Do You Want to Read More in 2023?

reduce the friction so that reading is an easy option

Reading has always been a part of my life. When I was younger, I could spend an entire afternoon in my favorite book. I can’t do that on a regular basis with two small children, and for many years it has been much easier to spend my free time consuming videos and newsfeeds. I found myself finishing fewer books, especially the sort of thought-provoking books that continue to bless me past the final page.

With a little conscious effort, I read over sixty books this year, not counting picture books and the Bible. This included longer, more complicated works like Dante’s Divine Comedy, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, the first three books of The Once and Future King (abandoned when the cynicism got to me), and The Silmarillion, as well as my fair share of murder mysteries, historical fiction, and light non-fiction.

My main strategy to read more has been to have an infant who wakes me up multiple times per night to nurse, well past her first birthday, so that I can squeeze in an extra hour with my e-reader, but barring that, here are some things that have helped me read more this year.

I find books I like.

I’m all for aspirational goals, and I personally need to read more philosophy and theology. But if you’re struggling to open the book or the Kindle app at all, stick with the genres, authors, and styles that immerse you.

I keep a book in my cozy spot.

A year ago, when I finally got the baby to bed, I’d be so nervous that she’d wake right back up that I’d sit, in limbo, watching those stultifying ten-second videos on Instagram. Ten seconds more, ten seconds more, and two hours could go by, with nothing to show for it.

Now, after the girls are down and the dishes are washed, I brew a cup of dandelion root tea and make my way over to the sofa, where a basket of possible books waits. Is it a Les Miserables night? Would I rather read a parenting book or leaf through my Commonplace Quarterly? Although I do use ebooks and audiobooks (see below), nothing relaxes me more than turning the pages of a real, paper book.

I use my library card.

I visit the library once a week with my daughters, where we load up on picture books. However, unless you have a very large library, you likely won’t find all of the books you want just by browsing the shelves.

Thankfully, most library systems offer many tools to help. Interlibrary Loan has been around for decades, and I use the library website to place holds on physical books and DVDs.

There are also more recent apps like Hoopla and Libby which loan e-books and audiobooks which you can download directly to your phone or e-reader. Libby lets you take out over ten titles at once, but you might have to wait if all the digital copies are currently signed out. Hoopla doesn’t make you wait, but you can only take out three titles per month.

I listen to audiobooks.

I consume a lot of books, but a significant portion are audiobooks. Technically, this is not reading, which requires decoding symbols into words, but it still helps me get through a lot of great stories and poems I otherwise would not. Washing dishes, taking a shower, prepping dinner, driving to the store - all of these are more enjoyable with a good book. Probably about a fifth of the books listed below were audiobooks. Also, most of the time, my Bible reading is actually just Bible listening.

I take my time on the “big” books.

Talking of the Bible, it’s actually a pretty easy book to read if you take your time. The chapters are short.

Many large books have relatively short chapters. There are just a lot of them. Laura Vanderkam alerted me to this when she talked about reading War and Peace in a year, one chapter per day. I read The Divine Comedy in three months, reading each canto in five to ten minutes each day.

Sometimes I read more quickly. Middlemarch definitely went faster, despite have hundreds of pages, because I needed to know what happened next. Right now, I’m in the slow marathon of the unabridged Les Miserables, which includes long digressions, like the fifty-page description of the Battle of Waterloo that was dropped into a particularly dramatic moment. When I can’t do more, reading one chapter a day (or two, with the help of my audiobook), helps me keep going. I know it will be worth it.

I use e-books when physical books would be awkward.

If I’m standing in line or sitting in a waiting room, I have a book waiting on my phone. At night, in the five minutes before I fall asleep, or the fifteen minutes when my toddler wakes me up, I’m reading a book - usually something light, since I can’t understand complicated sentences after 10 pm.

Other than that, I try to stick to audiobooks and physical books because I’m too easily distracted by my phone. It’s only safe when it’s on airplane mode.

I set goals.

I’ll talk more about my 2023 reading goals soon, but I’ve found that some very simple goals, held loosely, can keep me accountable. I make a broad list of titles for the year to come and treat it as a guide, not a rulebook.

I briefly review what I’ve read.

I jot down the books I started, finished, and dropped, writing a few sentences in reaction. I also keep a commonplace book for the quotes along the way. This doesn’t help me read more per se, but it helps me remember what I read.

And finally, I’ve taken the nuclear option.

If you really want to avoid modern distractions, you can disable most of the apps on your phone, including email and the browser. You can delete social media. You can hide the TV remote and make your computer password tediously long to type out. I might have done all of these things. I am easily addicted to electronics, so I’m happiest when I limit my access to them.

My 2022 Book List

This doesn’t include all the books I read this year, but most of the main ones are on here.

1. Old Testament (once)

2. New Testament (three times)

3. Andy Catlett by Wendell Berry

4. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, translated by Robert and Jean Hollander

5. Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

7. A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle

8. Miracle on 10th St. by Madeleine L’Engle

9. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

10. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

11. Stuart Little by E.B. White

12. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien

13. Song of the Swallows by Leo Politi

14. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club by Dorothy Sayers

15. Daisy Comes Home by Jan Brett

16. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

17. Middlemarch by George Eliot

18. Beauty and the Beast, adapted by Max Eisenberg

19. The Rested Child by W. Chris Winter

20. A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle

21. John Ronald’s Dragons by Caroline McAlister

22. Emily by Michael Bedard

23. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

24. The Last Bookshop in London by Madeline Martin

25. Outdoor Kids in an Inside World by Steve Rinella

26. The Story of My Life by Helen Keller

27. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, adapted by Michael Morpugo

28. Arthur, High King of Britain by Michael Morpugo

29. The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

30. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien

31. The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe

32. Tumtum & Nutmeg by Emily Bearn

33. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

34. Poirot’s Early Cases by Agatha Christie

35. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

36. Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge

37. A Place to Belong by Amber O’Neal Johnston

38. The Collected Poems of Richard Wilbur

39. Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather

40. The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge

41. The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White

42. The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher

43. The Queen of Air and Darkness by T.H. White

44. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

45. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

46. The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warren

47. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

48. On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson

49. Johnny Appleseed: A Tall Tale by Steven Kellogg

50. Miss Austen by Gail Hornby

51. The Moment of Tenderness by Madeleine L’Engle

52. Juliet’s School of Possibilities by Laura Vanderkam

53. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

54. Beauty by Robin McKinley

55. What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

56. Harry Potter 1-7 by J.K. Rowling

57. What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast by Laura Vanderkam

58. 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam

59. The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

60. Different by Sally Clarkson

61. Awaking Wonder by Sally Clarkson

62. The Gift of the Magpie by Donna Andrews

63. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

64. The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne

65. When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne

66. The Sleep Solution by W. Chris Winters

67. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

68. The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne