How I Read 100 Books in a Year

I'm going to tell you how I got through more than 100 books in 2023, and what I learned along the way.

If you're planning on doing the same thing, there are some unavoidable sacrifices you'll need to make, neither of which will surprise you, they are: time and money.

Before you run away, I'll also tell you how I lessened the impact of both of those things.

Why?

It wasn’t a New Year's Resolution. I'd started the year off with a couple of productive months; eight books in January, then the same again in February. Half way through March I'd already read another five, and it dawned on me that, at this pace, I'd be close to 100. It was a target that was too irresistible to ignore… In the previous years, I'd got through 50-60. A habit that was started before, but cemented through, lockdown.

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To some people, 100 is a lot, but it’s relative. There are people out there - on Book-Tok and Twitter - getting through 300+ books-a-year…

How?

The simplest answer is "audiobooks". I miss the smell and feel of physical books, and I continue to buy physical copies of books that I've loved, but the truth is audiobooks allow you to multitask. I don’t listen while working - I find I can't concentrate on either my task or my book if I try that, though YMMV. Here’s what works for me:

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Books as an Airlock

My bedtime habit is 30-45 minutes before I go to sleep, and, depending on my morning walk routine, I’ll do a similar amount in the morning. I find treating books as an airlock between sleep and being awake works really well for me. If you're listening before bed, then I'd recommend setting a time-out feature. I listen in 15-minute chunks, so if I do nod off, it's easy to find a place to pick up from.

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Hit The Streets (or towpaths, or footpaths)

I work from home, so I try and take several morning-walks every week. It's 60-90 minutes to take in some fresh air, and listen to a book. When I used to commute, I'd spend around that amount of time, or longer, on public transport. Marrying a hefty chunk of my reading habit and my walks is a virtuous cycle. When I'm not in the mood to walk, the chance to dive deeper into a book is a motivator. If I haven't yet fallen in love with my current book, then my walk gives me chance to get better acquainted with it. If you commute, then the bus, train or car journey gives you a great opportunity to fill your time with an audiobook.

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Fill the Gaps

Once you're hooked into audiobooks, you'll find every walk to the shops, or train journey, or long queue becomes a chance to tune in. Again, those tedious tasks become an opportunity. A 30-minute walk to the supermarket is no longer drudgery, but a chance to squeeze in an extra chapter or two.

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Something that didn't work for me was being too extreme with this idea. While at a conference, I thought the 5-minute walk between meetings was a chance to do more listening, but I found it hard to maintain any kind of flow if the chunks were too small.

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Speed

If you're using audiobooks then keep an ear out for the narrator's speed. They vary a lot, but even the fastest are usually much slower than when you read a physical book. My sweet-spot is usually between 1.8 and 2x speed. Depending on the narrator's accent, I sometimes find myself speeding up after a few minutes of acclimatising to their voice.

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Size Them Up

Luckily for this task, I naturally prefer shorter books. Almost everything I've read this year has been listed at <15 hours. Some have been as short as 2-3 hours. If you like "epics", then good luck with trying to squeeze 100 in.

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Don’t Break the Bank

One of the downsides to audiobooks is you can't go into a charity store and find hundreds of cheap options. I use Audible, and I've got a big wish list (300+ books). Whenever they have a sale – and there are LOTS of them - go to your wishlist and sort it by price order, lowest first, to see if anything in your list is reduced. They also have daily and monthly offers. The trick is to keep an eye out for sale prices being below what you've paid for your credits - sometimes it's cheaper to pay in ￡ than credits! (Audible defaults to paying by credits, so during the checkout process make sure you’re using the right method of payment).

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I also buy the Premium, 24-credit subscription. When you run out, you can simply renew your subscription. I'm on my third subscription of the year, which means my habit has cost me ~￡300.

More Motivations

What I've just described are the logistics of reading a lot. You also need some other motivation:

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Surprise Yourself

If you constantly read the same type of book, you might get bored. Revel in the new and different. I followed a few SM accounts from avid readers, and picked books that I might otherwise have avoided. Once I started to venture off-piste, it was hard not to stumble across books that I'd have previously missed.

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There have been addictive moments of discovery. For example, after years at an all-boys' school, and also being taught by Rick in The Young Ones that poetry was a bit 'wanky', I discovered it can actually be amazing. (Check out Slug by Hollie McNish!? I read it, loved it, and now poetry is very much back on the menu.)

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Track Your Progress

I'm wary of keeping score of pleasurable activities - it's easy for the pursuit of a destination to remove all the joy of the journey. As a game designer, I'm usually suspicious of gamification, but they can be useful when a target is being chased. Break your goal down into monthly targets

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If it's clear you're not going to reach your goal, don’t worry. Life is too short, and you should just enjoy whatever reading you can fit in. The aim is to squeeze as many pleasurable experiences into the year that you can. If it reaches the point where you're not enjoying it, then you've already failed.

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Keep Notes and a 'Stickerbook'

With so many books, you will start to forget things. I write a paragraph or two about each book when I've finished it. I can also share these with an online bookclub I'm part of.

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And because I don’t often buy physical copies, and get to see a bookshelf filling up, I’ll paste an image of each book cover into an expanding collage. It feels like collecting football/baseball/Pokemon cards, and it's nice to see the deck grow over the year.

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You Can Judge a Book by Its Cover

Ignore the idiom. There are so many great book covers (and it makes me wish more videogames were more experimental with their cover art), and most do a great job of providing hints and clues to the contents. And I'm not just talking about the storyline, but the tone and feel of the book. Something that has worked for me is checking out the synopses of any book cover that speaks to me. Most of the time, if the cover grabs me, the blurb does too.

Big Corp Blues - The Downside to Audiobooks

I'm no spring chicken. My age, and days of staring at monitors, mean I struggle with print. I hate reading through glasses. Audiobooks have helped me through a decline in reading, but I also dislike them.

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I'd love to be able to have the same purchasing choices as I have with physical books. I love indie bookshops (my dad briefly owned one during a midlife crisis, and I worked in it for a few summers). I love browsing through books at charity shops. I love the feel and smell of books. For now, the way I reconcile this is to buy physical copies of the books I love. I'll chase down first editions, and signed copies, and keep them as mementos.

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Many of my book choices are thanks to indie bookshops and their window displays. I wish I could repay them - a referral fee - but for now, that seems impossible. There are alternatives to Audible, but they wouldn't put money into the indie's hands either. I’ve bought over a dozen of this year’s books in physical copies – so I still probably put more into the till of indie bookshops than most. I just wish I could do more.

Next Year

I often work longer than average hours, and there have been moments when reaching my target has been a push, but not arduous. Some of the time that I usually spend listening to music have been eaten up by audiobooks this year. I might let music claw some of that time back next year. But I think 70-80 a year is probably my sweet spot. It's a number I can reach fairly effortlessly.

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That means my wishlist is probably going to grow quicker than I can get through them, at least until I retire…

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And if you decide you want to try and reach a new target in the next 12 months, don’t forget that the number of books you read means little compared to the enjoyment you get from them. Don't let the pursuit of a target ruin your enjoyment!