How To Read More
The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete beginning with the<br>movie screen, it couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t<br>compete with the computer screen. — Philip Roth
We’re halfway through 2026, and according to Goodreads I’ve read 80 books<br>so far, fiction and non-fiction and textbooks, including such doorstoppers as<br>Life and Fate (864p, astoundingly good). And I don’t feel like I’m<br>trying particularly hard. I still have plenty of time to work and code and<br>scroll.
This isn’t normal for me. At some point, as is the case for many of us, the<br>screen outcompeted the book, so that my average over the past ten years<br>would have been on the order of three to five books per year. And I’m not a<br>particularly fast or obsessive reader. Which is to say: if I can do it, so can<br>you. Here’s how:
Quit your job: working less than full time has freed up a<br>lot of time to read and learn and do various other things.
Read in public: if you put a number next to someone’s name, they will<br>maximize it. Reading privately is solipsistic (if I stop, what<br>changes?); reading in public, through Goodreads (which sucks, but it is<br>what it is), makes it feel less self-absorbed, and more like I’m achieving<br>something. You may call it performative, which is fine by me, as long as it<br>works.
Make a task: I used to start a lot of books, and not finish them, not<br>because I would explicitly choose to stop reading, but because I’d forget<br>about it. At the end of the day I’d see the book on my nightstand and go, oh,<br>right. More generally: the most common way I fail to finish a project is I<br>forget I intended to do it. This is solved by reifying the task: when<br>I start reading a book, I make a daily recurring task on Todoist for<br>it.
Start small: this feels embarrassing (what kind of brainrotted maniac<br>needs to microdose short books to build up to bigger books?) but it actually<br>works. Sort your to-read list by number of pages. Reading short books<br>generates evidence for the belief that you are the kind of person who can<br>decide to read a book, and follow through. Reading five, six, seven-hundred<br>page books feels vastly less daunting now.
Parallelize: reading the same book for two hours is almost<br>impossible. Reading four books, one pomodoro each, is completely doable, and<br>I do it most days.
Fraction: reading is a rare kind of activity where you can make progress<br>in any arbitrarily-small chunk of time. A few minutes on the train are enough<br>to turn a few pages. This isn’t the case for e.g. coding. You can take<br>advantage of that: find interstitial dead zones in your calendar to stuff with<br>reading.
Eat your vegetables: I read a lot of books I don’t particularly enjoy,<br>because I think they’re important, culturally or historically or in some<br>sense. I think this is good. If you only read books that hook you, you’re<br>going to read very little, and much of that will be unremarkable page-turner<br>slop. Internalizing that you can read a book even if you don’t love it<br>immunizes you against the lack of motivation. It’s like going to the gym even<br>if you don’t feel like it.
And if you don’t know what to read, have some of my favourites: The Diamond Age—From Third World to First—House of Suns—The Invention of Morel—On the Marble Cliffs—The Rediscovery of Man—Satan in Goray—The World of Yesterday.
Published<br>4 June, 2026
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