Reading books like reading blogs

I used to spend at least an hour each day reading various blogs, usually ones I'd discovered through aggregators like Hacker News, Reddit or Twitter.

I'd read the occasional book too, but it always felt like a more draining undertaking, as I'd be committing to reading about one thing for a longer time. At some point I would be a little bit sick of whatever I'd be reading, but some stubbornness would prevent me from just stopping. Instead I'd grit my teeth and finish what I'd started.

Sometimes a book would be so great that I'd get through with little struggling, but the process was unpleasant just as often.

At some point I realized that it doesn't need to be like this, and I managed to change the way I read to make it way more pleasant. If my rule before was "pick something that sounds interesting, and finish reading it no matter what", my revised system is similar to how I read blogs. First of all, I've decided that if I seem to dislike a book enough that it's a struggle to continue, then it's OK to just give up. There is no shortage of other books to read, after all.

Second, even a good book can get tiring compared to reading many small blog pieces from various authors on various topics. So that's what I do with books now too. I have several books I'm reading at any time, so that I can read several small pieces (chapters) from various authors on various topics. Reaching the end is then a bit like having caught up reading the entire archives of a blog.

It also helps to do this with ebooks, so that it's just as effortless to pick up where you left on even with a dozen books in progress, so you can always read up on whatever seems the most interesting at the moment, making it as much fun as catching up on a blog.