According to my Goodreads profile, I read 27 books last year. That’s not bad according to this wonderful documentary about reading that I have recently been watching; Bookstores: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content. That’s more than a heck of a lot of people. On the other hand among booktubers it is maybe not a lot. A bi-weekly book, basically. Sometimes we post videos where we’ve detailed the 10 books that we’ve recently picked up. I think that’s what led to the recent slew of tags about reading everything that you have on your to be read pile, or “if you have it, read it” as the tag may be. I’m tempted. I may do those tags. But in the meantime, I’m going to think about how to actually accomplish that and how to read more books in 2020.
Using Goodreads
I often do you use Goodreads as a goal-setter. And I also use Goodreads as a fictional to be read pile. Or shopping list! Oh, and also an inventory. I think that going forward I’ll try and figure a way to use Goodreads better as a proper reflection of my real-time to be read pile. I do often update what I’m reading but I think I’d like to make a goal of updating that more accurately and more often and not focussing so much on using it as an inventory or shopping list.
Using Time Better
I think that simply using my time better would be a huge benefit. Not that I waste a lot of time and not that I have a lot of time to spare, but I had gotten on a trend of using my Kindle and keeping it loaded with something I’m currently reading electronically but I fell out of that habit. So that’s a good one to pick up first off. There was also a time in my life when I would read for one half hour every morning to start my day. Always fiction. Horror fiction. Short stories. That was an excellent habit that I’d like to revisit as well. Maybe not only short stories there’s no saying I can’t read one gigantic book in a year by reading for half an hour every single morning, and that’s on top of my regular reading.
Drinking More Tea
This may sound silly but I haven’t been drinking enough tea this year. Simple as that. Tea equals reading books. There’s a reason that the common meme exists between reading books and tea, booktubers and spilling tea, cozying up with a good book, getting hygge with it and drinking tea. I have a fantastic array of teas! A mandarin honeybush orange tea that I love. I have a really nice Smokey darker Assam tea that I double love. I have chocolate chai tea that is perfect for chilly weather. I have some bright peppermint tea that I adore. I’ve always been a fan of a good Earl Grey and I have three of those so… I should drink more tea. Drinking tea instantly has me on the couch cozying up for a while since I pour it hot and I take it black. A perfect time to read a book.
This sounds like a good start. A slow start. Small bites. Baby steps and all that. What it comes down to is wanting to enjoy the books that I have already bought, to add books to my list that I’ve been only looking fondly at over the last year, and to be able to enjoy a lot more of my fellow horror authors work.
Let me know if you have any tried-and-true techniques for slow immersive and deeply enjoyable fiction reading in the meantime, you can take a look at my year in books!
Also watch Bookstores: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content