Hand taking book from shelf with dark background

When I was taking my PSLE, my days looked like this: sprawled on the sofa devouring one novel after another. (P.S. No regrets.)

I’ve been a voracious reader since young. Yet I’ve also experienced lapses when I was reading much less than I desired. I know how life, schoolwork, and a whirlwind of other activities can get in the way of our reading goals.

So how was I able to read 40 books (most of them in print) in my last—and busiest—year of secondary school? How am I currently on my 56th book this year, averaging more than one book every week?

There’s no secret. And there’s no sacrifice—you can do it all within your packed-to-the-brim schedule and hectic-as-hell life. Let’s get started.

5 Concrete Ways to Read More

#1 Choose whatever interests you

We’re often caged in the mindset that we have to read certain books, like classics, “best-selling” or “highly recommended” books, and eschew others. This is flawed thinking. Picking the books we truly want to read will create an amazing reading experience, and consequently keep our reading habit alive.

Although I always love great works of fiction, I currently read almost exclusively nonfiction, simply because I want to. But I also mix in a novel every now and then. That’s the beauty of the book-niverse—complete freedom of choice, with limitless possibilities.

Essentially: go for whatever you feel like reading right now. I remember there was a phase when I was absolutely into biographies and memoirs, a period when I had a fondness for war novels. When I was five or six years old I must have read every book about animals on the children’s nonfiction shelves. Things change, we change, and any book that you feel like reading right now is the best book for you.

#2 Use the Libby app

When I first discovered OverDrive, I was blown away. Being able to borrow eBooks and audiobooks with a single click? That level of convenience and accessibility was simply unimaginable. It was heaven for a bibliophile like me.

Libby is essentially an app by OverDrive, with a new interface but the same functions. It’s linked to Singapore’s National Library Board. Simply sign in with your NLB account, and you have a mobile library right in your pocket.

#3 Listen to audiobooks

I used to have an aversion to audiobooks. I believed that I was more of a “visual” learner and thought that listening would degrade the “quality” of my reading as I wouldn’t be taking in as much information. Five years later, however, I’m a complete audiobook convert. I’ve discovered that the more you listen to audiobooks, the more you train yourself to focus on the words being read.

Now, I consume most of my books on audio (on the Libby app) at 2x speed. Increasingly, I find that I seldom have the time to sit down and read a book—which I believe is the case for many of us in our fast-paced lives. Listening to an audiobook means that I can fill any time when I’m not doing cognitive work with “reading”.

When I’m walking, running, exercising, tidying up, commuting—these are all opportunities to get some “reading” done. It’s honestly amazing how many more books you can read in this way.

#4 Establish a routine

My success in reading 40 books in secondary four must be attributed, at least in part, to how far I stay from school. Once I got onto the MRT, that was my cue to take out my book. My hour-long commute became my protected reading time.

Recently, as I’ve veered towards audiobooks and neglected my eBooks and paperbacks, I’ve committed to a new habit: setting aside a fixed time to read every night.

In our bustling lives, simply thinking “I want to read more” won’t do. There must be a specific time set aside during the day for reading and reading only. Usually, the start and end of the day work best, as these are the times that are least likely to be disrupted by other activities, studies, or work.

For instance, I listen to my audiobook during my morning exercise, and read a printed book at night before bed. I also whip out my audiobook whenever I’m doing something that doesn’t require intense focus, and this is also a habit. But no matter what, I know that every single day, I will have listened to my audiobook for at least half an hour in the morning.

#5 Keep the bar low

So we know that “protected” or “scheduled” time is important. The key, however, is really not how much time or how many pages you read (or how many minutes of the audiobook you listen to), but consistency. You have to do it daily.

It all starts from a tiny habit. This is especially helpful if you haven’t yet cultivated a regular reading habit, or have little motivation to immerse yourself in books. For instance, alluding to my nightly reading habit, my goal is simple: Read one page of my book every night before I go to bed. In fact, I could make it even simpler to begin with: Open my book to the bookmarked page at 9:30pm every night. Once I’ve done that—I need not have read a single word on the page—I have succeeded.

Of course, I exceed my “one page” goal every night. But I’m not raising the bar. I’m keeping the expectation at just one page.

(P.S. Yes, you should definitely read Atomic Habits by James Clear and, if you want more, Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.)

Why you should read more books

I think this deserves a whole other post by itself, but for anyone who’s unconvinced as to why reading more books is a worthy goal, I’ll summarise it as such: Fiction expands your imagination and empowers you to rediscover yourself through a different world; nonfiction exposes you to intriguing and cogently expressed insights that can be nothing short of life-changing. Of course, this is a deliberate over-generalisation, and each can be just as easily said about the other.

Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.

Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

Focus on quality over quantity

Stating how many books I’ve read a year seems like a terribly conceited thing to do. I don’t usually keep track of the number, and I fact, I had no idea until I went to count, just for this post.

I think there’s absolutely no need to set a goal for how many books to read each year, or even each month. I didn’t start out the year with an earth-shattering New Year’s resolution “I want to read 70 books in 2020”.

In fact, the best thing to do is to develop a reading habit (one page a day!), rather than focusing on the number of books read. Moreover, different books have different lengths (I took so long to finish The Emperor of All Maladies), so it’s utterly unfair to make any form of measurement based on the number of books read.

In the end, we’ll all become stories.

Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder and Other Stories

Inspiration for your next read

Browse my reading lists below (many more to come soon!):

Or, read my latest book reviews.