You could also resolve to get through 10 or 25 or 100 pages per day, or set a goal of reading one book per week or a certain number per year. I thrive when I have specific benchmarks to work toward, so I aim to read 50 pages a day. Embark on a quest to read every book featured on this year’s New York Times hardcover nonfiction best sellers list, for example, or to read something published each year from the time you were born. “We sometimes tell ourselves stories about our reading lives that aren’t necessarily true. Short works like these aren’t as daunting as longer tomes and can motivate you to find a reading routine that will work best for you, Moreno says. “You don’t have to be like, ‘I’m going to read War and Peace,’” says Chasity Moreno, who works in the New York Public Library’s Reader Services department.

• “They make it feel more like a communal thing that you’re doing.”
• Instead, block off 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night for reading.
• To answer that ever-pressing question, we spoke to authors, bookstagrammers and TODAY’s Book Lover in Chief, Jenna Bush Hager herself, for tips.
• As mentioned above, when people ask me how I read so many books, they often assume I’m speed reading.

Put your phone away

A few minutes of downtime between activities or appointments may seem trivial, but they soon add up to hours, and to entire books read; there’s great possibilities in spare moments! You’ll be amazed at how many books you can knock off in a month by reading an hour a day. Instead of doing your typical time-wasting smartphone scan at those times, you’ll read. If you’re looking to increase your physical and mental library and read more books this year, maybe they’ll work for you too. When I posted a collage of my favorite of those 120 reads on Instagram, a lot of guys asked me what my secret was for digesting that many tomes in 12 months. As with most habits that can greatly impact your life, this will never feel urgent, but it is important.

Uncover a suitable space for reading to make it feel more like joy than a job. Consider these tips, based on my back-and-forth experience and a trickle of data, if you long to read more this year. I’ve fallen in love with reading again (and a few books, too), and you can too. I’d either buy books that sat untouched on my nightstand for ages or get discouraged by a book I didn’t connect with, letting months go by without picking up another. Her superpower is matching people MS Interactive up with the perfect book.

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Perhaps it feels counterintuitive, but by giving yourself permission to call it quits, you’ll make space for books you’d enjoy much more—and there’s no better way to feed your reading motivation than that. Bogel often asks people what’s deterring them from reading, and the answer is that they’re stuck in the middle of a book they don’t want to finish. Ask the prolific readers you encounter for recommendations or to tell you about the last great book they read. “Sometimes you don’t have the time to sit and read,” she adds.

Have a running list of books to read next

Instead, block off 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night for reading. You don’t need to set aside an hour straight for reading. That’s more than two dozen non-work related books in 12 months.

Keep up the momentum by saving books you’re interested in, whether it’s a list on your phone or saved on a digital wishlist. Play around with different days and times of the day to see when it feels accessible and pleasurable for you to read. But now that I read more, it has become one of my favorite parts of the day. There was a time when the feeling of a paperback felt too overwhelming, and it was audiobooks that got me into reading, to and from work. As you read more, you can also follow along with Read With Jenna’s Streaking With Jenna, a 2023 initiative inviting readers to keep a reading streak going throughout the year.

To me, it feels like going to going figuring out what kind of food you want to eat for dinner. For author Emma Straub, the question of what to read next is one of reading’s great joys. Booktoker Zang calls the beginning of the book the "beginning borings." She challenges herself to make it through until she feels invested — or she doesn’t. But it’s worth finding the niches that get you excited, at least to get into the habit. "A lot of people who don’t read or want to read see reading as something that needs to be intellectually stimulating — and it doesn’t," Zang says. Think about the parts of your routine that are now automatic.

Reader Videos

I’ll read for 5 minutes, but then get the itch to check my email or scroll through Instagram. I’ve found that when I read on my phone, I tend to get really distracted. Now I’m going to completely contradict that advice by recommending you avoid reading on your smartphone as much as possible. So I just recommended using the Kindle app on your smartphone to get more reading done. Avoid reading on your smartphone. The easiest way to be ready to read when you find yourself with a little slice of time is to download the Kindle app on your phone.