In 2024, I wrote an article about the decline of book-loving culture. People read less. In 2021, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of adults in the USA and found that 23% hadn’t read a book in the past year. That by itself is a rather alarming number. The bigger question, then, is: for those who read a book, what did they get out of it?

For many people, reading books is a nice way to escape reality, learn new things, gather wisdom, get entertainment, and spend their free time. But how many can read? Yes, if you are literate, you can read the words, but do you truly read the book if at the end you can’t even say what it was about?

Humans have been writing and reading for a couple of thousand years, but it has always been a rather niche endeavor. All that changed with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440. This enabled the mass production of written text. Increased literacy in society then did the rest.

I read about a hundred books a year. About half of that is purely for enjoyment. Things like spy thrillers, detective stories, sci-fi, and fantasy novels. The other half is for education. I read about Stoicism, leadership, psychology, sociology, self-help, running, and even the occasional memoirs of interesting people.

I read because I love it. But I also read because I like to write. I believe that to write well and have things to share, one should read a lot and live a lot. Gather wisdom, think about it, distill and combine ideas, come up with new ones, and then share them.

How do I read to get something out of it? What approach can you adopt to become a better reader?

1. Read all the time

When I tell people I read 100 books a year, they often wonder where I find the time. Well, I always carry a book with me. In fact, I carry about a hundred books with me all the time in the form of an Amazon Kindle reader. Whether you have a gadget or a printed book doesn’t matter. What matters is the ability to grab a book any time you’ve got a couple of minutes and read. You would be surprised how much reading you can do.

2. Read with intention

There is reading, and there is reading. You can mindlessly skim through a book and say you read it, or you can read with intention. I actually do both. That’s why I sort my reading into two categories: for entertainment and for education. When I read for entertainment, the goal is to relax and clear my mind. When I read for education, the goal is to retain the important information for future use.

3. Make notes

When you want to remember things, you need to mark the important ones and, ideally, write them down in some form. What I do is to highlight notes on my Kindle, and then when the book is finish I would download the notes to my computer, go through them, and rewrite them in my own words, often even research the topics a bit more, to get a full understanding and to have material for my own writing.

4. Re-read books

Many people just borrow books and return them when they are finished reading. It feels right. However, I’m strongly of the belief that books should be revisited. Once I finish a book, I put it on a bookshelf where it is easily accessible for future reference. I often re-read books, or portions of them, after a couple of years to remind myself what they were about and to put them into a new context I have since learned.

5. Read the classics

Have you heard about the Lindy Effect? In simple terms, it states that the future life expectancy of a nonperishable item is proportional to its current age. When it comes to books, it means that if a book or an idea survived 2,000 years, it is going to survive 2,000 more. If it is just the latest romance novel, it may survive till autumn, and then it will be forgotten. I’m a student of Stoicism, and the wisdom of Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius is ageless. If you want to understand human nature and the world around you, ignore the news and read old books instead.

6. Read bestsellers

Lindy is good, but don’t ignore the new authors completely. Lots of living authors produce great works. I have dozens of authors I follow and read anything they write, Daniel Pink, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Ryan Holiday, Jonathan Haidt, Adam Grant, Robert Greene, Cal Newport, Simon Sinek, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Patrick Lencioni, Marshall Goldsmith, Malcolm Gladwell, and many, many more.

7. Stop reading rubbish

This is one rule I often struggle with, but getting better as time goes by. No law says you need to finish a book that you read. If it is no good, if it doesn’t bring any value to you, then put it down and read something else. I admit that putting down a book, even if I don’t enjoy it, is really tough for me. What I often do is quickly skim the rest of the book for pieces of wisdom. Sometimes I find some, sometimes it is just a waste of time.

8. Don’t read difficult writers

If a book is really difficult to read, has a chaotic structure, and presents unclear ideas, stop reading it. If the writer didn’t put enough effort into clarity of thought and writing in easy to follow style, why should you put effort into trying to decipher what they meant?

9. Search for wisdom

I rarely read books just to gather facts. For that internet is usually the place to go. What I look for is pieces of wisdom that make me think. That’s why I like reading authors like Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Ryan Holiday, or Robert Greene. I like it when books make me rethink my views of the world and my life, and, as a consequence, make me a better person.

10. Read the bibliography

When I finish a book, I go through the bibliography and endnotes, and I search for interesting books to read next to expand my knowledge on a topic that caught my attention. I have a long list of books I want to read. In fact, I have about 100 books on that list and go through it every now and then, picking the next 10 books I will read.

11. Buy the book now

Not only do I have a long list of books I want to read. I have a huge pile of books I’ve already bought that I want to read. When I see a book I want to read, I buy it on the spot, or at least put it in my Amazon cart and buy all of it in regular intervals. Assuming you have spare money for books, this is the best way to have an interesting book to read at hand. When I finish one book, I immediately pick the next one. No time to lose. Your library shouldn’t just have books you’ve read; it should have lots of books you are about to read.

12. Read contrarian opinions

When I read a book that presents an interesting idea, I immediately research it and see if there is a book that presents a contrarian view. If you want to understand a topic fully, you should hear both sides of the argument and not be locked in a bubble of your favorite author.

13. Market good books

Every year, I pick my Top 10 books and share their titles and short annotations with people around me. I recommend they read as many as possible. These are the books I feel bring interesting opinions, expand knowledge, provide wisdom, or are motivational enough to make anyone’s life better. I also give dozens of books as Christmas presents, usually tailored specifically to the particular person.

14. Be on lookout

Always keep looking for the next interesting book to read. When I happen to be in a shopping mall with a bit of spare time, I often wander into a bookshop to see what new titles have been released and go through the bookshelves to see if something catches my eye. I also note down all book recommendations from people I follow on social media. I would check out the Top 10 lists of other people and often pick a book they recommend that I would never have picked on my own.

15. Apply what you read

Reading is a nice hobby, but to bring true value, you need to think about what you read and then apply it in your life. Only reading Stoic authors won’t make you a Stoic. The daily discipline will. Putting what you read into practice will help to retain the information and give you a different perspective, a practical one, on the topic. When you re-read the book later, it will give you even more insights, as you will be able to imagine its practical use more easily.

That’s it. Well, that’s the bare minimum of a good reader. I’m sure we could add many more tips and tricks that make us better readers, but this list is a good start. These are the rules that I try to follow, and they work great.

Now, grab a book and put these rules into action.

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