#1 Reading 200 Books A Year
In the last two years I have read over 420 books, or 210 books a year. I have dyslexia which means that letters and words get mixed up in my head. This prevented me from learning to read until I was 12 years old. In the next 10 minutes I am going to tell you how I went from not knowing how to read to reading 200 books a year, how I read so many books, why reading is worthwhile, how to find time to read, reading formats, reading imperatives, reading speed, and how long it will take to read 100 books.
How did I go from knowing how to read to reading 200 books a year? I did it through Grit. You should read Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth. Grit is gotten through making markable goals, with clear timelines, and properly rewarding yourself for your progress. Here is a link to a paper I published on this subject. I was fortunate to have a tutor who taught me how to read. Each week I learned one letter of the alphabet, and each week I was given points that I could use to get baseball cards as a reward for learning that weeks lesson.
As an adult this continues with me setting challenges for myself and trying to reach them. The reward is the self-satisfaction that comes from completing an impossible goal. I track the books that I am reading, want to read, and the ones I have read through Goodreads which is both an app and website. Using this app, you can set a goal for how many books you want to read in a year. Two years ago, I read barely any books by the time summer came around. But I did the math on how much time I had and decided it would be crazy if I could read 100 books in one year. I got to that goal a lot faster than I thought I could, and I ended up reading 210 books before the year was over.
Why did I find it worthwhile reading so many books within one year? It all comes down to a book called Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. I thought that it would be really cool to know more about George Washington than anyone I know. After reading this book though I came to realize that nobody I knew knew very much about anything. Not even professors know much about anything. In fact, all of humanity knows very little about anything. By reading books on every subject I have been able to slowly relieve the stress of knowing nothing. The reward for reading much is to understand life and everything in it just a little bit. There is a book called Educated by Tara Westover which encompasses this idea. Without learning a lot of stuff life was basically meaningless to her. The more you read the less existential angst you should have. To understand this more you should read the concept of anxiety by Søren Kierkegaard and then the courage to be by Paul Tillich.
How do you find the time to read more books? You should read how to read a book by Mortimer J. Adler to understand this better. There are many levels of reading a book. When you study the Bible you literally study every single word and its history. This is completely different from how you would read a children’s book. There are many levels to reading. You probably read books in one of two ways. You study it for a class underlining and highlighting and taking notes, or you pick up a book of fiction and try to relate to the emotions in the book, to be on an adventure, or being romanced. Most of the time when I read books, I try to understand the mind of the author or the subject. You are not trying to remember the details of the book but instead trying to change yourself through the reading of the book. By reading about George Washington I would try to understand the mind of Washington. If I read a book by Seneca, I try to change the way I think about the subject through the ideas of the book. This allows the information you read to be stickier to your memories. Which means less time spent on each page.
Reading format is an important subject. You can read a paper book that you own or get from a library, but this makes it harder to start reading. You need to have the book with you, you need to buy it, or you need to take time out of your busy day to go find the book at the library. You can read the book online through an app. This way you can read more often whenever you are bored or just waiting around. If you do this, I would suggest a subscription to Scribd which is a website and app that has books and audio books at a monthly price which gives you access to the whole library. The downside to this is that you must be stationary and devote your full attention to the book, and it will affect you sleep cycle to stare at screens all the time. regardless you should make it a goal to increase your reading speed. Which is calculated as words per minute. You speak at 120-150 words a minute, and a page in a book has around 250 words on it. Find a paper you have written and read for one minute then highlight the words you have read and that should show you your reading speed. By reading daily and for longer periods of time you can increase your ability to read. This is the same concept of running. For a reference I can read around 1000 words a minute.
Alternatively, you can listen to a book rather than reading it. This is especially helpful if you have dyslexia. This method has many benefits. It is less stressful on the mind and on the eyes, it also allows for greater mobility meaning you can read while driving and doing chores. In my opinion listening to books is as good as or better than reading them. You should read this article for another argument over the differences. The main difference is concentration. Reading requires much more concentration than listening to a book. Listening to a book can be done well or badly. If you do it well, you can get the same amount or more out of listening as reading. This is why I listen to substantially more books than I read. But I use the words read and listen interchangeably. When I listen to books, I generally listen at 650 words a minute. Although I feel comfortable listening to books at 900 words a minute.
If you listen to books, then you should consider using Scribd as it has a large audio library for a low price. Furthermore, most books especially the ones we all are reading so if you want to listen to them you should get a subscription to Speechify which is an app that takes pictures of text and scans it and convers it to audio.
Regardless of which path you choose you should try to create an imperative to read. If you know what the next ten books you are going to read are then you have a reason to get through the first nine. My reading list has over 800 books on it. Every time I read a book, I try to find one or two books to be added to the list. Most good books recommend a few books or mention some in passing. These are the books that you should consider reading. This way you will have more than one opinion on each subject in your head.
Looking back on the conversation about reading speed. Let’s do the math on how long it would take you to read 100 books. most books are around 100,000 words or 400 pages. A 100 books then would have 10,000,000 ten million words. If you read 500 words a minute you can read 30,000 words an hour. Just multiply your WPM by 60. Now divide ten million by your words per hour so ten million divided by 30,000 is 333 hours. Which means if you want to read 100 books this year you only need an hour a day! Reading 200 books a year would only take 2 hours a day.
In conclusion, whether or not you read 100 or 200 books this year is a choice. We have gone over why you should read books, how to read them, how to read more books, and how much time it would take you to read them.
Referenced works and apps
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
My article on Grit (https://www.deltacollege.edu/student-life/student-media/delta-winds/2017-table-contents/learning-read)
Goodreads (app)
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow
Educated by Tara Westover
the concept of anxiety by Søren Kierkegaard
the courage to be by Paul Tillich
how to read a book by Mortimer J. Adler
Scribd (app)
Article on reading vs. listening (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/friendly-interest/201812/why-listening-book-is-not-the-same-reading-it)
Speechify (app)
Recommended books
Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
how to read a book by Mortimer J. Adler (especially the reading list in back of book)
Crito by Plato
The Symposium by Plato
A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World by A.J. Swoboda
The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle
Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa
Geronimo: His Own Story by Geronimo
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
St Anselm’s Monologium: On the Being of God by Anselm of Canterbury
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
Strenuous Life by Theodore Roosevelt
The Courage to Be by Paul Tillich
Post is adapted from a speech presented in the Mastering Advanced Study Techniques (MAST) at Fuller Theological Seminary discussion on Reading 200+ books a year.
