How to Read More Books

And spend less time on the fresh hell that is Twitter!

My future, as represented by Belle in Beauty and the Beast. (via Disney)

I’m not going to ask how many days you’ve been in a self-imposed COVID-19 lockdown because I don’t want to be disappointed in you. But no matter if you’re on day 14 or day 30, I’m willing to bet that mindlessly scrolling through Netflix and Twitter with your reptile-brain has grown to be a little bit unsatisfying. 

I’m also willing to bet that somewhere in your home, there lies a stack of books you’ve never read before. I, a pretty avid reader, have them too—I call them my guilt piles. Every book represents all the time I could have spent doing something useful instead of practicing my daily self-loathing on Instagram. There’s a quote from Big Little Lies season one (yes, I’m quoting Big Little Lies—I’m gay, it’s allowed) where Reese Witherspoon’s character says, “I love my grudges. I tend to them like little pets.” I feel similarly about my guilt piles. One day, I tell myself, patting the cover of an 832-page biography of Susan Sontag. One day. 

To make my self-punishment even more palpable, I stack my guilt piles up against a wall, one on top of the other, until they teeter dangerously, waiting for one of my cats to prompt their downfall. In fact, I recently took inventory of the unread books in my collection and resolved to donate the ones I probably will never read, and make a priority list of the things I do want to eventually read. This list was tragically rendered moot when a McNally Jackson Books opened next door to my apartment, and I came home with 10 new books to add to my guilt. One of them was a 600-page book about Italian fairy tales. What is wrong with me? I asked myself. My fiancé later asked me the same question.

Now, however, we are staring down the mouth of at least four more weeks of social distancing, which means a whole lot of time spent sitting on our couches, wondering what to do with ourselves. Our mobile devices—which an infectious disease doctor once told me are “basically our third arms”—are buzzing with push alerts bringing nothing but bad news. Our remote workplaces somehow perversely trick us into being more connected to our screens than we’ve ever been at the office, where we can get up to gossip with our coworkers or take a coffee break. Our partners, once a salve for sore eyes after a long day at work, are now becoming our nemeses. (More than 300 couples in Dazhou, China filed for divorce once they learned about the nation’s upcoming lax on quarantining.)

It’s the perfect time to get away, and the best way to (ethically) do that right now is by reading a book. After all, if I had to cancel that vacation with my fiancé to Hawaii, certainly I can conjure some of the ocean and sand with The Vacationers by Emma Straub. If I miss being home with my family, I can always pick up any good old Italian story by Elena Ferrante. And if I want to really lean into the whole apocalypse theme, there’s always The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

So far this year, I’ve read 30 books, which is about an average of two or three books per week, give or take. People often ask me, “How do you read so fast?” so I figured I’d give a few tips on how to get started in carving your way through your own collection. And if you need recommendations on what to read, I’ve listed the books I’ve finished this year below, with a brief synopsis of each one. Over the next few days, I’ll be monitoring the comments for anyone who would like a more personalized book recommendation from me. Scroll all the way down for instructions and be sure to check back for my response! 

How to Spend More Time Reading (And Less Time Scrolling)

1. Make it a habit.

The easiest way to commit to reading a lot is to actually block out time in your day to do it. For a while, the only time I could actually devote to reading was while on vacation, when I’d tear through three to four books in under a week. Once I got home and back into my daily routine, I’d try to read before bed, which was essentially futile. If anything ever came up after work—a dinner, a happy hour—I could never manage to get a meaningful amount of pages read, since the white wine buzz mixed with the comforting pillows would usually mean I’d drift off after a paragraph or two. Discouraged, I’d give up on reading for pleasure altogether until my next vacation.

So, I started waking up earlier. At first, I’d commit to reading for 20 minutes while drinking my morning coffee. Eventually, I started waking up early enough to dedicate a full hour to reading. This ritual has been extremely gratifying since I started in January. Where in your day or week can you find the time to develop a reading habit? Yours doesn’t have to look like mine—maybe you are a before-bed reader; maybe you can set aside time to read on your lunch break with your laptop screen closed; maybe you like to read a little bit after ordering dinner, or while waiting for your delivery to arrive. Whatever it is, it helps to start small and then adjust your reading schedule as you see fit. Fifteen to 30 minutes every day goes a long way. 

2. Don’t be a snob about it.

If you’re trying to make reading a regular thing, I’d like to gently suggest that now is not the time to tackle War and Peace, or some other epic tome. To start off, go with the path of least resistance—pick up something you know you’re going to love and want to finish, whether that’s a Danielle Steele novel, a young adult book, a graphic novel, a poetry collection, whatever! The point is, starting a good habit is easier when you feel like you can make progress without too much hard work. 

A book is a book, no matter the page count, the author, the cover art, or the genre. If your first book of choice is filled with pictures and short poems or diary entries, that’s great! It still counts. You can always build up to the more intimidating titles on your to-read list. 

3. Make a list!

It’s helpful to keep more than just an imagined inventory of the books you want to read. If you use an e-reader, you have an advantage here, since you can compile books in an organized list right on your device. For those of us (myself included) who need a physical copy to feel fulfilled, the sheer number of books can get overwhelming. I have friends who compulsively use the GoodReads app, where you can set reading goals, keep your to-read lists up-to-date, leave reviews of what you’ve read so far, and join online book clubs. I keep a Notes app list of books I’ve bought that I actually want to read, and then I add to it whenever I make another ill-advised trip to Books Are Magic or McNally Jackson. Rather than try to keep this list in order of priority, I find it helpful to just look at the titles before selecting the next one to dive into, then crossing it off the list when I’ve finished. The list comes in handy so you can remember exactly what you have to look forward to, and to remember what you’ve read so far.

4. You’re allowed to give up on a book.

Even though I recommend making time for reading daily, I also don’t look at it like a chore. Reading, to me, is more like exercise or meditation—time I carve out of my schedule to make myself feel better. For this reason, I don’t believe you should feel obligated to finish a book that you don’t like or can’t get into. Generally speaking, I’ll give a book a solid 75 pages before deciding whether or not to give up. Earlier this year, I really suffered through A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White, which took me about twice as long to get through as anything else on my list. I really don’t think I’m any the wiser for it. If anything, that was time I could’ve spent reading something I loved. Don’t forget that you’re reading for yourself and you make the rules. If you hate a book, put it down and try something new.

5. Donate books you know you’ll never read.

If I had Marie Kondo’d the books in my apartment, I’d never have finally gotten around to reading Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde this year, which is now one of my favorite essay collections I’ve ever read. You won’t know if a book “sparks joy” until you’ve actually given it a solid chance (more on this later). However, there are inevitably some books lying around that you just know you’re never going to get to, or books you tried to read but ended up really disliking. If you are feeling overwhelmed or discouraged by clutter, you can always donate books to your local library or a nonprofit that’s in need. (I love Housing Works!) Sometimes, making a little extra space makes us feel a lot better mentally—especially when we’re spending so much time indoors.

6. You can read more than one book at a time.

I’ve found that multi-tasking, or reading different types of books at once, has helped me feel more excited for my reading time every day. This year, I started reading poetry for the first time in my life, and have finished collections by Langston Hughes, Frank O’Hara, and Nikki Giovanni. I never would have picked up a poetry book before, but I’ve found these collections to be so thoroughly rewarding and refreshing, especially while reading denser nonfiction work. Similarly, I got a real thrill from making my way through Watchmen, a graphic novel that’s effectively a comic book epic. (I have also never been stopped so much by fellow readers or fans, all of whom asked me where I was in the book, what I thought, and who my favorite character was.) If you lose attention or focus easily, try splitting your time between two books of different genres and see what happens. 

7. Ration the book wisely.

When I first open a book, I flip through it to get a sense of how long each chapter is, what the font size is, how many chapters there are, etc. This more or less gives me a better idea of how much time I’ll spend reading it. I tend to crave a sense of finality during my reading sessions, meaning I feel a compulsive need to get through at least a full chapter in its entirety before moving on with my day. I find this to be particularly helpful with collections of essays or short stories—since there’s no overarching storyline to follow, it can be tempting to put the book down in the middle of a passage. My best advice is to stick with it. Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, for example, was taking me a frustrating amount of time to get through each day, even though I loved the writing. Once I committed to a chapter per day, I was only reading it for 45 minute stretches, and finished in one week. 

8. Try audiobooks!

We don’t all absorb information in the same way, and we should be able to use whatever tools we like to read a book we’re interested in. I am a big fan of audiobooks—I listen to them during workouts, while getting ready in the morning, and while I’m cooking. I especially love audiobooks for certain genres, like memoir (which feels like someone is sitting down to tell you one nice, long story about their life) and essays (which feel a bit like college lectures, in a good way). I prefer to keep my experiences separate—to physically read one book and listen to a different one on audio—but theoretically, you could be absorbing the same book via different mediums. Whatever works for you. 

9. Shop local and shop in person.

People ask me how I find my books, and to be honest, I don’t monitor “best of” lists for new material, and I don’t tend to follow what other people or book clubs are reading. I like to walk into a bookstore and see what’s recommended by the people who work there. I’d love to tell you something different, but it’s true—the only people I trust to recommend books are the employees who write the short and surprisingly tender notes to accompany something they’ve read in the hopes that you’ll have a similar experience. 

It absolutely kills me to know that so many of these folks—people I’ve never met face to face, but who have given me so much knowledge, joy, and companionship—are now out of a job due to the pandemic. It is crucial that we support independent bookstores and resist Amazon. Many of your local bookstores may still be open for appointments, online and custom phone orders, or even home delivery. Please contact your favorite store to ask about book buying options, or consider purchasing a gift card now to use when physical locations reopen. Pick up the phone and talk to one of the employees about books you love, and ask for suggestions. Independent bookstores are one of the few places in this world where you can still find people eager to help you. Don’t let them go out of business.

If you need a suggestion of places that are still taking orders and shipping, check out: Center for Fiction, Books Are Magic, or McNally Jackson!

10. Reading is not a race. I promise.

I know this whole piece may be devoted to helping you read more and/or read faster, which feels like yet another productivity trap wherein we’re all mindlessly efficient and adding to our lists and going about our robotic lives. I hope you don’t take this as a competitive challenge. Rather, if you want to make a commitment to reading, it’s exactly that: a commitment! Like anything else, it’s something you do every day or when you know you can make time. It’s fine if you put a book down for a week when work gets stressful or things feel overwhelming. Just pick it back up again and get right back to it when things have calmed down.

Maybe you’ll find, like I have, that reading makes you genuinely happier. Maybe you, too, will allow Fran Lebowitz to accompany you on a walk outside—by audiobook—and you’ll laugh out loud, causing a few strangers on the street to turn and look at you, concerned. Maybe you, too, will feel completely and totally overwhelmed by everything on your Twitter feed, so much so that your eye could bleed, so a book becomes your only means of escape. Before you know it, it’s one o’clock in the morning, and you’re wondering how Joan Didion could have wrecked you in such a profound way. Or maybe what you need is a lunch break—a quick couple of poems to read to pick up your spirits for your next hour of conference calls. Perhaps that’s when you’ll first turn to Nikki Giovanni, like I did, and shed a single tear for the kind of beauty that six lines of poetry could give to you.

Whatever it is, it is not the quantity of the books you read. It is selecting the things that will make you feel good. It is looking at the book on your bedside table and seeing an opportunity for escape, time travel, or wisdom. It is picking it up and getting to the point where you wish everything else in life could stop so you never have to put it down.

Now’s for the fun part! Want me to recommend a book, or maybe even get recommended some books by the other readers here? Feel free to drop me a comment below and I’ll do my best! If possible, let me know: The last book you read and loved, your favorite genre, and how you want the book to make you feel. (For me, I’d say: The last book I loved was The World That We Knew, my favorite genre is magical realism fiction, and I want my next book to make me feel hopeful.) 

Below, you can find my reading list for 2020 (so far)! I’ll be updating as I go. 

What I’ve Read (So Far!) in 2020:

1. A Year Without a Name by Cyrus Grace Dunham: A haunting and beautiful coming-of-age story that proves you don’t need a lot of words to say something powerful.

2. A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White: Another coming-of-age story, albeit one that hasn’t exactly aged well itself. It is, however, a part of the gay (and I say gay, not queer, deliberately) literary canon.

3. Burn the Place by Iliana Regan: A memoir by the famous chef of Elizabeth in Chicago, who reckons with addiction, queerness, and finding an escape from it all in nature and food.

4. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain: One of the most New York memoirs I’ve ever read, Bourdain is acerbic, politically incorrect, and somehow never loses his charm.

5. Watchmen by Alan Moore: The most delightful graphic novel—and maybe book—I’ve read this year, with haunting political parallels to the goings on of today. Read this then watch or re-watch the Regina King series on HBO.

6. Metamorphoses by Ovid: I’m a big Greek mythology fan and have been ever since I was a kid. Metamorphoses is somehow more entertaining than The Odyssey in that it feels like Madeline Miller herself actually wrote it. 

7. The Big Sea by Langston Hughes: One of the world’s finest poets tells the first part of his life story, and so brings the Harlem Renaissance to life.

8. Selected Poems by Langston Hughes: Page after page of concise, lyrical genius.

9. How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell: It’s true that Odell can sometimes come off as a bit privileged in her approach, but her overall thesis is valuable to all of us who need to spend a bit less time on our phones. 

10. The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman: Magical realism meets the Holocaust—and if that sounds daft, you simply have to give it a try to understand. 

11. Wake, Siren by Nina MacLaughlin: It’s Metamorphoses, but this time, the women get their due. If you liked Song of Achilles, try it out! 

12. Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James: A fantasy novel that is hard to actually explain concisely. Just know that this may very well be a contemporary Lord of the Rings, especially with how James builds worlds and their characters. 

13. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi: I couldn’t put this down, I read it in one day. Oyeyemi turned the story of Snow White into a contemporary, political, and feminist work of art. 

14. Stitches by Anne Lamott: Lamott writes about religion the way Robin Givhan writes about fashion. It doesn’t have to be so fussy, so complicated for us to grasp the deeper message.

15. Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener: A genius book about the formation of the technocracy of the United States—and the New Yorker who found herself unwittingly participating in the surveillance state.

16. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett: This is a book about a family who lives in a breathtakingly beautiful house, and what happens when said family falls apart. If that sounds boring, you’ve never read Patchett before! (Start with Commonwealth, then go here.)

17. Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde: Listening to this on audiobook was basically like having someone read me for filth every single day on the subway. (I loved it.)

18. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks: The single most formative book I’ve ever read on masculinity. You’ll see me quoting it ad nauseum for the rest of my damn life. 

19. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende: Allende is one of my favorite authors, and this book about the rise of socialism in Chile feels oddly prescient today. 

20. Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara: O’Hara is another New York gem, and his poems help you see New York through an entirely different light. It had me yearning for a trip on the Metro North. 

21. Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein: Smart, concise, and approachable political analysis of our very deeply doomed democracy, and how, exactly, we got here. I listened on audio because it was a bit too cumbersome a read for me. 

22. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister: Another book that basically made me feel guilty (and a little stupid) the whole way through, but I truly feel the better for having read it. 

23. Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino: Jia is so smart and her references are so vast that I truly would love a trip through her brain. Trick Mirror is a great read for any millennial trying to parse out the past two decades or so of pop culture and how it’s infiltrated our ways of thinking.

24. Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni: You will cry from the beauty. 

25. Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson: Mary Magdalene wasn’t who you think she was. Watterson, a scholar and theologian, explains how the First Lady of Christianity was scorned by the men who wanted to keep the gates of Christ’s kingdom. You do not need to be Christian or even remotely religious to enjoy this book. 

26. Real Life by Brandon Taylor: One of the most compelling and wonderful fiction books I’ve read so far this year—a story that deals with higher education, race, sexuality, and the feelings that accompany being a social outsider.

27. Homie by Danez Smith: A poetry collection that is, in a word, revelatory. If ever there were a wordsmith, it is Danez Smith.

28. Mr. Know It All by John Waters: A memoir from a “filth elder” that is filled to the brim with filth, humor, and funny anecdotes about a vibrant career. It was offensive—as is all of Waters’ work.

29. Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion: Didion’s sparseness of prose is somehow exactly what makes her a brilliant writer. She shows that elegance really is restraint.

30. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott: The seminal book on writing. It was my second time around with this one, and it was more enjoyable this time. I immediately put it down, started a writing group with two friends, and went to buy index cards.