Expand Your Horizons: Why You Should Read More in 2022 – and How to Build a Reading Habit
How (and Why) I Read 61 Books Last Year
I love to read. Truly.
It’s one of the great pleasures in my life.
Reading allows me access to ideas and opinions from writers across the globe – and across time. It expands my mind, helps me empathize with folks different from me, and feeds my soul. Professionally, a good book accelerates my business, helping me try out new strategies and tactics and avoid others’ mistakes.
I could wax poetic about reading – and in fact, I’ve already started. Before I bore you too, too much with my own relationship to literature, let me make a case for why I think you should read more this year. Then, if you’ll indulge me, I can help you build your own reading habit. Finally, in an act of both narcissism and building on my own records, I’ll share with you the books I read this year – and which ones particularly stuck out to me.
“Books allowed me to see a world beyond the front porch of my grandmother’s shotgun house…[and] the power to see possibilities beyond what was allowed at the time.” - Oprah Winfrey
Why Reading is Leading: Read “Moar” Books
Did anyone else have a “Read and Lead” program in school? Over the summer, we were asked to catalog the books we read. With an adults’ signature, we would receive rewards – pencils, stickers, and the coveted personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.
I was a fastidious child – and an avid reader. My poor mother would have to request extra reading slips so that I could write down everything I read. (Clearly, this has been an obsession for quite some time.) But beyond my love of reading and quantifying what I read, there are real benefits to picking up a book (see footnotes for the relevant studies).
Reading Makes You More Open-Minded
Books help you live more lives than the one you’re given. These new experiences help develop an open mind, which ties into empathy below.
Reading is Associated with Living Longer
Multiple studies show a correlation between longevity and reading (an example below). Not only does reading reduce stress, but it slows cognitive decline and appears to protect against diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Readers are Better Leaders
Reading helps you understand others’ minds. It allows you to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.” Verbal intelligence, empathy, and knowledge are all associated with being a better leader. Harvard Business Review has a great, short piece on leadership and literacy.
Healthline shares some more benefits, including lowered stress, improved brain connectivity, lower blood pressure, and reduced risk of cognitive decline as you age.
How to Build a Reading Habit
The most successful among us seem to read the most:
Warren Buffett spends as much as five or six hours a day reading
Bill Gates reads 50 books a year
Mark Cuban reads for 3+ hours every day
Of course, these folks aren’t just reading books. They’re reading newspapers, corporate reports, research papers, and more. But, books are a great place to start.
So how do you build a reading habit around your busy life? Start small.
Perhaps it’s just 2 pages with your morning coffee. Or 15 minutes before you go to bed.
Or listening to an audiobook on your commute.
I personally like to build my habits daily. Doing something every day is easier for me to do than, say, every other day. Or only on the weekends. I started a great book this year by one of my favorite authors and speakers, Jen Sincero: Badass Habits: Cultivate the Awareness, Boundaries, and Daily Upgrades You Need to Make Them Stick. I was in a funk and felt like I couldn’t accomplish anything worthwhile. Those feelings faded, and I remembered how to build a habit that had fallen to the wayside during COVID: eating well. I no longer needed Jen’s badass support, but I still have the book for those times when I’m feeling powerless to affect change in my life.
For more tips on how to read more, check out my post “How to Read More.”
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. - Mortimer J. Adler
The Books of 2022
With so many things to read (and watch and listen to), it’s important that you enjoy the media that you’re consuming. This year, I tried to be more intentional with the books that I finished. This year, more than any other, I started many books that I didn’t complete. Some of them bored me. But with most of them, I found that I was reading them at the wrong time. Trying to read something heavy when Delta was surging. Or trying something light when I needed something deep and intellectual to occupy my mind.
Thus, my biggest piece of advice is to quit.
Just quit. If you’re not finding joy in what you’re reading, you should simply stop.
Life is too short.
Now, there have been some books that were difficult for me. A Swim in the Pond in the Rain was challenging. It’s a collection of Russian short stories from the 1800s followed by an analysis of each piece by a writer and professor. I found I could only read one short story and analysis per day. Each story was so weighty and each analysis was so in-depth that I needed time to process. I could read one a day – max. Yet, I found joy in reading them.
So, with that caveat out of the way, my top 3 business books of the year:
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain - George Saunders
Daring Greatly - Brené Brown
Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter
My top 3 personal books of the year:
Under the Whispering Door - T.J. Clune
The Tyrant Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin
And here are all of the books that I finished in 2021:
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain - George Saunders
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything - Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Scar - China Miéville
Iron Council - China Miéville
The Witness for the Dead - Katherine Addison
The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Witchmark - C.L. Polk
Flash Fire - T.J. Clune
The Extraordinaries - T.J. Clune
Under the Whispering Door - T.J. Clune
The House on the Cerulean Sea - T.J. Clune
A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians - H.G. Parry
The Engineer - C.S. Poe
The Gangster - C.S. Poe
Infinity Son - Adam Silvera
The People of Sparks - Jeanne DuPrau
The City of Ember - Jeanne DuPrau
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter
Ruin and Rising - Leigh Bardugo
Siege and Storm - Leigh Bardugo
Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo
Rhythm of War - Brandon Sanderson
Dawnshard - Brandon Sanderson
Oathbringer - Brandon Sanderson
Words of Radiance - Brandon Sanderson
The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson
The Hero of Ages - Brandon Sanderson
The Well of Ascension - Brandon Sanderson
Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson
Circe - Madeline Miller
A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness
X-men: God Loves, Man Kills - Chris Claremont, Brent Anderson
Daring Greatly - Brené Brown
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse
One Million Followers: How I Built a Massive Social Following in 30 Days - Brendan Kane
Presuasian: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade - Robert Cialdini
Before They Are Hanged - Joe Abercrombie
Last Argument of Kings - Joe Abercrombie
The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie
The Impossible Contract - K.A. Doore
The Unconquered City - K.A. Doore
The Perfect Assassin - K.A. Doore
Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin
The Broken Kingdoms - N.K. Jemisin
The Kingdom of Gods - N.K. Jemisin
The Mask Falling - Samantha Shannon
The Dawn Chorus - Samantha Shannon
On the Merits of Unnaturalness - Samantha Shannon
The Song Rising - Samantha Shannon
The Mime Order - Samantha Shannon
The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon
Children of Virtue and Vengeance - Tomi Adeyemi
The Tyrant Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Ascension - Jacqueline Koyanagi
The Truth - Terry Pratchett
The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett
Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
The Empire of Gold - S.A. Chakraborty
Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. - Fernando Pessoa
How will you build a reading habit in 2022? Hit me up on Twitter, and let’s talk about it – chatting about books is almost as much fun as reading them.
More Reading:
The Books of 2020
The Books of 2019
The Books of 2018
Footnotes:
Maja Djikic, Keith Oatley, & Mihnea C. Moldoveanu, 2013)
Avni Bavishi, Martin D. Slade, & Becca R. Levy, 2016)
David Comer Kidd & Emanuele Castano, 2013)