Developing Healthy Reading Habits

You know a chapter a day, a poem a day, an essay a day, a short story a day, it does wonders. Most of them are about 5 pages, or 2,000 words or less. I think people are going to start consuming shorter works, like Short Stories and Personal Essays and Poetry. Because when I read, I can't really get through a whole lot, but I take it in chunks, you read 1 chapter or essay or poem or short story a day, that's 365 chapters, essays, poems, or short stories, and that's about 360,000 words a year. Which is about 5 books a year.

To give you another example, I will read a chapter from a book, and might read that book over 10 years. My memory gets refreshed as I pick it up again, and I can start from that basis. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, or The Prince and the Pauper--two of my favorites now--have been read by me for about 10 years now. Brother's Karamazov, also. Sometimes, like the Wizard of Oz, I just read the whole novel in a few days. Or Animal Farm I read in one sitting. Boethius, I read a chapter a day, and left the last chapter till now. I started him in December last year. Descartes, also, the Discourse on the Method, have been reading a little bit here and there. I might read a story from Egyptian Mythology, or read over Ptahhotep again; might read a dozen chapters of the Bible--that I fly through because I'm very familiar with it. Might read a poem, and do a deep analysis of it.

Another thing, I don't particularly like reading. I just read for wisdom. It's not my favorite activity. I'd rather listen to a video essay for 20 minutes, and break it into two segments, than read a novel. Unless I go into the flow.