Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose best friends were books. Everywhere she went, she made sure to carry a novel with her and made weekly trips to both her library and her local bookstore. All was well until the little girl reached high school and was introduced to a world of Netflix and piles of homework. The little girl would soon become a college student and have even less time to make her leisure novels a priority in her life. Until, one day by chance, the once little girl picked up a novel during Thanksgiving break that reinvigorated her love of reading.
That little girl was me, and this winter break, I read close to 20 books, thus reminding how much I used to love and still love to read. To keep this reading streak up, I’ve developed several habits that help me keep up my reading game. Here are some tips if you want to start/find your love of reading!
- Find A Book
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This seems pretty self-explanatory, but the key to starting to read is finding a book that interests you. If you like books in their physical form, take a trip to your local library or bookstore and peruse the shelves for some interesting reads. Amazon is also a great outlet for both physical and digital books. Use the website to see what the biggest reads are at the time and get some great deals on books. If you’re a big book buyer and don’t mind gently used books, check out Half Price Books. They have excellent deals on all books and offer some great sales throughout the year online and in its brick and mortar stores across the country.
- Make Time To Read
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This tip is probably the hardest one to follow: make time to read! If reading is important to you, then you’ll find or even make time to read your new book. This may require taking a step back and looking at your day to day schedule. When do you have the most time to sit and relax with a book? Is it in the morning, during your lunch break, on the weekends? Use those breaks to crack open your novel and get in as much reading as you can.
- Set Goals
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If setting goals helps, set a page number goal to meet each time you read your book. It can be 50 pages each day or 200 for each seating, but make sure it meets your lifestyle and reading habits. Don’t like that kind of day to day pressure, then consider making a goal that spans across the year. Goodreads, a book-based social media website, is a great way to help you keep track of the books you’ll read this year. Goodreads encourages its users to set a reading challenge each year to see how many books they can read. This challenge is a great way to keep track of all the books you read and can help hold yourself accountable for the goals you set. Goodreads is also a great website to get information about upcoming book releases and to connect with fellow book readers across the globe.
- Connect With Other Book Lovers
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No matter what kind of goals you’re setting, you’ll need support and, luckily, the book community is flourishing on many different social media platforms. A scroll through the bookstagram hashtag on Instagram will introduce you to thousands of dedicated users! Give a follow to a couple of users and accounts that match your reading likes. YouTube is another great outlet for finding lovers of books! The book community, lovingly called BookTube, has tons of great individuals who use their pages to discuss their favorite books and create fun book-centered videos. Some of my favorites include polandbananasbooks, jessethereader, Katytastic, Tashapolis, and abookutopia, but a quick search will open the doors to many more accounts, as well.
- Have Fun!
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Remember that this journey is supposed to be fun! Don’t feel bad for not finishing a book you don’t like or taking a break from reading when you feel overwhelmed with life. Reading for pleasure should help detox yourself from any of life’s stress and should not be another thing added to your already large pile of work. Make sure reading keeps its status as a relaxing, entertaining outlet in your life!