[Book Club] How did I read 55 books in 2023?

Dec 29, 2023

“How can you read so many books? One book per week!”

I get this question a lot. And I would like to share my experience here today. In summary, there is no magic. Just trust the system and stick with it.

There are, in total, 5 significant concepts support my reading habits. Let’s start.

A big portion of the reading is on Apple Books.

#1. Starts with whatever interests you.

You might have heard a lot from someone pedantic telling you that you should read all the classics. Jane Austin, Laozi, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Sima Qian, Rabindranath Tagore, etc. If you want to go for literature, then maybe yes. However, if you want to start building a habit of reading, consider something more digestible. My journey started with comic books, fantasy, and sci-fi, then classics, major book prize winners, and now a blended mixture of business (management, marketing, UX design, etc.), essays, popular science on medicine, and technology textbooks.

My point is what you read doesn’t matter. If you can continue reading, you will find your paths automatically.

#2. Using audiobooks

Have you ever found yourself reading the same line over and over again but got nothing into your brain? Try switching the media. My highest level of concentration in reading comes when I have the book open and its audiobook reading into my ears. I can continue this with 2-3 times of playback speed for hours. Usually, a book in Audible is roughly 8-12 hours. It means it can be finished within an afternoon, with a cup of bubble tea, perhaps.

Some books don’t have commercial audio versions for sale. I would then use Speechify to convert them into audiobooks. It is not a perfect solution as it struggles to read images or charts. However, it works pretty well if you want to read a textbook, which generally doesn’t have an audiobook.

#3. Set a small goal.

Even though I love reading and have built the habit of reading, there are days when things get crazy. I set a goal in my Apple Book app.

5 mins per day.

That’s all.

If I don’t feel I want to continue, I can quit and do something else. But most of the time, I will go and read for at least half an hour. I would typically choose stories at those moments. Come on, who doesn’t want to know whether the girl escapes from the enemy and finds out the killer, whether that stupid guy figures out his problem and fixes the relationship? I want.

#4. It is ok to have multiple books open at the same time.

I figured out my routine.

Textbooks or business books in the morning. Popular science during the commute. Stories or literature before sleep.

At peak time, I had 6 books started, and I switched among them from time to time.

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental physics equations.

In an interview, Stephen Hawking expressed himself like the above when answering about the beauty of science. I am not bright enough to discover a new science theory by only reading. However, occasionally, you can notice a similar way of viewing the world on different topics, one from management books and another from literature.

At that moment, you would slap your thigh and say, “Aha! It makes total sense!”

#5. It is ok not to finish a book.

Let’s be honest: not all books are worth finishing. Also, not all books are written for the same group of people. If one book doesn’t click, close it and open another one. I have 20+ books outside those 60 that were abandoned this year. Most are too basic or have an appealing name and abstract but not the main content. Some are too tough to follow through. Some textbooks only have specific chapters that are relevant to me.

I will talk in-depth about my reading system in another week. Please let me know if you are interested in this kind of topic. I am also happy to know what your favorite book is in 2023.

Here are my most-read [Book Club] book summaries.