How does one read a book the right way? Are there certain practices and behaviors that are often disrespectful of a book or the author? I would say yes. This is all in a half-joking manner, but there are truly some things that I think we should remember when reading a book.

Judge Every Book by Its Cover Unless Given a Reason to Do Otherwise

There are enough people in this world practicing “don’t judge a book by its cover™” that if they find a masterful book with an ugly cover, they’ll let you know, then you can read it. But there is no use subjecting yourself to some drab magenta book cover if you don’t really know if it will be a good book.

Stick with it until page number __.

This is a rule that lots of people have that I don’t. I’ve heard people say that they stick with a book for 100 pages, 140 pages, it really varies. My trick is that if I don’t like a book, I don’t keep reading. The end.

Give it your attention.

When you sit down to read a book, don’t jump up to do this and pull out your phone to take a picture and text your friend who is also reading a book and taking pictures. Just. Read. The. Book. Whoever wrote that book spent valuable time putting words together in an order that makes sense so that you can read it and enjoy the rhythm and flow. It wasn’t written to be grabbed in little half-paragraph bites. It was written to be chewed.

Be patient.

Newsflash! We have trouble with patience. I don’t want to sound like every social critic blogger, but I will say that the obsessive-compulsive use of social media has probably damaged our patience a lot. Instead of sitting in a doctor’s office and doing nothing (or looking at the fish or reading a book) we now scroll through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, et cetera. So, of course, when we do most anything else, we find ourselves bored very easily.

Sadly, this happens to me practically every time I read a book. Here, a short record of my thoughts when reading a book, for your listening pleasure.

Hmm, I am enjoying this book. Very nice. Oh, good choice of word there, nice imagery. Who is this author? Oh yes. Wow, that’s an awful photo. And that bio is written in third-person but obviously written by the person herself. Back to reading. I should see how many pages are left before the end of this chapter. Ope… Just about seven. How many pages have I read so far? Just about… one. That’s nice. I love this book so much, I think I’ll check to see how far I am again. I’d say… 1/9th. No… maybe 1/10th.

…And so on and so forth. I am rightfully disgusted with myself. So I have developed a rule that I try to practice as often as my brain will let me:

Don’t check to see how many pages are left before the end of the chapter. Ever.

But someone will say “how can you know if you can read the chapter before you have to go do something else?” Well, here’s the thing, if you have to leave in the middle of a chapter, you use something called a bookmark, and if you have to do a tiny bit of back-reading next time, that’s okay. It’s probably good for you.

Actually read books.

It’s horribly rude to leave unread materials sitting around your house. Sure, they make great decorations (this is coming from someone who once checked out a bagful of books from the library just to use as decorations – they were classics, no one checks those out anyway), but too long sitting as unused decorations and they won’t feel valued.

Read your books! And while you do, remember to:

• Judge books by their cover.
• Stick with it until a decided page number. (If you’re that kind of person.)
• Give it your attention.
• Be patient.

Happy reading!

P.S. This is the 150th blog post!