my reading routine

how i find time to read throughout the week

morning sun warming my story bookcase, shot on my EOS Rebel T7

“what are you reading these days?”

What used to be the start of a riveting conversation has recently begun to trigger an allergic reaction of sorts, as if my immune system is mistaking this friendly gesture as a challenge.

At this point, most people know I like to read. And because I know that they know that I like to read, I feel pressured to respond with a well-articulated answer hitting all the key points—a brief synopsis without spoilers, why I chose it, and how I’m enjoying it so far.

Unfortunately, the words that eventually gurgle out of my mouth destroy the entire ethic of the conversation, to the point where the only way to save it with grace is to lob the question back to my poor friend and pray that they do a better job with it than I—what about you, have you read anything interesting lately?

Here’s my issue: I never have a great answer for what I’m reading at the moment because I’ve become quite non-commitmental when it comes to books.

My reading approach for these last few months can be best described as perusing mostly, but absolutely engrossed for short bursts.

90% of the time, I play the role of surveyor, reading a few pages out of a novel, skimming through the key chapters of another self-help book, reminding myself of a passage from my favorite book for creative inspiration—just floating between texts with a vague sense of intentionality.

The remaining 10% of the time, the bookworm spirit takes over me, I get absolutely locked into whatever I’m reading, and end up starting and finishing books within a day or two.

Whether I’m in perusing or engrossed mode is moreso a reflection of my mental energy, rather than a response to the quality of the author’s work. That’s why I have trouble coming up with an answer to what are you reading these days?—I feel unjustified and underqualified to distill the entire landscape of great books directly affecting my psyche into a punchy, socially-acceptable answer.

Interestingly enough, this shares many similarities with something a co-worker told me last week. She mentioned that the most difficult question she gets asked is where are you from? A simple question for most, but nearly impossible for her to answer because she moved almost every year growing up. Having to choose a singular place to project as her “hometown” feels historically inaccurate and emotionally insensitive. For simplicity (and to avoid sharing her entire life story everytime she meets someone new), she usually answers Illinois, as that’s where she was born.

Anyways, since this is the corner of the internet in which I ramble, here is my ultra-accurate answer to what I’m reading these days:

• I most recently finished two books: The Sense of an Ending and Niels Lyhne. They were both about 200 pages long, but The Sense of an Ending took me two days and Niels Lyhne took me two months. While The Sense of an Ending was an enjoyable meditation on aging and lived experience, Niels Lyhne might be one of my favorite books ever. It’s an aesthetic, haunting yet beautiful story of a failed artist, which captures a range of human emotion that I’ve yet to experience in any other novel.

  • Excerpt from Niels Lyhne: “He was weary of himself, of cold ideas and brain dreams. Life a poem? Not when you went about forever poetizing about your own life instead of living it. How innocuous it all was, and empty, empty, empty! This chasing after yourself, craftily observing your own tracks--in a circle, of course. This sham diving into the stream of life while all the time you sat angling after yourself, fishing yourself up in one curious disguise or another! If he could only be overwhelmed by something--life, love, passion--so that he could no longer shape it into poems, but had to let it shape him!”

• I’m currently reading three books: The Overstory, In the Presence of Absence, and Children of Dune. While I really like the plot and writing behind Overstory, for some reason I have trouble keeping up with the cadence of the text, so I might leave it half read. In the Presence of Absence is Mahmoud Darwish’s lyrical elegy. Darwish is one of my favorite poets, and I read about a chapter a week as it’s on heavy stuff that takes time to digest—it would feel wrong to read this without breaks. And I started Children of Dune (third book in the series) two days ago and I’m about halfway done. The crazy part about the Dune series is that it was written in the 1960s, before we had even stepped foot on the moon!

• I’m skimming So Good They Can’t Ignore You and The Passion Economy because I’m in the process of charting out my future career plans. The two offer contradicting thesis, the former advocates following your skills while the latter, as implied by the title, champions passion. I’m understanding the arguments for both, but have been getting more convinced by the skill-based approach. This article has also been a great supplement to the two books.

“when do you find time to read?”

I also get this question a lot, and since it’s a bit more tactical, I feel much more at ease answering it.

The written work I consume falls under three broad categories: news, articles, and books. Usually, I read the news in the morning, articles during the day, and books before bed.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown.

reading the news

Ironically, the most common way I stay up to date with daily headlines is by reading NPR Up First’s podcast title and descriptions. I rarely listen to the episodes.

up first from npr

I much prefer reading (or listening to) longer-form thought pieces on news stories that are most relevant to our times and my interests. That’s why I subscribe to the weekly editions of The Economist and The New Yorker. To grossly oversimplify, I get my art & culture news from The New Yorker, and business & political news from The Economist.

For those who want to try out these two publications (I think they’re great), I’d check out to see if your local library has them in their Libby catalogue for free. The DC library has The New Yorker available, so if all else fails, try signing up for an account there.

I read the news pretty much right after I wake up on weekdays to get my brain moving. On an average week, I spend about 3 hours between the two publications.

reading substack articles

I used to spend a lot more time on the platform, initially out of curiosity of what others were writing, and then as an anxious tic to constantly benchmark my own work to others.

Now, I’m probably reading other people’s work for less than an hour a week. I find time during my commutes, lunches, workouts, and any sort of in-between period when I feel a tendency to scroll through YouTube reels.

I want to do a better job at staying passively active on the platform. As someone who writes here, I often feel pressured to stay up to date with other people’s works, especially writers who I’m friends with. Unfortunately, that simply isn’t sustainable, and I must accept that a few articles here and there will slip by me.

With that being said, for those who spend more than an hour reading on Substack each week, I’ll offer you my two cents:

Writers on here have their own, unique agendas that run parallel to what you as a reader value. For example, many are trying to build themselves up within a niche so they can create a paid subscriber list, or, so they can sell a product. Others write purely for the sake of content creation, hopping onto trends left and right, with no genuine sense of identity. Ironically, and perhaps this is me projecting, I’ve realized that paid content on this platform is generally worse than free content. When people write to fit the taste of others, the result is a homogenized thought environment. Bleh.

So, in lieu of this, I’d encourage you to spend less time reading on this platform, and more time engaging. Even if you don’t explicitly post anything, respond to articles you like with comments, post your passing thoughts on notes, and empower yourself to trust your intuition and ideas. The platform can only benefit from a diverse set of perspectives.

books

In 2024, I would crawl into bed thirty minutes before bedtime, with the expectation that I’d read before bed. In reality, I’d fall asleep almost immediately.

We adapt, we grow, we learn from our mistakes. In the new year I’ve started reading an hour before my latest acceptable bedtime, knowing that I’ll probably fall asleep in thirty minutes. As I mentioned above, what I read is quite sporadic, but before bed I prefer to read something on the lighter side, like a novel, short story collection, or some poems. I have, on more than one occasion, read a self-help book before bed, only for it to cause my mind to race and overplan, and ultimately, unable to sleep.

I read more on the weekends, where I feel at liberty to set aside 1-2 hour chunks of uninterrupted time. In total, I probably spend about 4 hours a week reading books.

Here’s my Goodreads for those who are interested in following along (I usually post updates in bulk, but my collections are mostly up to date).

To wrap this up, I’ll turn the question back to you all. Let me know in the comments, what are you reading these days?