For many years, I’ve felt distressed about the steady decline of reading in my day-to-day life. I went from Goodreads shelves of 50-60 books a year in middle school, to 10-20 in high school. Then, in early college, I was finding myself reading maybe one or two books a year outside of school. As someone who has always defined myself as a reader and writer, this lack of reading was not only injuring my mental health, but my writing ability. I was less inspired, less driven, and my actual work was choppier. However, with all of the other reading I was doing for school, reading on my own just felt like an extra chore.
Then, last year, I reconnected with reading. Experimenting with a couple techniques, I found a place for books in my daily routine. I finished the year with about 5 books and several other non-traditional stories read. I felt like myself going into 2024, and I started a plan that has been instrumental in keeping my reading strong. Here are all the things I’m doing in 2024 to keep me doing what I love.
- Start Easy: Whenever I tried to improve my reading habits during my slump, I would try to pick up books that were ultra massive, super intellectual, or in an older style. I thought I could handle these, because I’d read things like them before. So then, when I failed, I felt like giving up. So this time, I started easy. I read books that were shorter, or for a younger audience, and avoided books that were super intellectual, like the texts I was already reading for school. Then, I built up to reading four, five hundred pages books (sometimes in two days!), with all the fancy worldbuilding and in-depth themes. Starting easy allowed me to remind myself that my personal reading is for fun, and should be relaxing.
- Reading Journals: I had a small reading journal towards the end of the last year that helped me immensely. Having a space dedicated to the books I read where I could review and keep track of them made me feel great about my progress. All I had to do was open the pages and see how much I’d accomplished, and I would feel like a reader– like myself. Not only that, but keeping track of the genres, authors, and how I felt about each book allowed me to engage with them more deeply, and helped me select next books from sequels or the same author, if I enjoyed it. My grandma got me this adorable (and chunky!) reading journal for Christmas, and I love it so far!
- Book Buddies/Book Clubs: One day, when my friend and I were exploring a nearby Barnes and Nobles, he plucked a huge novel off the shelf of the fantasy section and said, “we should buddy read this.” I looked at the giant, orange thing (Priory of the Orange Tree), and said, on a whim, “Sure!” I am now 450 pages into this 800+ page epic fantasy, and had to hold myself back from purchasing the sequel when I saw it at my campus bookstore today. As a kid, I disliked english teacher’s instructions to read just a certain amount of a book before the next class, so I wasn’t sure how it would go. However, as an adult, meeting up to discuss the last 20 or so chapters of the “buddy read” book has been one of my favorite hobbies this year. There is something so entertaining and connective about comparing hypotheses, discussing how you think characters look, and talking about what you do and don’t like about the text.
- Habit Tracking: Tracking my reading as a habit in my habit tracker has also been great for my reading this year. I’m not going to lie, I get a little excited about to-do lists, and a habit tracker is really just one big to-do list for each day. When I check off a day, saying I’ve “read” that day– and it doesn’t matter how much or how little, just that I did it– I feel successful. And when I count up all the days I chose to read instead of scrolling (which I am very prone to), I feel good about myself.
- Mini Library (Book Buddy App): Have you ever wanted your own mini library catalog? Have you ever had “nothing to read,” when you have tons of books on your shelf but just don’t know where to start? I was definitely overwhelmed by the choices I had, and the lack of order. So, when I organized my bookshelf for this year, I also downloaded an app called BookBuddy, that allows you to scan the ISBN of each of your books and add it to your personal library. You can rate the book, review it, and edit any of the categories. Then, when you’re trying to decide what you want to read later on from your own collection, you can search by genre, author, age range, and more! Setting up my mini-library was really exciting and motivating for me, and the app is free up to 50 books!