How to Read More Books

And my very first Substack post

This is my first Substack ever! This, of course, means that I’ve decided to start a Substack. (click to skip this intro)

My goals with Substack are threefold:

1) Creating a writing portfolio - I’m currently looking for a job, and I’ve realized that most of my past professional writing is either confidential or publicly available but academic. I’m trying to create a portfolio of writing samples I can share with future employers.

2) Sharing knowledge and advancing opinions - Through reading books, listening to podcasts, reading Substacks, reading long form news, etc., I consume a TON of information every day. I’ve also worked in several different but overlapping sectors - so I do feel that I have some thoughts worth sharing.

Some of my writing will be directly relevant to my career - I might write about the similarities I’ve noticed between the Effective Altruist approach to global development with Soviet high modernism. Other writing will simply be more fun but subtly persuasive - I’m a huge history nerd and have spent the last few years living in India. Accordingly, there will be a number of posts talking about the history of certain regions or architectural styles in India. These will be mostly ‘fun,’ but the implicit argument in most of them will be: “look at how amazing this history is, but the history is underappreciated!”

3) Practicing my writing and clarifying my thoughts - I have historically thought of myself as a good writer and strong communicator. While my writing is best when I can imagine a specific audience (e.g., writing an email), I have always struggled with more abstract audiences in blogs, LinkedIn posts, and academic writing.

Just as importantly, writing will help me identify where my arguments are weakest and where there are gaps in my knowledge.

With that introduction, let’s jump into the first post!

How to read more:

Recently, I’ve come across several FT articles, Substack posts, and podcast interviews about how to read books (and, naturally, why you should read more books). Generally, they argue that physical paper books are great, Kindle is okay, and audiobooks are terrible. They prefer reading for longer period of times (in 30 min+ chunks) rather than reading for a few minutes at a time.

I have slightly different reading advice. How to read and maintain knowledge effectively is not something I’ve ever researched, so this advice is mostly my personal recommendations based on personal experience.

My advice is quite simple - do what works best for you.

---

Their advice fails to distinguish between different kinds of readers and different reading goals

‘How to read’ advice fails to recognize that people quite simply have different ways of processing information. Some people have ADHD. Even without ADHD, most people are battling phone addictions that have changed the way they consume information.

Additionally, advice for readers often fails to distinguish between readers at different stages in their reading journey. Crudely, let’s imagine two types of readers:

1. People who will make their way through a single book in 6 months who find the process difficult and not rewarding.

2. People who read a fair amount already but are looking to diversify what they read, improve retention, experience reading in a more thoughtful way, or read even more.

For the first group, my advice is:

1) Life is too short to read bad books. If you’re not enjoying a book, put it down. If you’re trying to read more books in general, it doesn’t matter whether the book is considered a classic. What matters is your enjoyment.

My hunch is that a lot of people who try to start reading again will try to dive back into some of the books they’ve read in high school or college. They’ll try to read some two-hundred-year-old translation of The Odyssey, only to be quickly overwhelmed by ancient Greek geography.

Others try to pick up reading out of a sense of professional guilt. They’ll decide they’ll only read the most influential nonfiction books in their field only to discover that reading an 862-page book on the history of trade policy in America does not immediately bring them joy (no matter how well written that book is).

Or if they’ll try to read some poorly written self-help book that they’ve seen recommended on LinkedIn.

Pick up a book that excites you. Don’t force yourself to read what you think you should be reading. If you’re trying to get back into reading, go for a thriller. Go for a ‘beach read.’ Read books that have been turned into movies.

2) Read different books at the same time. In any given week, I’m reading 1-2 physical books, 1-2 Kindle books, and 3+ audiobooks.

Each day you decide what you’re in the mood to read.

If you’re hooked on an incredible book, you might choose to read that book every time until you finish it.

For most books though, you won’t always be in the mood to read them. Often, incredible books explore heavy themes like violence, racism, colonialism, or the death of a loved one. Incredible books can drag in the middle or simply be extremely long. Nonfiction books on difficult topics or in set in countries with unfamiliar languages might require attention not available at all times of the day.

The beauty of reading multiple books is that I’m not always in the mood to read about the enablers of the Holocaust. If I’m reading that book alongside a fun science fiction thriller, a retelling of the Mahabharata, historical fiction about the Opium Wars, a history of the global financial crisis, and a biography of Malcolm X, then chances are that I’m always in the mood to read something!

This makes it easier to ‘quit’ books you’re not enjoying. Let’s say you’re reading a book on the history of vaccine production in India because you work for a vaccination-related Indian nonprofit.

If you’re reading only the dry nonfiction book, then you have to actively decide to stop reading it. And deciding to stop this book and switching to a memoir by your favorite actor might feel professionally irresponsible. More likely, you’ll end up passively ‘deciding’ to read a few pages of that book every other week for the next six months.

In contrast, if you’re reading multiple books at the same time, you don’t have to actively decide to quit reading any particular book. Two months will pass before you realize you haven’t opened that history of vaccine production. By then, you might have actually found a different enjoyable and professional book. Putting the book back on the shelf ‘for later’ is much easier when you’re balancing multiple books.

Ultimately, this prevents you from getting stuck on a single bad book for months at a time.

3) Read different kinds of books (at the same time). While reading five philosophical books about the Holocaust at the same time might be easier than reading one philosophical book about the Holocaust, I would think this undoes the benefit of balancing multiple books.

I try to maintain a balance of:
Fiction and nonfiction books. Largely self-explanatory.

Easy and challenging books. I want books I can enjoy as escapism or when I can’t give the book my full attention. I also want books that teach me new things or provide me new perspectives.

Demographics of the author. As a white dude, I often realize my want-to-read books are frequently written by other white men. While part of this is due to biases in publishing and biases in what gets considered ‘literature,’ in general people tend to read books written by people similar to then. Making sure your library was written by a mix of men and women and a mix of races and nationalities is an easy (if quite imperfect and crude) shortcut to making sure you read different kinds of books.

4) Kindle vs paperback vs audiobooks? Whichever! Experiment to find out what’s best for you. It can take a while to figure out what works best for you. Some mediums may work for some kinds of books but not others.

For example, personally I can read most works of fiction in a physical book, on a Kindle, or through an audiobook. In contrast, I have found that I’ll never be able to read long nonfiction on Kindle.

My favorite book of all time is ‘The Power Broker,’ but I’ve only ever ‘read’ it as an audiobook. As it is my favorite and as there are occasionally passages I want to reference, I also have a physical copy. In other words - mix and match!

Listening to audiobooks on a walk is hands-down my favorite way to read a book. I experience the story more and remember details far longer this way than in any other format. However, I can’t listen to audiobooks on a long flight. For long flights, I do best with Kindles or physical books.

Again, experiment - sometimes even for the same book! Sometimes I’ll buy a physical copy of a book. Something as ‘silly’ as the book being heavy or uncomfortable to hold might mean that I make extremely slow progress - if I see the same book on discount on Audible or Kindle, I’ll buy the book to see if a digital format is any better for me. Often, it is. Other times, I’ll progress just as slowly through an audiobook version as I did the print, so I’ll end up returning the audiobook.

Ultimately, do what works best for you

I’ve seen and heard references to academic studies that have found that people are more likely to retain information if they read it in a physical book than if they read it on a screen, that listening to audiobooks uses less of your brain than if you read the words on a page.

I have heard of some research suggesting that you should read one book at a time, or multiple, or that you shouldn’t read if you can’t devote a long period of time to it.

Four thoughts about ‘research’ that has proven a particular method is best:
1) I imagine the research is more complicated. It’s possible that the difference between e-ink and a regular screen is important, so research that treats both as ‘screens’ might be misleading. Perhaps the studies are flawed - small sample sizes leading to random errors or making incorrect comparisons.

2) Academic research is all about averages. Something may be true for most people but not true for you individually. A well-designed study might find, “using a sample of 100,000 readers who were randomly assigned….. audiobook readers retained the least amount of information on average.” This may be true for most people. For me, I have found through years and thousands of hours of reading that I retain information best from going on walks while listening to audiobooks. What’s true for the average person does not change what’s true for me.

3) That being said, if it’s true for most people, it’ll probably be true for you. Don’t dismiss the research entirely, but don’t be afraid to figure out what’s best for you personally. The research should be viewed as something that is probably true for you unless you’ve experienced otherwise personally.

4) Remember your goals and don’t let the enemy be the perfect of the good. If you’re reading a book a year but want to start reading a book a month, do whatever is the most natural! If reading Lord of the Rings on your phone while you’re waiting for the bus is easy, then don’t feel guilty about not reading a hardcover copy of Marcus Aurelius in the original Latin.

For the second group (who read a lot, but want to ‘improve’ their reading), my advice is:

In a future post!