Time Out! How to Find Time to Read.

What should I do about all those books piling up on my shelves--that I have not read?

I want to take a moment to suggest some ideas on how to read those books you have accumulated in your bookcases. I know. You're busy. But you can find the time. Try 15 minutes a day.

Louis Shores, a well-known librarian, published an article in The Wonderful World of Books (1952). He pointed out that people who read just 15 minutes a day, at an average rate of 300 words per minute, will read 4,500 words in 15 minutes; 31,500 words in a week; 126,000 words in a month; and 1,512,000 words in a year, or approximately 20 books a year.

When I told one adult class about reading 15 minutes a day, several students came up during the next class period and said, in effect, "You rat! I tried reading 15 minutes and, before I knew it, I was reading for an hour."

But how to start? Those books have been sitting on your shelves forever. You just can't seem to get into them. What you lack is a reason to get into them, which, of course, is their ideas. How do you know that their ideas are worthwhile for you?

What I am about to suggest is probably going to sound crazy to some people. More than one person has said to me, "You read crazy." It will especially sound crazy to people who have to start on page one and read through the book, word by word, sentence by sentence and chapter by chapter, in order, without missing a word. In my defense, all I can say is, "It works for me."

Remember, Francis Bacon, 1n 1625, said that some books are to be "tasted" (or read only in parts), some books are to be "swallowed" (or read rapidly and without a great deal of thought, westerns, mysteries, romances, chick-lit, etc.) and that some few books are to be read thoroughly and carefully. He said this because at that time, the 1600s, there were about eight million books in existence and people had to be selective in what they chose to read. For me, as a student, the revolutionary idea was his emphasis that some, maybe many, books need to be read only in part and not all the way through.

I have a very short attention span. Books have to "grab" me, especially if they are lengthy. I learned a long time ago that the most important paragraph in any chapter in any book is the first paragraph. Editors are constantly telling writers that the first sentence and the first paragraph are the most important sentence and paragraph in the chapter. Because they "grab" readers. The second most important paragraph in each chapter is the last paragraph which should stimulate the reader to begin the next chapter.

I always begin a nonfiction book by reading just the first and the last paragraphs of every chapter in the book. In nonfiction, the first paragraph introduces the writer's ideas and the last paragraph summarizes the ideas. With some chapters, the main ideas revealed in the first and last paragraphs are all I need to know. With other chapters, I want more details. I read the first sentence of each paragraph in the chapter. If I am hooked by a first sentence of a paragraph, I read everything. When I lose interest in those details, I return to reading the first sentence of each paragraph.

In fiction, reading the first and last paragraphs causes me to raise questions, to wonder what is going to happen next. That usually hooks me and I begin reading everything. But every novel has its "down time" and I learned a technique from reading New Yorker short stories about how to deal with that "down time."

So many times I would drag myself through entire stories in The New Yorker, only to realize at the end that I had wasted my time. The story was not any good. How could I find out ahead of time whether a story was worth my time?

I experimented. In one of my experiments, I tried reading just one paragraph on a page or in a column and was amazed at how much I had learned about the story in just a few minutes--enough to know whether it was worthwhile to read the entire story.

When I encounter "down time" in a novel, I read just a paragraph a page, which carries me through the slow spots until I am again hooked and reading everything.

I might be crazy, but I am steadily whittling down the number of books I haven't read. And I have discovered thousands of ideas.

I have learned how to become "hooked" on my books. I read for ideas. I always find the time to read because interesting ideas make me think and give me insights into life that change my life. That is what this blog is for. I am sharing with you the ideas I have gained from books that I have read. I would like you, my readers, to share your ideas from the books you have read. Emerson was right. We can't read them all, but we can share what we have read with others.

All the best. RayS.