How To Cultivate A Lifetime Reading Habit

Reading has always been and will always be an integral part of my life. I felt very blessed that I always have a natural inclination towards reading even when I was very young.

However if you do not posses this natural tendency and yet you envy people who can bury themselves in a book and tune out the world for hours on end, there are still tips you can follow. You must be among the many people who would love to read more, but just feel restless, distracted or bored while you do it. You can still unleash your inner bookworm by following the advice below.

At first I thought I want to write the tips myself. However there are very good lists of suggestion available on the net with many points similar to mine. So I copied and pasted one, again from www.lifehack.org. My comments are in blue.

14 Ways to Cultivate a Lifetime Reading Habit
FEATURED LIFESTYLE BY LEO BABAUTA | 1K SHARES

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” — W. Somerset Maugham

Somewhere after “lose weight”, “stop procrastinating”, and “fall in love”, “read more” is one of the top goals that many people set for themselves. And rightly so: A good book can be hugely satisfying, can teach you about things beyond your daily horizons, and can create characters so vivid you feel as if you really know them.

If reading is a habit you’d like to get into, there are a number of ways to cultivate it.

First, realise that reading is highly enjoyable, if you have a good book. If you have a lousy book (or an extremely difficult one) and you are forcing yourself through it, it will seem like a chore. If this happens for several days in a row, consider abandoning the book and finding one that you’ll really love.

Other than that, try these tips to cultivate a lifetime reading habit:

Set times.

You should have a few set times during every day when you’ll read for at least 5-10 minutes. These are times that you will read no matter what — triggers that happen each day. For example, make it a habit to read during breakfast and lunch (and even dinner if you eat alone). And if you also read every time you’re sitting on the can, and when you go to bed, you now have four times a day when you read for 10 minutes each — or 40 minutes a day. That’s a great start, and by itself would be an excellent daily reading habit. But there’s more you can do.

Always carry a book.

Wherever you go, take a book with you. When I leave the house, I always make sure to have my drivers license, my keys and my book, at a minimum. The book stays with me in the car, and I take it into the office and to appointments and pretty much everywhere I go, unless I know I definitely won’t be reading (like at a movie). If there is a time when you have to wait (like at a doctor’s office or at the DMV), whip out your book and read. Great way to pass the time.
I always read while I wait for the train to and from work as well as while riding them. If I go into a restaurant alone, I would read while waiting for the food rather than toying with the hand phone like a lot of people do nowadays. If the stranger next to me on public transportation start to be a bit too friendly and began asking a lot of questions on the pretext of making small talk, l get my book out and start reading.

Make a list.

Keep a list of all the great books you want to read. You can keep this in your journal, in a pocket notebook, on your personal home page, on your personal wiki, wherever. Be sure to add to it whenever you hear about a good book, online or in person. Keep a running list, and cross out the ones you read. Tech trick: create a Gmail account for your book list, and email the address every time you hear about a good book. Now your inbox will be your reading list. When you’ve read a book, file it under “Done”. If you want, you can even reply to the message (to the same address) with notes about the book, and those will be in the same conversation thread, so now your Gmail account is your reading log too.
One of my important goals in life is to read as many books as possible that have won the Putlizer Prize for Fiction as well as the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. However on both of these award-winning lists I have only read less than ten each. There are indeed many many great books on both lists. The problem is I usually get distracted by newly published books every time I visited a book store and thus the number I have read on both lists move rather slowly. Respected authors' work are of course great to read most of the time but newcomers can be thrilling too.

Find a quiet place. 

Find a place in your home where you can sit in a comfortable chair (don’t lay down unless you’re going to sleep) and curl up with a good book without interruptions. There should be no television or computer near the chair to minimise distractions, and no music or noisy family members/roommates. If you don’t have a place like this, create one.
I believe people are different in where they prefer to read. I do not really mind the noise if I have a good book. In fact a good book would be a distraction from all the noise.

Reduce television/Internet. 

If you really want to read more, try cutting back on TV or Internet consumption. This may be difficult for many people. Still, every minute you reduce of Internet/TV, you could use for reading. This could create hours of book reading time.
Too much television or Internet dull the senses. Is there such a thing as too much reading? Hmmm..........rather unlikely I think.

Read to your kid. 

If you have children, you must, must read to them. Creating the reading habit in your kids is the best way to ensure they’ll be readers when they grow up … and it will help them to be successful in life as well. Find some great children’s books, and read to them. At the same time, you’re developing the reading habit in yourself … and spending some quality time with your child as well.
Sometimes just poking fun, I would read aloud near where Mickey and Tam are sleeping. Mickey just couldn't be bothered he would just continue sleeping, but Tam would move further away after a few minutes. Must be the wrong book ha ha ha.

Keep a log. 

Similar to the reading list, this log should have not only the title and author of the books you read, but the dates you start and finish them if possible. Even better, put a note next to each with your thoughts about the book. It is extremely satisfying to go back over the log after a couple of months to see all the great books you’ve read.

Go to used book shops. 

My favourite place to go is a discount book store where I drop off all my old books (I usually take a couple of boxes of books) and get a big discount on used books I find in the store. I typically spend only a couple of dollars for a dozen or more books, so although I read a lot, books aren’t a major expense. And it is very fun to browse through the new books people have donated. Make your trip to a used book store a regular thing.
Around Klang Valley you should watch out for the famous Big Bad Wolf Sale. You can really really get a bargain especially for children's books, travel books, coffee table books on various topics, business and management books, DIY books, self-help books. However not so much on literary fiction I think.

Have a library day. 
Even cheaper than a used book shop is a library, of course. Make it a weekly trip.

Read fun and compelling books. 

Find books that really grip you and keep you going. Even if they aren’t literary masterpieces, they make you want to read — and that’s the goal here. After you have cultivated the reading habit, you can move on to more difficult stuff, but for now, go for the fun, gripping stuff. Stephen King, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum, Nora Roberts, Sue Grafton, Dan Brown … all those popular authors are popular for a reason — they tell great stories. Other stuff you might like: Vonnegut, William Gibson, Douglas Adams, Nick Hornby, Trevanian, Ann Patchett, Terry Pratchett, Terry McMillan, F. Scott Fitzgerald. All excellent storytellers.
What is fun and compelling is different from one person to another. To kindle your interest in reading the reading materials are not necessarily great literary works by famous authors. It can be titles like "Mindfulness for Busy People", "The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People", "A Cook's Tour", "Defying Age", "Found in Malaysia", "The Complete Cat Book", "Illustrated Tales from Shakespeare", "Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl". There must be some topics you adore, start from there. Read whatever catches your fancy. Don't worry about hype, bestsellers, respected authors, etc.

Make it pleasurable. 

Make your reading time your favourite time of day. Have some good tea or coffee while you read, or another kind of treat. Get into a comfortable chair with a good blanket. Read during sunrise or sunset, or at the beach.

Blog it. 

One of the best ways to form a habit is to put it on your blog. If you don’t have one, create one. It’s free. Have your family go there and give you book suggestions and comment on the ones you’re reading. It keeps you accountable for your goals.

Set a high goal. 

Tell yourself that you want to read 50 books this year (or some other number like that). Then set about trying to accomplish it. Just be sure you’re still enjoying the reading though — don’t make it a rushed chore.
Have a reading hour or reading day. If you turn off the TV or Internet in the evening, you could have a set hour (perhaps just after dinner) when you and maybe all the members of your family read each night. Or you could do a reading day, when you (and again, your other family members if you can get them to join you) read for practically the whole day. It’s super fun.
Frankly I am not so worried about how many books I read. I just read. There are books I finished in a week, there are others that I took a month or more to finish. There are books I have bought for a few months and still haven't come round to reading them. There are books I read quarter through then I left them out, because I got hold of a more interesting book, coming back to them only months later. Sometimes I have like two or three books that I am reading at one time. I am not a very disciplined individual where reading is concerned. I tend to be greedy. And definitely, in a month for example, my buying list is higher than my have-been-read list. I am a book hoarder too!