I used to read a lot when I was small but then fell out of the habit. Rekindled it with my first child. With them I spent a lot of time walking around at all hours of the day to get them to sleep. That were perfect reading opportunities, and I have continued to always carry a book. As TFA says, that is key.

Audiobooks and tracking. I still watch a lot of YouTube and other social media so I haven't had to cut anything out yet I have many audiobooks on my phone loaded up that I listen to at 2x+ speed as well as have a spreadsheet of what I'm reading and how long it takes. Before anyone comments, yes I can understand it just fine as I've acclimated myself over years to do so, it's similar to blind people being able to understand at very high speeds too after years of practice.

I've read 31 novels since January, far more than I'd read in the last 30 years.

Easy: I read 50 pages every night when I go to bed, instead of screens.

I started with short novels, 150 pages or fewer (chatgpt gave me a reading list).

It quickly became a habit, and it's lovely.

Good advice about not enjoying a book and putting it down isn’t a failure on your part. Same for the part about reading multiple books. This blocked me for a while, if I decided to start a book I HAD to read that book and I HAD to finish it. It’s a great way to kill something you’d otherwise enjoy.

One thing that irked me wrong was the part about audiobooks and attention:

> Listening to audio while cooking or cleaning or whatever you do is not the same thing; you are not 100% concentrated on the content. Also, reading is faster than listening, so use your time wisely.

First of all, sometimes you are not concentrating a 100% on something and that is fine. I listen to podcasts while driving, I often miss sentences or longer bits because there’s more traffic that I focus on. That’s fine. I can either go back or accept it.

Second, this is coming from the person that said:

> I read a book when I cook lunch or dinner, and I read a book when eating breakfast.

> I have become good at walking my dog while reading

Edit: formatting

Because success is an end unto itself, my plan to succeed at reading more books will begin by reading zero books.

Obviously the longer I spend reading no books, the greater my success will be. Time to install TikTok to the homescreen.

Zero to One, Baby.

I did a similar thing a few years ago, I deleted reddit, social media, and other time-wasters from my phone, and now I keep a queue of books in an e-reader app. When I have a few idle moments somewhere, my options are to sit and think (sometimes a nice option), or read some book.

I get through about 2 books per month this way. I haven't noticed eye strain issues, but I tend to keep the brightness low and the font size reasonable. If you struggle with eye strain, you might benefit from an e-book phone case (e.g., https://www.inkcase.com/inkcase-for-iphone/) if you don't want to carry a separate device.

Also, if you are just getting started then read easy books. You know the 100 classics from highschool. And you after you finish a book, you can find some great analysis of those books online.

One thing I learned is often when you are excited about those easy books, voracious readers are quick to tell you how much the book sucks. "Read this by an obscure author instead". Ignore that until you have read a whole lot of books in your list.

One of my main takeaways from this article is that the author ADORES Umberto Eco.

Which is understandable.

I have an old iPad, which doesn't seem to run anything other than the default apps, hence it is distraction free in a sense. The only thing I use it for is to read, works quite well and I have managed to accomplish reading quite a few books.

From when I learned to read up to the end of my 20s I read much more than one book per week. Whoever after 30 or maybe a bit before I started to read less and less, until now where I read vert rarely (usually on plane).

I don't know why. Maybe it's psychological. Maybe it's just ageing. Maybe it's my brain fried first by internet then by the smartphone.

I still buy more books than I read, probably unconsciously hoping that one day the flame that pushed me to devour so many books will get ablaze again