Reading This Way Might Help You Get More Enjoyment and Meaning from Books

Due to both changes in the writing industry and shifts in my personal life, I’ve been giving intense thought to what my goals and purpose should be as a writer. Why do I want to persist? What do I want to come of my efforts?

Much of my writing, admittedly, is purely selfish. It’s cathartic to spew everything onto the page, and I need a way to authentically share who I am. Writing is where I am most comfortable handing myself to other people and connecting with them.

But as a professional, one major purpose I have in writing is to help other people love to read. If my words teach something, improve their lives, or increase their joy, they’ll naturally want to keep coming back to the page. I want people to have the comfort of that.

But does the way people read influence how much they love to do it? Could perceptions about how we must approach books change how people feel about them?

You don’t have to go from start to finish when reading

Based on a post by Vinh Giang, I’m now inclined to think people would love to read more if they were more flexible in how they made their way through content.

As Giang points out, most of us are taught to read sequentially. We start at the beginning and try to make our way, one page at a time, to the end.

But this isn’t always necessary or even desirable, particularly in non-fiction where each chapter might have a distinct takeaway.

Instead of reading sequentially, we can hop around, finding the material that is most relevant. If we focus on what is relevant, it’s more likely we will develop positive associations around the reading process, because we’ll perceive the return from the activity to be higher.

Readers have only one obligation

This insight has changed my perception of the obligation readers have to authors. Right up until I saw Giang’s post, I thought it was a reader’s duty and a fair exchange for all the effort put into a book that the reader would plod through the whole thing. But I realized that that perception is based on my own desire for validation, as well as my understanding of how intense the process of writing a book can be. And

just as a hungry individual is not obligated to consume every option at a buffet, readers are not obligated to read every word simply because authors provide them. Readers are obligated only to find what satisfies them, and it doesn’t always take scarfing the entire buffet to do that.

New seasons, new reading relevance

One of the elements I mentioned in my comment on Giang’s post is that people will go through different seasons of their lives. I had a season where I was entirely focused on my children, for example, whereas now they are old enough to not depend on me as much. So, what is not relevant to you now might become relevant later on, and reading a book well might mean playing the long game.

This is not normally how most of us want to consume books. Most of us want to get through books as quickly as humanly possible, not only so we can move on to other books and activities, but also so we can use our read-books count as a point of pride. There’s a FOMO aspect within those goals.

But what if we miss out more by taking in books at the wrong time? What if we get more out of content by waiting for it?

Check the time, let it be

I have yet to try Giang’s recommendation. But it’s given me plenty of food for thought, and it occurs to me that perhaps an old rule of thumb about decluttering might apply well — what goes unused for a specific period probably can be set aside. if you read parts of a book, know from the chapter outline what remains, but don’t come back to the text within a given amount of time, such as six months, then it’s probably safe to say that whatever you haven’t read in the book doesn’t hold enough relevancy to your current life to worry about getting back to reading. It might be worth just keeping some kind of database, even through something like Trello cards, so you know where to find information when you need it on specific topics within the books you have.

How does Giang’s approach to reading influence your view on DNF lists? Do you think you’d explore and enjoy more books if you adopted the flexibility he suggests? Leave me a note on LinkedIn.