The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete beginning with the movie screen, it couldn’t compete with the television screen, and it can’t compete with the computer screen. — Philip Roth
We’re halfway through 2026, and according to Goodreads I’ve read 80 books so far, fiction and non-fiction and textbooks, including such doorstoppers as Life and Fate (864p, astoundingly good). And I don’t feel like I’m trying particularly hard. I still have plenty of time to work and code and scroll.
This isn’t normal for me. At some point, as is the case for many of us, the screen outcompeted the book, so that my average over the past ten years would have been on the order of three to five books per year. And I’m not a particularly fast or obsessive reader. Which is to say: if I can do it, so can you. Here’s how:
- Quit your job: working less than full time has freed up a lot of time to read and learn and do various other things.
- Read in public: if you put a number next to someone’s name, they will maximize it. Reading privately is solipsistic (if I stop, what changes?); reading in public, through Goodreads (which sucks, but it is what it is), makes it feel less self-absorbed, and more like I’m achieving something. You may call it performative, which is fine by me, as long as it works.
- Make a task: I used to start a lot of books, and not finish them, not because I would explicitly choose to stop reading, but because I’d forget about it. At the end of the day I’d see the book on my nightstand and go, oh, right. More generally: the most common way I fail to finish a project is I forget I intended to do it. This is solved by reifying the task: when I start reading a book, I make a daily recurring task on Todoist for it.
- Start small: this feels embarrassing (what kind of brainrotted maniac needs to microdose short books to build up to bigger books?) but it actually works. Sort your to-read list by number of pages. Reading short books generates evidence for the belief that you are the kind of person who can decide to read a book, and follow through. Reading five, six, seven-hundred page books feels vastly less daunting now.
- Parallelize: reading the same book for two hours is almost impossible. Reading four books, one pomodoro each, is completely doable, and I do it most days.
- Fraction: reading is a rare kind of activity where you can make progress in any arbitrarily-small chunk of time. A few minutes on the train are enough to turn a few pages. This isn’t the case for e.g. coding. You can take advantage of that: find interstitial dead zones in your calendar to stuff with reading.
- Eat your vegetables: I read a lot of books I don’t particularly enjoy, because I think they’re important, culturally or historically or in some sense. I think this is good. If you only read books that hook you, you’re going to read very little, and much of that will be unremarkable page-turner slop. Internalizing that you can read a book even if you don’t love it immunizes you against the lack of motivation. It’s like going to the gym even if you don’t feel like it.
And if you don’t know what to read, have some of my favourites: The Diamond Age— From Third World to First— House of Suns— The Invention of Morel— On the Marble Cliffs— The Rediscovery of Man— Satan in Goray— The World of Yesterday.