You will read less than you think

Assume you will read 30 books a year for your entire life between 15 and 85 years old. That is 30 * 70 = 2100 books.
I don’t know about you, but I had never done the math and that made me sad. I regret having read a lot of the books I read now!

Conclusion: (1) read more, (2) be careful what you select to read.
For (1), I now read 1 hour daily.
For (2), I try my best to read mostly books published ~100 years before the present day1.

When to read

If you only read at night, you should change that habit.
Challenging reading should be done when your brain is fully functional! Not delegated to the end of the day when you are tired and sleepy. That is why I think that it makes sense to carve out at least an hour of reading a day during the day. That’s not easy to do in most jobs but if you can make it work, I highly recommend it!

Of course I also read at night, it’s the best way to improve the quality of sleep in my opinion. I usually select lighter books for that.

How to read

I always had a feeling that reading on physical books was more pleasurable but wasn’t able to explain why well this is the first time I saw words which get close to explaining why . There is nothing better than an e-reader for reading at night or while travelling though. That is why I always read two books at once, one in physical form and another on my e-reader2.

  1. The longer a book has been relevant the longer it will tend to be relevant. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect  ↩︎

  2. The book on my e-reader is always lighter in nature so that reading at night does not pose an issue. Hard to read Voltaire when you are half asleep! ↩︎