How to read every book on your list

I used to be a master at Tsundoku. It hasn't always been that way, after all, nobody is born a master. I started around the age of 17 and trained regularly and very hard. After a few years, probably at the age of 21, I had been a master only for some months and then suddenly everything changed.

Prologue

You may ask yourself what Tsundoku is. I got you covered. Tsundoku, according to Professor Andrew Gerstle of the University of London, is the art of buying books and never reading them. It seems to be related to book-madness, or bibliomania as Thomas Frognall Dibdin called being addicted to collecting and possessing books. You probably can imagine why I prefer Tsundoku. Mastering some ancient Japanese art definitely sounds better than falling prey to a pretty modern addiction.

How did I become a master?

I used to read a lot as a kid. Starting with Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Ambigua, slowly reading through fantasy to science fiction accompanied with non-fiction books on astronomy, biology and physics, you would always find me near a book. I was a real glutton for reading. Then adolescence happened. And I changed. It began with video games and parties and later I would spend most of my time with my girlfriend or my friends. Don't get me wrong, these years were some of the best of my life filled with experiences I would never want to have missed. But I also became a stranger to the adventurous stories, fantastic worlds and mind-blowing science of our universe. Incited by teachers, family and the quest to know it all, I continued to buy books. Especially literary classics and popular science books. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time left between my peers, video games, school and sleep, or at least as I perceived it. So I stayed an avid book collector, despite not really reading anymore.

Absolute low

During my first year of university, I felt an even stronger urge to read a lot but found even less time to do so. Parties, studying and life always stood between me and a good book. Also, my stubbornness to not begin a book until another one is finished and the habit of having to finish every book didn't help either.

In late 2018 I went to China for an exchange semester. In this faraway country, the cities were plastered with Hànzì, Chinese characters, and the menus were drenched with strange, sometimes far from accurate translations into Pinyin. As I adapted to my daily life in Beijing I tried to read Paul Ekman's book on emotions and Kai Strittmatter’s China an A-Z. And I succeeded. But two books in six months seemed embarrassing to me and my motivation dropped below zero. I already accepted to limit myself from now on to reading comics at the beach. Even worse, I didn't even look forward to reading anything anymore. That's how discouraged I was.

Saved at last

It was at that point in my career as a reader that I confessed it to my girlfriend. I told her how I was buying books I would never read and that as I was collecting them, they were collecting dust on my shelf. Awaiting her laughter I was surprised when she told me that she was struggling with the same problem. It was then that she came up with the idea that was so embarrassingly simple in hindsight that it amazes me. We founded our own little book club. It consisted of us two as only members and the commitment to read some books together. We started with Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. We each bought a copy and began reading. It became some sort of competition between us and we wanted to keep up with each other to exchange theories and critique. Long story short we finished the 600 pages in no time. Boosted from the success we tried another book. This time Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, followed by One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (btw mentioning these here because they're amazing books I cannot recommend enough). Soon I began reading again on my own, finding the time between other tasks. More importantly, I changed my approach to reading: I stopped forcing myself and just tried a book. Now, if some book just isn't for me, I give it away or sell it. There are so many great books, that nobody should waste time on books that they don't love.

Epilogue

So what conclusion is there to draw? Well, there are some things I've learned on my reading journey from master collector to master reader:

1. Read with a partner, friend, relative. Gamify the reading experience.
2. Start with easy books that you will most likely love. Good experiences pay off. Find books that make it hard for you to put them away.
3. Don't force yourself to finish every book. There are so many great books on all kinds of topics and written in vastly different styles. Don’t like this one? Move on!
4. Try to read different types of books, but don't keep yourself from binging a specific genre if that's what excites you. There is a lot to learn from novels and a lot of beauty in some non-fiction books.

If you could read to the end of this article, there's no doubt that you have all it takes to become a master reader and read every book on your list. So start now, there's only so much you can read in a lifetime and unlimited stories are out there waiting to be discovered.