How to Enjoy Reading Books

After my previous essay on why reading a lot of books is just a vanity metric, I got a handful of emails, one of which came from a very good friend. He said,

Good point

You started the article with challenging a common assumption then showed the solution

I relate to it because I track X number of books and do in fact only read nonfiction business lol

So I guess the article spoke to me as a target audience

So my question to you is how do you train yourself to like the activity of reading? Particularly BOOKS. It's easy for people to enjoy blog posts but much less often for books.

I agree with him. It’s much easier to enjoy blog posts than books, just like how it’s easier to eat snacks than a whole meal.

Reading articles or listening to audiobooks don't net the same benefits as reading a book. They don't require our full attention and thus, don't offer the full engagement and enjoyment we crave.

However, the sad fact is that most of us just just grit our teeth through a book because "All CEOs/smart people/interesting individuals read." (I don't agree with this idea, by the way. But that's a rant for another time.)

In this essay, I'll expand on two pieces of advice from Naval Ravikant on enjoying reading:

1. "Read what you love until you love to read"

2. "The best books are the ones you devour"

The point is to learn to enjoy the challenge of reading a book. Wisdom comes as a consequence of turning reading into an enjoyable hobby.

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Enjoyable reading: Read what you love

"Read what you love until you love to read."— Naval Ravikant

Find a book that will make 30 minutes of reading fly by.

Just like any habit, enjoying the act of reading takes repetition. In the beginning, read what you know you like, until you get into the habit of reading.

If you enjoy reading comic books, do it.

If all you want to read right now is a Dungeons & Dragon's 5th Edition Player's Handbook, go for it.

If you want to reread C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe for the fifth time, you're welcome to do that.

Don't worry about what other people say is worth reading or not. What's important is that you pick up what you enjoy reading so you can do it day after day.

With time, you'll organically reach for more challenging books.

Contextual reading: Read what you'll devour

"The best books are the ones you devour." — Naval Ravikant

Read contextually, both in an energy sense and a circumstantial sense. Instead of fiction and non-fiction, categorize books as either narrative versus non-narrative. And only read when you have the winds of curiosity in your sails.

The existence or the lack of an overarching story dictates how much energy you need to read a book.

For example, narrative books, like novels, biographies, and memoirs, have big picture stories that pull you through from beginning to end. Non-narrative books, like business, advice, and personal development, don't.

The natural desire to know what happens next mean narrative books require less energy to slip into flow and to continue reading than a non-narrative one.

Narrative and non-narrative books demand differing levels of attention also because they force you to grapple with the author's ideas or arguments at different times.

Narrative books are indirect or less explicit about how they present ideas. Learning from narrative books tend to happen subconsciously, when you're not actively reading the book.

In contrast, non-narrative books (at least the good ones) get straight to the point and require you to understand the ideas while you read.

Now, there are books from authors like Malcolm Gladwell and Robert Greene that employ stories so skillfully that they blur the line between narrative and non-narrative.

For books like those, use your judgement and self-awareness to gauge the amount of energy required to beat inertia and maintain momentum.

The other way to approach contextual reading is to read books only when you are intensely curious about the topic.

I call this "just in time reading". This means you:

1. Read a book to help solve a problem

2. Put down books that don't pique your curiosity at the moment

In particular, I've found that I read non-fiction books faster this way.

So how do you give a book a chance without becoming too invested into finishing it?

Read a book for 100 pages minus your age. At that point, you can keep reading or put it down if it doesn't interest you.

(For example, I'm 25 as of this writing, so I'll read 75 pages of a book to gauge my desire to finish it.)

In the future, your circumstances or reading habits might change to make reading it easier. In the meantime, the hateful slog isn't worth the suffering.

My reading habits: How I trained myself to enjoy reading

Personally, I try to read for 30 minutes a day. I track this habit just for awareness and to spot my natural patterns for when/how much I like to read. I don't beat myself up if I don't hit it.

During the day, I follow my contextual reading strategy. I always read at least 1 narrative and 1 non-narrative book at once. I tend to read non-narrative books when I have more energy and motivation and narrative books when I have less.

Here's my current reading list:

• Jim Finnegan's Barbarian Days (narrative)

• Eric Jorgenson's The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (non-narrative)

• Ryan Holiday's Trust Me I'm Lying (work-related, non-narrative)

I keep a running list of the books I'm reading in an Evernote file. 

When I do my weekly planning, I gauge my progress for each of those books. If there is one that is close to being finished, I try to read it first before I read the others.

By incorporate my reading into my planning, I have a tangible goal to work towards on a short term basis. This keeps me motivated to read day to day and balances my desire to finish books without the unneeded pressure to do it.

But don't take my word for it.

Try out different books and varying ways of reading.

Ultimately, to become a reader, you can't blindly follow everyone else's advice on how to do it. Reading is an intensely personal activity, one best enjoyed on its own terms.

Whether we’re a binge reader like Ryan Holiday or a consistent one like Farnam Street's Shane Parrish, we don't have to push ourselves to finish a certain number of books by the end of the year when we enjoy reading.

Bragging about having read 50 books in a year is a vanity metric. It's more worthwhile to rack up an impressive number of books read – and understood! – at the end of the year as a consequence of our commitment to enjoying the process of reading.