Read More Books, Many More
An apologia and guide based on my 2024 experiment
In 2023 I decided that I would read 40 books in 2024. Somewhere along the way I decided I would rather average a book a week and later I decided that 5 books a month was even better.
I didn’t make 5 every month, or even one a week. I finished just short at 51 books in the year of our Lord 2024.
I have eclectic interests, so it is really unlikely that there are any readers who would want to replicate my list. More interesting is what a real year of reading looks like when you read more books in a month than most American adults will in a decade.
That is a sad fact, literary Americans are going extinct.
I will try to convince you, a dear Substack reader interested in virtue and masculinity and creative localist musings, to read more yourself. I will try to be brutally honest in reading techniques so that such quantity seems eminently reasonable rather than intimidating.
Chapter 1:
Society’s Reading Habits and Increasing Illiteracy
We don’t read much. It occurs that I may need statistics because the Substack audience is atypical in this matter.
According to Statista, 42% of college graduates never read another book after college. I am about to finish college, and I suspect that this number is low. Otherwise bright and ambitious students will still choose majors like engineering or accounting where they can make a lot of money, but not even have to read books during college.
Then you have the students who may be in more humanities based majors or at least classes. They are (often) not reading the assigned books. Professors are increasingly not assigning full books because “students today cannot handle it”.
About this same number, 44% of American adults will not read 1 book in a year. I think an average book for an adult could be set at 300 pages.
For those of you who haven’t read a math book… that is less than 1 page a day.
There was a viral challenge, 75 Hard, that was mostly about fitness. It dared participants to follow a diet perfectly for 75 days or restart at the beginning. It demanded you workout twice a day 45 minutes at a time (one of those being outside no matter the weather) and again, start from the beginning if you failed. On the same list of challenging requirements was to read 10 pages a day.
Following a consistent diet or workout routine are known as very difficult feats of discipline, most people wish that they did these things and cannot because they are so challenging. Reading 10 pages is now considered just as challenging as 45 minutes of pushups in the snow.
We are not reading, so naturally, we are losing our ability to read.
20% of adults in the US cannot read above a 5th grade reading level. 50% of adults cannot read above an 8th grade level.
Some modern writing guides will say it is best to write at an 8th grade level to increase comprehension and that a lower (8th or 9th) level is indicative of a more talented writer. Despite that, I don’t think that complex, important, ideas are best described at that level. For example, the US Constitution, according to the very useful Hemingway editor website, is at a 14th grade level. I suspect that being coded with this reasonable sounding, but ultimately wrong advice is a reason that AI has such a boring, non-committal style of writing.
It turns out that some things we take for granted, phonics, comparing and contrasting, and remembering the beginning of an argument by the time you get to the end of it, are not instantly learnable by iPad kids.
Digital reading does not bridge the gap. No one is improving their comprehension from Instagram and Facebook captions. Studies popularized by the Atlantic article “Is Google Making us Stupid” also prove that when people read on a screen, they almost cannot help but skim. I am guilty here, I will sometime read articles online backwards I am so bad with skimming, but never on physical books.
That so much of reading in academia is now online explains why college students don’t have basic academic habits, across both soft fields and harder ones. Part of the M in STEM is Statistics, and they are screaming “Americans are increasingly illiterate!”
“So what?” says the STEM major through his six figure starting salary. “I didn’t need to read to learn advanced math and engineering, I wont need to read after college either!”
Chapter 2
Why to Read
Some people argue for reading along these lines…
Author X researched, wrote, and edited this book for 5 years
I read this book in 5 hours
Therefore, I have been incredibly efficient in downloading 5 years of information and thought in only 5 hours: an incredible investment!
It’s incredibly stupid.
I have even heard people add up those 5 years per book (or whatever it is) and claim that their “mental age” is in the hundreds or thousands, like an Abraham of high finance (because these kinds of people are always super into the stock market).
Reading a book does not make you as smart as the author… obviously. It doesn’t make you as smart as the author on that topic… also obviously. It doesn’t even make you as smart as the author on the content included in the book at the depth included in the book, because they know why it’s included and why the order of information matters and probably just remember it better than you would to boot.
Reading exposes you to more ideas, usually real ideas, as in fully formed conceptions of the world. Ideas are not the collection of thoughts and things we half heard that make up most of our mental space. With this definition, you don’t get an idea in the shower, you get the beginning of an idea. To become a true idea, it must be developed with true effort.
Ideas and the rational part of the soul required to develop them is what separates us from the animals. Other people’s ideas are what enable me to hold doctrines of the faith which give me a chance at going to heaven (not a guarantee Protestants, sorry).
Fiction and poetry do this too, but often with emotional ideas that, if the author put them into non-fiction prose, would not actually be the same idea. You can’t describe it, so it has to be “danced around” as it were.
The point of reading is then to improve your thinking. It will make it possible for you to develop your own ideas, but even without putting in that work, you can connect the ideas you are reading about to each other and to other people that you meet. Having good thoughts is a prerequisite for having good conversations.
Don’t think this is utilitarian, boosting our thinking to solve problems better (though it will). “Thinking” better, in this mode, also includes loving better, dreaming better, mourning better and all sorts of soul enrichment that cannot be quoted with exact utility.
The STEM major making a mint designing circuit panels may want to read about electricity to enjoy his job a bit more, making connections metaphorically along with literally. But he definitely will want to read to enjoy his life more, enjoy his country more, and enjoy his family more. He will be more of a man.
Reading as a Boon to Masculinity
This is Crusade for Manliness so I ought to add why men in particular should become readers. Some ladies may resonate with the following as well, but that it too deep a rabbit hole for an already long article.
The act of wrestling with thoughts to turn them into original ideas is the rational equivalent of body’s ability to procreate, to make something new from itself. The male procreative role implies a further responsibility to have real ideas.
In procreating these ideas, men specifically must take the initiative. The process starts with bravery and a certain charm. The creative muse (a more feminine concept) is certainly part of the process, but needs to be courted. Inspiration cannot be forced, but it can be romanced. In the world of ideas, this courtship is carried out by reading.
Step by step, you get to know the ideas in the books. Some books are not worth keeping, but help you figure out what you are looking for. Some ideas are special enough to inspire much more loyalty. You’re thoughts mix with those of the various books and ideas are born. Actual new ideas, a unique combination of you and your sources.
These ideas as we’re defining them are powerful, both true and valuable.
They need to be true which touches the masculine role of protector. There are two sides: truth and falsehood, and a battle of ideas for men to fight. Some writers think they are clever by challenging everything, especially religious truths. By denying everything they necessarily have no foundation to their ideas. With no foundation they come off as flimsy and pathetic. Rather than being a starting ground for a whole new set of knowledge, they get rightly thrown out.
Defending the border, the true doctrines that mankind already has found, is the harder, manlier task. Conforming your ideas and your thinking to the whole body of true and beautiful works already existing requires you to read even more to check yourself. It requires real cleverness and nuance. Like a master general, the constraints provide an opportunity for elegance as well.
Getting to this point of battle and romance with books and the world of true ideas is not necessarily easy. The rewards are out there but inconvenient to find. You risk wasting a lot of time and falling among false ideas in disguise.
A true idea that is new could be trivial, much of the news for example, but this is not the hope for an idea. A new and valuable true idea is a rare find. You will need to be exposed to a lot of books with repeated ideas, wrong ones, or simply trivial ideas before you get to those of the best and worthiest kind.
A man needs to machete through the brush of the jungle to reach El Dorado. Choosing a book, and then choosing another are the steps towards this adventure full of both risk and reward. It is exactly the kind of adventure for which the masculine soul longs.
So we ought to be more specific on how to start it.
Chapter 3:
How to Choose Books
Common advice for regaining readers is to “choose books that actually interest you”.
If that is the advice that you feel good receiving, you need some tough love. If you are not interested in a lot of different books, that means you are not a very interesting person.
I believe there are not that many people who feel good receiving that advice, and mostly these writers are trying to get people to read (buy) more modern books that are not that good.
However, if you are an uninterested and uninteresting person, have no fear. This matter is easily remedied. A small dose of reading will get you interested in things quite quickly if the writing is any good.
Starting from scratch
Start with what you have in your head, thinking back there must be a time when you thought “oh I should know more about this” or “oh I should read that”. Ideally, you have some books in your home that you have not read (or have not read lately). These will do just fine.
Maybe it is the novel that was adapted into a movie, maybe it is the biography of an athlete or president. If you think “sounds boring” or “I already know what will happen” that is fine. We are setting a baseline and building an identity. It’s like doing 10 push-ups every morning, you need to build a habit.
Continue with this into method until you get into a conversation where the book(s) you have been reading or recently finished comes up somewhat naturally. Make your educated comment. If you have never been a reader, your friend or coworker will be mildly impressed. You are in. You are officially interesting again, which means you are more interested.
This brings us back to the book lover’s dilemma.
There Are Too Many Options
This is true, there are more good books than time to read them. There are a few ways around this.
Read classics
Every subject has classics. No matter how interesting you are, you probably are not interested in all subjects all the time. Let your current obsessions be the guide. Look at lists of “Best Books About X”. There will be some that show up on all or most lists. These are your classics. They may be “modern classics” as oxymoronic as it sounds, but some subjects are currently in their prime.
Once you have read enough of the classics, you can ease off the subject. Each additional work will give you less and less return. My personal theory is that reading 50 books on one subject is as good as any other method for achieving “expertise”. Reading 5 books on a subject is enough to be remarkably adept, assuming the subject is not too broad.
Read authors
The satisfying part of reading multiple books from the same author is when you can look at a subject they have maybe only touched on tangentially and confidently say to yourself “I know what that person would say about this topic”.
You approach this satisfaction when you are reading a second or third book of the same author and can recognize where they are drawing from their previous work and where they have evolved their thought. You are reading the ideas as much as the words at that point. But it works with words too. Reading enough of an author gives you a sense of their style.
I think you can get to this “style recognition” and “cross-work theme connection” level at around 3 books.
Combine primary and secondary sources
With some books, as you’re reading them, you’re thinking “I am going to have to read this again one day”. With some books, you have never even read them, but have gotten a sense of what they are about from articles and conversations with people who have.
This is the power of secondary sources.
You will reduce the need to re-read by going in or refreshing some key ideas. With some books, like classic fiction, you may not get it at all without some outside help. You will become more intellectual in the proper sense of the word. By engaging with ideas (our sophisticated fleshed out kinds) about a text, you are more likely to have ideas of your own.
Some people say they’d prefer to go in blind the first time to just “experience it for themselves”. Those people are Protestants. I’m kidding. Partially.
You cannot go into anything blind. You were raised in a society in context. Every other thing you have ever read will subtly “affect” your reading of the work. The affect will actually be so subtle as to be negligible because, thankfully, there is objective meaning in the world and words convey it quite effectively for our human purposes.
If the worry is that you will simply adopt the same opinion as the secondary source, the reply is twofold:
If you pick the right secondary source, you may be lucky enough to end up with the right opinion. Commentaries on the Gospels from literal saints are better than your blind reading.
The objection is kind of ridiculous because the nature of a secondary source is to take you out of purely buying into the primary source. By reading it, you are already thinking critically, why would you magically stop at the next level up. You could read a tertiary source if you’d like, or contrasting opinion secondary sources. You could just cut to the chase though and ask your rational intellect, “is this opinion true?” like you do with all other critical thinking.
With your classics, if they are really classic, you can append your five to five books about those books. You can also go the other way by looking at the sources of your more modern idea books, and reading those together.
I hope it is clear that you will need to upgrade from a single “To Read” list to multiple lists of books by category.
From there you can better sort priority within each list. This can be difficult. Go two books at a time, figure out which is the better of the two for you right now. You may also have to compare categories.
Ultimately, access will help you decide, along with your interests that are stronger in the moment. From your broader “category” lists, take a guess at what would be best for next month. So you’ll have:
Lists by category or author
List of “next on deck” books
List of started books that you are actively reading
List of finished books
Move items from the top into the next as needed.
If push comes to shove and you are having a hard time deciding what to put in “next on deck”, perhaps try dedicating a month to one subject (I am trying that this year). This would also solve the problem of feeling like you have too much breadth of topics and insufficient depth.
The humble checklist is used by surgeons and airline pilots, it is a required tool of the serious reader as well.
Chapter 4:
How to Read More
I’ve just told you to group books together. An obvious way to read more is to read multiple books at the same time. Jake at the excellent Substack Dreaming of the Rood recently suggested NOT doing this; that starting one book without finishing another was like cheating on your wife.
I beg to differ. At the risk of mixing my prior metaphor, starting books together is like taking your wife to dinner and her childhood friends that you’ve never met are there. She’ll have a good time and you will learn new things about her.
Seriously though, if you come across a book that you knew you wanted to read, or one you are reading references one that you have, you have to start that new book as soon as you can.
Having simultaneous fiction and non-fiction, or dense and popular-audience, or spiritual and secular is too useful to forgo. Worst case scenario you get burned out on something important like deep theology, start resenting a holy topic, and stop reading altogether.
Having more than one enables you to put down a book that simply is not good without losing too much progress on your total list for the month or year. So even if you are worried about finishing books, and I agree that finishing the whole book is important, you will want to read more than one at a time.
Debate settled. You should be actively reading three or more books at once. Obviously you should not jump back and forth page to page though if you want to get your total page numbers high.
To do just that, to boost raw pages, let’s look at some math.
The average page in a book has 250 words. The average non-fiction idea book is in the range of 300 pages. Biographies and fiction are longer. I cannot tell you what an educated person’s reading speed is because it is very very dependent on the genre. Those novels that are more than 300 pages will read far faster than 300 pages of medieval philosophy.
The easiest reading habit to integrate is the evening. For some people this is in bed, for some it may be in an armchair with a warm-lit floor lamp and a glass of bourbon. Either way, 10 pages a day amounts to 12 books a year. 10 pages a day on weekdays and 25 on weekends adds up to 17 books a year. 20 pages a weekday and 100 pages on both Saturday and Sunday adds up to 52 books a year (my rough goal).
Figure out how long it takes you to read 10 pages in your desired genres and scale according to the time you are willing to invest. Remember, 12 a year is already leaps and bounds over the average American. With the right books, a year could be all it takes to become very impressive.
But we can do more to up those pages.
Public libraries are increasingly un-impressive in their selections. Not unlike Catholic liturgy, in an attempt to attract people, they have reduced quality and hence: lost more people. However, libraries share with one another and with inter-library loans you get two major benefits.
Access to a lot of the books you will want to read, especially more famous older ones, or modern ones. More obscure theology that is old but not “classic” will remain difficult to find.
The due date of a library book will light a fire under you to finish faster than you would otherwise.
If you are struggling to find desired titles with libraries, buy used, but you could also try university libraries or niche subject matter libraries if you have any of either within driving distance.
Similarly to due dates, tracking what books you are actively reading and how many pages you have to go in a consistent system will be psychological pressure to finish faster. Record “pages to go” as often as you can.
At this point you know what books you want to read, and you are carving out time to read them. The oft repeated advice to “always have a book on you” come in here. Little pockets throughout the day can add on to the evening and weekend times we carved out earlier. Most people I’ve worked with spend their lunch break on TikTok. It seems to this writer that Tolstoy would be less embarrassing.
With evening, weekends and the little spaces throughout the day accounted, there is not much space left for reading. If you cannot read for work, the upper limit of reading has basically been reached here. However, that is all theoretical, in practice, there are some tricky things you can do.
I know because I’ve done them.
Chapter 5:
How I Actually Read More with Brutal Honesty
First of all, I have a flip phone. Sunbeam Wireless (a startup founded by Mennonites) makes it possible for me to opt out of constant web access while retaining the ability to look up directions.
Before 2024, I averaged about 20 books a year. So without the smartphone, I could’ve guessed those numbers would go up.
Second of all, I had more than my fair share of eleventh hour reading binges. Having monthly reading goals was fairly crucial for me (though I often did not live up to them). Weekly is too constricting. At any given moment, I am in the middle of 5 to 10 books (maybe more). Finishing 300 pages a week is absolutely doable as I said.
Related to this point, not all books were started at the top of the year or the top of the month. There were a few which I allowed to sit at 60, 70, or 80% read, waiting for when I was behind for the month. There were also a few books that were quite a bit under 300 pages that served the same purpose for a last minute finish. Saint books for kids are often wonderful reads. Books of the Bible are still books. Whether a “collected works” volume is one book or five for your tracking purposes is between you and God.
Thirdly and perhaps most brutally of the brutal honesty, there were times where I straight up shirked responsibilities to read instead. Evening/nighttime may be the most conducive to reading but I “snuck” in “some” extra reading in the mornings with coffee flowing through my blood and brain. And by “snuck in some”, I mean I very obviously read a lot in the mornings.
With the aforementioned coffee and the undistracted nature of mornings, I could beat my evening speed no matter the genre. The cost was my schoolwork as a student, my work for money (I was lucky to have a more flexible part time job), or my sleep.
The thing is though… the work got done.
A lot of the books I read in 2024 were about “productivity”. I honestly did learn how to do more work in less time. But then when you gain that time back, the big moral question is “what do you do with it?”
An obvious wrong answer is more productivity to get even more done and make more money. While perhaps tempting, this ends up in an infinite regress not only shallow, but silly.
In my better moments in 2024, I opted for reading, praying rosaries, and taking walks outside. I cannot imagine a more “productive” allocation of resources.
If it is true that reading enriches the God-given capacity for thought. That places it firmly below ora but above labora in a hierarchy of human action. It is a privilege to be able to trade money in for time for prayer and deep thinking through a book. The monastics show us that with a little bravery and sacrifice, it is a privilege more accessible than you might think.
Appendix
What I Read and My Rankings If You’re Curious
51—The Proximity Principle - Ken Coleman
50—The Fourth Cup - Scott Hahn
49—St Francis and the Conversion of the Muslims - Frank Rega
I know, St Francis and the Conversion of the Muslims sounds like a great title, how dare I rank it low. That was the problem, it should have been knocked out of the park with the subject matter, but it didn’t deliver.
48—The Happiness Trap - Russ Harris
47—Crown of Swords - Robert Jordan
46—To Sell is Human - Daniel Pink
45—A Mathematicians Apology - G.H. Hardy
44—Hail Holy Queen - Scott Hahn
43—Prophecy of Jeremiah - Jeremiah
I’m sorry. I understand the the Holy Ghost is a co-author of the book of Jeremiah and I have ranked it below a book about running 5ks, I have three reasons/excuses.
You cannot understand the Bible at the appropriate level just by reading it outright, you need deep prayer and meditation upon it, instruction from someone more learned and spiritual to help you, or in the very least instruction in the form of a secondary source book. Acts 8:30-33 says you cannot understand the bible on your own reading, we need tradition (note: this understanding of Acts 8 is backed by tradition).
I don’t really think it is meant to be read straight through like a novel and in isolation. The Church in Her wisdom, splits books of the bible into passages and presents them in various order. She also links practically every verse with other verses, I did not read every cross reference as I came upon it.
The Old Testament is just not as important as the New Testament. Inspired, but I read this during Advent to look for things that eluded to Christ. The only reason I can do that is because I already have the Gospels. I truly think a lot of the text is meant for the BC and the early Church converting from Judaism. There is surely stuff in there for moderns, but it certainly less obvious.
It’s also not as good as Isaiah which I read last Advent.
So again, Scott Hahn should not be offended.
42—Problem of Pain - CS Lewis
41—The Thought of Their Heart - Solange Hertz
40—Hidden Potential - Adam Grant
39—Shop Class as Soul Craft - Matthew Crawford
38—Doors of Silence - Anonymous Carthusian
37—80/20 Running - Matt Fitzgerald
36—Hillbilly Elegy - JD Vance
35—The Blatchford Controversies - GK Chesterton
34—Give and Take - Adam Grant
33—Benedict Option - Rod Dreher
32—Durable Trades - Rory Groves
31—The Father’s of the Church - Mike Aquilina
30—Win at College - Cal Newport
29—The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
28—Life of Christ - Fulton Sheen
27—The Immaculata Our Ideal - Fr. Karl Stehlin
26—Open Letter to Confused Catholics - Marcel Lefebvre
25—Saint Louis and the Last Crusade - Margaret Anne Hubbard
24—When Silence Speaks - Tim Peeters
23—Apology - Plato
It is cool to hear Socrates’ origin story, but it simply is not as good as the other dialogues I have read.
22—So Good They Can’t Ignore You - Cal Newport
21—Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris
20—Get Better at Anything - Scott H Young
19—Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss
18—World Outside Your Head - Matthew Crawford
17—How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
16—Slow Productivity - Cal Newport
15—Servile State - Hilaire Belloc
14—A World Without Email - Cal Newport
13—Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
So close to twelfth… but now you know I’m honest.
12—Straight A Student - Cal Newport
11—Four Thousand Weeks - Oliver Burkeman
10—Heretics - GK Chesterton
9—Henry V - Shakespeare
8—King Lear - Shakespeare
7—Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport
6—Political Economy of Distributism - William Salter
5—Odyssey - Homer
Odyssey is better than Iliad. I don’t actually think that is controversial.
4—Orthodoxy - GK Chesterton
3—Introduction to the Devout Life - St Francis De Sales
2—Deep Work - Cal Newport
1—Hound of Heaven: Dominic de Guzman - August Drane
Books and Slowing Down of Culture in 2025
Multiple books I read were about slowness. Some literally, like Slow Productivity, some surprisingly, like 80/20 Running. Some were less obvious, Odysseus took 10 years to make it home after a 10 year war. My favorite books were the ones I went through the slowest. (That is true outside of the year. My favorite novel: War and Peace took me 7 years to read, from ages 13 to 20.)
This could just be a trend in my reading and not indicative of culture in 2025, but if you look at the common alternative to reading: YouTube, you see a similar thing. Even the biggest YouTubers are now taking long stretches of time in between uploads. They are going slower than they used to go. I think this is because internet content has reach capacity. In the main channels of media consumption, even the highest quantity will get drowned out because there is so much content, human and artificial. Quality is the only game in town.
So in 2025 I expect this to continue, I’d point out that Stranger Things is a cultural touch point every time a season is released, not in spite of but, because of the fact that they don’t release every year.
My prediction is an increase in slowness and that this slowness will actually be an advantage. It sounds nice, but these surprisingly slow winners are not just going to be rad trads with new monasticism or conservative intellectuals smoking cigars and pondering in their armchairs. As much as I think those crowds should have more of a cultural say, the power hungry will always get power more effectively than the virtuous, even if it means slowing down.
So maybe, if you want to stay ahead of the culture, don’t just slow down, but opt out. Don’t make your life about consuming media, even books. It is cool to read 51 books, but it is cooler to pray 51 rosaries or have 51 meaningful interactions with a friend. Remember that my point of reading at all was to think, so go to these non-media experiences, or at least… think about it.