

1. Use your lunch breaks.  Not only does this get me away from my desk in the week it also gives me 20 minutes of calm at the weekends
2. Try to always have a book close to hand.  My "man bag" which I take everywhere always has a book inside it.  Great for doctors, dentists and any other appointments which I might be kept waiting for.
3. Buy a bunch of books you think will be great.  I always make sure I have a selections of books, bought waiting to be read and in a place that I can see them.  Having spent the money I don't want to waste it and it spurs me on to read my current book so I can get to one on the shelf.  
   
4. Pick the book you most want to read at the moment you are ready to start a new book.  I know this sounds really obvious but there are two points to this.  Firstly I find books are much harder to read if we haven't totally bought into reading it.  Secondly by having a selection of good books to read I pick the one that I am most excited about NOW! 
5. Make use of any commutes to work. I have on average an hours drive to work.which is mad far less stressful by listening to audio books.  I hire them from the library for just 60p a month and it adds between 5 and 8 books a year.  As the lovereading website says biographies do tend to work better due to their chatty style.
6. Don't be afraid to quit.  In a perfect world we would love every book we picked up but in reality we all struggle with some books at times.  There is a difference between struggling and not enjoying or avoiding altogether. Not only do I read more in the long run, my reading life is also made much happier by quitting on average a couple of books a year.      
7. A change is as good as a rest.    We all have our favorite genres and authors which is normally a good thing....until  lethargy kicks in.  When this happens I used to give myself a few weeks away from reading but now I find that switching to a totally different type of book works even better,       ​