Oct 31, 2013

How To Read More Books, Faster

There are more books published today than ever before. Anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can bring out a book today. While this gives readers a whole lot of choice, it also creates a big deal of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) on genres of their choice. 

In my limited experience, you can only read more books faster when you're interested in reading a book. When the material grips you by the throat and keeps you awake till 3 in the morning. You'll know it when that happens.

So how can you read more books faster?

1) Get on Goodreads: Even though I don't like the website's design, it is still a very good starting point of keeping a track of what you're reading and how far along you are in your reading challenge for the year. There is a reading challenge on Goodreads where you can promise yourself the number of books you'll read in a year. Good stuff, I am on Goodreads here. I update it on/off.

2) Find a comfortable reading platform: While many people scoff at reading on screens such as mobile phones and laptop monitors, it is the future and it's coming at you full speed. If you don't suffer from any kind of eye problems, I don't see any reason why you can't read a book on a screen, because come on, you're reading this post a screen too. Consider a book like thousands of blog posts, read at your pace.

One thing I'd suggest if you're reading on laptop or computer monitor, is to get this app F.lux which can regulate the color of your screen to make it easy to read.

Another, if you want to read in your browser, and you have books in .epub format, you can get a number of .epub readers in the app stores of your browser. There are .epub reading extensions available for both Chrome and Firefox. Also, if you're into reading Kindle books, you can simply go to http://read.amazon.com/ and read your kindle books here.

3) Invest some money in a book reader of your choice: Now, be it a kindle or an iPad or a Tab. It makes sense to go for something which has a slightly better screen than Chinese made cheap tablets. You get what you pay for, frankly. So get something good. You're a serious reader, you need a fucking tablet. No two ways about it. This is the future.

4) Book reading apps: Book reading apps for tablets and phones are a dime a dozen on all kinds of app stores. My personal favorites are iBooks on iPhone (put your .epubs in Dropbox or email them to yourself, download and open in iBooks), Stanza app on iPhone (I don't think it's available anymore) Readmill (on Both iOS and Android), Moon Reader+ (Android only). I use some or most of these apps, and the best part about using multiple apps is that, if you get bored or fatigued of reading a book in one platform, maybe you can switch to a different genre or author in another app. Variation is the spice of life and everything.

5) Get Information about Books: While reading the genres of your interest is the best way to get more reading done faster, one should always explore other writing genres too. You can join online book clubs, or book specific websites. Buzzfeed has a good section about books, there are tumblr blogs about books, Amazon sends good emails about the books that might interest you or books that are free, you've to create your own reading flow when it comes to reading. You can follow your favorite authors on Twitter and FB to make sure that you're in sync with whatever new material they're putting out. iO9 and Tor often write good stuff about books. I am not linking any of them because I am lazy, and you're not, you know how to punch things into Google, right?


So, that's about it. You read more books by reading more books. Simple as that. The tips mentioned above can help you, but only till a degree, after that you're on your own, just like everything else in life. Happy reading!

[Got thoughts? Tips? Ideas? life hacks? hit me on @69fubar to talk about this post]