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How to Read: For the Book Lover Who Can’t Remember the Last Time They Read a Book

“I love to read,” “Oh, yeah? What have you read lately?” “……”



(psst. you can scroll down and just read the bold-numbered points if you wanna cut to the chase, I will even spare you an ironic comment if you do)


Reading has always been a staple of my personality. I wrote my college application essay literally on reading. Like many readers, I was introduced to books as a listener. For as long as my memory stretches back, my nights were filled of sinister villains, cowardly sidekicks, house pet heroes, and a truly necessary surplus shenanigans.

Drifting to sleep on a pirate ship, eyes closing as I sailed on a vintage aircraft carrier, stifling yawns while shrinking down to guinea pig size, the swift sound of each page turn sang me to sleep. The skyscrapers of library books by my bed provided the backdrop to the nightly lullabies as Dad and I threw on our capes and flew into the sky.

There’s so much from my childhood I hold near and dear to my heart, but these moments are quite unparalleled. My parents read to me far later into life than I would assume most would, it never really felt like a bedtime story, it wasn’t infantile, it was just a way we bonded. I was a highly anxious kid and not a lot would quiet my mind, so for years, on nights I was struggling, one of my parents would sit with me and read. Through much of this time, I was reading on my own, I always had a pile of books I was working through, but sometimes my brain was too loud to read alone. At some point there was a pretty natural transition from someone reading aloud to me reading by myself before bed, I don’t remember it happening, so it must just have been time.

As I got older and busier, and school got harder and more time consuming, I read for fun less and less. The chances I read more than 5 books between 2014 and 2020 are relatively slim. I never didn’t consider myself to be a reader, but then it would come up and someone would ask what I was reading and I didn’t have an answer.

It kinda felt like how I had blonde hair as a kid, and like almost any blonde-haired kid I had that illness into my early adulthood that made me look at my now fully and obviously brown hair and think “I’m a natural blonde still, it’s the light making it look dark.”

If you or a loved one has been harmed by a brunette who grew up blonde you may be entitled to financial compensation.


Anyway, I felt like such a poser but for some reason I just couldn’t get myself to read. I didn’t have the time, the attention span, the interest, I didn’t even want to pick up a book.



I read one book in 2019. I read the same first 300 pages of Stephen King’s under the dome several times over the span of 2020–2021 because I’d get about 300 pages in before getting bored, and then in a few months when I took another stab at it, I had no idea what was going on. It was a vicious cycle. That was the closest I came to finishing a book in both of those years. In 2022 I read 33 books.

So now you’re here, and thinking, “wait but how I wanna be like you so bad you’re so cool and smart and pretty and funny and well read,” and to that I say don’t worry, I am a kind and benevolent God I will share with you my formula.


1. Make your first book one you can’t put down

The first book I read that year was the kind where you’re five pages in and then all of a sudden it’s 4 am and you have an 8 am class and you’re so hungry and so thirsty and so tired and you have to pee so badly because the second you opened the book you were so completely immersed in it you couldn’t put it down until you knew how it ended. I first read “We Were Liars” by E. Locheart. This book made me so mad, I wanted to light it on fire because I was so disheveled by the ending. I am not a uniquely emotional person, it had been a while since I had felt that much about anything. I love a good thriller, so my best advice is to find a book that has you on the edge of your seat, once you’re in, you’re in. Do some research, it doesn’t have to be a well-written book even, for me, I love Stephen King, but I am not going to argue that I think he is a uniquely eloquent writer. He is a damn good storyteller, though. Find a 300 page book that will take over your brain until you finish it. 2. Find a book that feels like it’s speaking directly to you.

This was a truly special experience because I shared it with someone I love. My best friend was also getting really into reading at about the same time I was and we had both expressed interest in this book, so we decided to share it. She read the first half, leaving little anecdotes along the pages. She highlighted and bookmarked her favorite parts and filled the margins with little stories and notes about how she related or what she liked. I learned more about her through this book than I had in the three years prior to us being friends. She then passed the book off to me in which I read it cover to cover, I left some little notes in the beginning and dog tagged them so she could go back and read them, then proceeded to take notes as I read the second half. When I finished, I gave the book back to her and she picked up where she left off and read to the end with my notes. The book itself felt so close to home, I have always felt like I see the world through a very similar lens to John Green, and much of the book was written in an ode to my hometown of Indianapolis, so it felt especially intimate. I use the phrase “falling in love” with reading a lot because of books and experiences like I had with The Anthropocene Reviewed. This book made me feel so overwhelmingly human.

3. Find an author who knows you better than you know yourself This is along the same vein, but what helped me really solidify my habit of reading was finding an author who never missed. For me, this was Frederick Backman. I started with “My Grandmother Asked me to Tell you She’s Sorry,” a book that is so complicated and beautiful and funny and it feels like the author wrote this just for me, like he and I are sharing all of these little secrets hidden in between the pages. I then read “Anxious People” which may forever be my favorite book. I knew by the second page it would from then on it would hold a permanent spot in my heart. I just kept reading his work and loving each as much as the last. 4. Find what you love about your favorite books and look for that. Yes, I think diversity in what you read to some extent matters. I don’t mean you need to read nonfiction if you don’t enjoy doing that, don’t listen to people that say nonfiction is any more valuable than fiction they are boring people.

This is along the same vein, but what helped me really solidify my habit of reading was finding an author who never missed. For me, this was Frederick Backman. I started with “My Grandmother Asked me to Tell you She’s Sorry,” a book that is so complicated and beautiful and funny and it feels like the author wrote this just for me, like he and I are sharing all of these little secrets hidden in between the pages. I then read “Anxious People” which may forever be my favorite book. I knew by the second page it would from then on it would hold a permanent spot in my heart. I just kept reading his work and loving each as much as the last.

Yes, I think diversity in what you read to some extent matters. I don’t mean you need to read nonfiction if you don’t enjoy doing that, don’t listen to people that say nonfiction is any more valuable than fiction they are boring people. Eventually, once you are really wired to read a lot, I would encourage you to be cautious of reading only authors with a similar narrative to you. Of the books I read in 2022, a majority of them were written by white authors likely because that is what is familiar to me, but I do think it’s important to explore more than your lived experience and culture and to find authors that do not look like you. Starting out, however, if you are reading different fonts of the same book on repeat, I think that’s okay. I gravitate to fiction that is often about unlikely friendships, and looking back that is a very common theme of much of what I read, but hey, I was reading, and I was enjoying it. This year I will be more conscious to make my authors more inclusive, but I will probably continue to read a lot of books about friendship.

It’s the same. Reading has no moral value, it has no superior value. I often see people look down on audiobooks, perhaps because they think they require less discipline to sit and read everyday. LOSER ALERT. That’s a lame take. Read if you want to. Listen if you want to. It could not matter less. Count it on your Goodreads. It’s all the same processing parts of your brain. You learned the story, you imagined the story, you processed the story. You’re gonna tell me that because you read it versus listened to it that’s any different? No. You have successfully finished a book. If you like physically reading more that is so awesome, but listening is quite the same. It is a hobby. It holds no moral value.(that being said, it is important for kids and such to physically read, I am not saying you should never read, I am saying, if you enjoy listening to books over reading them, don’t feel like that counts any less.)Get a library card, download Libby. Find Narrators who you love. I personally will listen to anything Julia Wehlan or Marin Ireland narrate.

Find other people who like to read. No way in hell you’d get me into a book club, but I always post what I am reading to my IG story, and it’s so fun to discuss books with people in my dms. They don’t have to be reading what you’re reading, but being around people who like books is super motivating.

My friend almost exclusively reads what she calls “cartoon cover romance books” and she loves them. If you want to read it, read it. I cannot emphasize enough, that as a grown adult, reading has no superior qualities to other activities. Whether you read civil war nonfiction for fun or cartoon-cover romance books, it is a hobby. Not everything you do has to be deeply functional. Whether you like to read or paint or play a sport or do crosswords or watch reality tv, your hobbies are supposed to be things you enjoy, not something to prove your superior whatever with.

You definitely don’t have to do this, but for me, I used Goodreads last year, and the dopamine hit I got from pressing the “I finished this book button” was enough to make me pick up my next book. Plus it’s helpful to identify what you like and find new recommendations. The app also has the option to make a yearly goal, and that was super fun to work towards. I am once again encouraging you to not feel any type of way about including audiobooks in this, it counts. I also love to judge things, so I really enjoyed truly and publically hating Colleen Hoover this year and making it everybody’s problem.



If you feel like a reader in your heart, you’re a reader. Listen to an audiobook. Read something frivolous. Books are not homework, there are no rules.


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