My reading habit

A friend recently asked in the responses to my annual book gifting tradition how I maintain my reading habit. I thought this was a very good question, one that I haven’t actually examined in detail before. Over the many years of tracking my reading, I’ve somewhat backed my way into a set of routines that work for me.

I can’t claim the following is the most optimal setup, but I am proud that reading is central to my life. I’ve managed to fit books into my life amidst the chaos of work, personal commitments, hobbies, obligations, and even international moves. I like being a person who reads a lot, who has good book recommendations, and whose name pops up in people’s heads when they receive an unexpected book in the mail.

I suspect I will continue to revise my reading habits for the rest of my life, especially as my circumstances change. I regularly come across other writers, artists, and public thinkers who share their reading approach. I eagerly steal from their setups when it suits me.

So I hope that the details of my routines inspire similar copycats. Let’s all read more, deeply and joyfully, especially when what’s happening in the world these days can be so destabilizing.

I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.

– Kurt Vonnegut

Discovery

I care about reading a lot, but I don’t particularly care about being well-read in any definition of the word.

The concept of adult personal curriculums blew up on social media last autumn, and if you like shaping your reading that way, then more power to you! For me, I find that long-term rigid structures don’t work because it puts an undue amount of (self-imposed, unnecessary) pressure on a hobby I wish to be a low-effort and fulfilling.

Personal curriculums are just the next step in the natural evolution of aesthetic journaling.

I also find it unpleasant to focus on what I should be reading, which evokes a whole lot of feelings of guilt and obligation, and prefer to lean in to what I want to read. I have learned by trial and error how to cultivate a book backlog, and now it only consists of titles that are actively interesting and stimulating to me.

My reading taste can swing from wildly eccentric to solidly mainstream. I alternate between super niche books and picking up the most popular trashy romantasy novel of the day. Frankly, the whole idea of needing a certain kind of book checklist in order to qualify as a good intellectual (or again that dreaded word, “well-read”) smells like literary snobbery to me.

I think I’ve always been quite defensive of eclectic, open-minded reading because I’ve been a lifelong science fiction and fantasy reader. Most of my favorite books will never be taught in schools or universities. As Ursula K. Le Guin laments about a lifetime of being dismissed as a “genre fiction” writer,

Of course every reader will prefer certain genres and be bored or repelled by others. But anybody who claims that one genre is categorically superior to all others must be ready and able to defend their prejudice. And that involves knowing what the “inferior” genres actually consist of, their nature and their forms of excellence. It involves reading them.

If we thought of all fictional genres as literature, we’d be done with the time-wasting, ill-natured diatribes and sneers against popular novelists who don’t write by the rules of realism, the banning of imaginative writing from MFA writing courses, the failure of so many English teachers to teach what people actually read, and the endless, silly apologising for actually reading it.

If critics and teachers gave up insisting that one kind of literature is the only one worth reading, it would free up a lot of time for them to think about the different things novels do and how they do it, and above all, to consider why certain individual books in every genre are, have been for centuries, and will continue to be more worth reading than most of the others.

Because there is the real mystery. Why is one book entertaining, another disappointing, another a revelation and a lasting joy? What is quality? What makes a good book good and a bad book bad?

Not its subject. Not its genre. What, then? That’s what good book-talk has always been about.

So, all those words just to say: I read a wide-range of books.

…on automating my book pipeline

How do I find these interesting books, then?

I’ve managed to automate most of my book discovery to be push-based rather than pull-based. This is ideal because it’s requires very little input energy from me: I simply follow writers and influencers whose content I already enjoy, and their recommendations will eventually end up in my email inbox or social media feeds. I plan to add a blogroll to my website soon (inspired by Chris Glass) to share all my favorite websites and content creators.

When I see a new book title, I’ll open my todo app and log it as a todo item. I keep my backlog in a “books” project categorized by different genres. I used to track my book list in a spreadsheet or note in the Notes app, but I found that it was too much effort to add or update. I’m always using my todo app for daily life logistics so it fits seamlessly into my routine. I don’t need any complex or fiddly organization features, just a way to quickly write down a few lines of text without interrupting my current flow. If I’m in the middle of something, I leave the book in an uncategorized inbox section at the top and come back later to sort it.

I also try to include the source and any useful details in the description. Books might lurk in the backlog for months (or heaven forbid, years) so I’ve found that these notes help me remember why I saved a particularly obscure or quirky rec. It also helps me remember which ones are direct recommendations from friends and family. I try to prioritize those books first because I love having real-time discussions about the book contents.

But if I miss or forget to capture a book title, I don’t sweat it too much. The benefit of curating a high-quality media diet across many different channels (newsletters, podcasts, Youtube, BookTok, etc) means that the truly outstanding book titles will bubble up time and time again.

The recurring reminders are also a good signal to bump it up in my reading priority. I usually resist setting timelines to read books (creates more unnecessary pressure), with the one exception: if a work is particularly resonant in the cultural zeitgeist at that time, I’ll start it then. It’s fun to read contemporaneously so I can engage with the communal discussions and thinkpieces.

Some recent releases which generated a ton of buzz, encouraging timely reading:

• 2025: Perfection & The Tainted Cup
• 2026: Flesh

Even Amazon UK is getting in on the Flesh hype.

Sometimes older works from the literary canon re-emerge into the zeitgest as well. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust and Middlemarch by George Eliot are two other classics mentioned quite regularly in my content catalog, so they are strong contenders for my 2026 reading list.

…on actively searching for books

Beyond a passive book pipeline, I regularly seek out new books as well. I very much subscribe to Celine Nguyen’s idea of research as leisure activity:

Research as leisure activity is directed by passions and instincts. It’s fundamentally very personal: What are you interested in now? It’s fine, and maybe even better, if the topic isn’t explicitly intellectual or academic in nature. And if one topic leads you to another topic that seems totally unrelated, that’s something to get excited about—not fearful of. It’s a style of research that is well-suited for people okay with being dilettantes, who are comfortable with an idiosyncratic, non-comprehensive education in a particular domain.

I do a lot of research on topics for personal projects or areas of special interest, such as:

• Japan: travel writing, cookbooks, and social analysis which directly influence my guide books
• Fashion: books and podcasts on the intersection of American Ivy, Japanese Ivy, and British prep fashion styles
• Architecture: how building homes and the language of design patterns have evolved

I also sign myself up for one-off research projects to make the reading experience more dynamic and interesting. I have had a lot of rewarding experiences reading paired books to create a dialogue between texts. Recently, I read a science book together with a memoir about the winter season, and the complementary reading stimulated a lot more thoughts and reflection than each text could accomplish on its own. I considering following this thread further by adopting Jasper Nighthawk’s ritual of reading a big winter book every winter season.

Traveling is also a great excuse to search out books that take place in that particular city or country. During and after our international move, I read a mixture of fantasy and nonfiction books set in London. For an upcoming trip to Japan in a few weeks, I’ll be reading books about Tokyo’s urban design and recently translated bestseller.

Once I purchase a book, I go into my todo app to mark it as complete. And just like I don’t put any pressure to read a book on a certain timeline, I don’t force myself to read it as soon as I’ve purchased it. So in reality, the list is less of a book-reading tracker and more of a book-buying one.

I have set a personal rule of total book purchasing freedom. I always allow myself to buy a book I’m excited about, and doesn’t matter if I already have a ton of books in the queue or just bought one the day before. In the grand scheme of all the different types of shopping addictions, books seem like the most harmless kind of purchasing compulsion.

I strongly believe in Umberto Eco’s philosophy of a working library, where you accumulate more unread than read books. I am certainly nowhere near Eco’s personal collection of over 30,000 books, but I’ve certainly started giving it a solid go in the last few years. As my local bookseller advised me recently, “Buying books is a different hobby than reading books.”

I am most susceptible to picking up new books during one of my favorite past-times: wandering around a physical bookstore. The serendipity of the store layout often leads me to discovering new titles or reinforcing popular ones already on my list. I love libraries for this reason too. The digital reading experience will never be able to replace embodied exploration with the intentionality of a human mind arranging a shelf or window display, combined with that perfect smell of paper books.

The only trouble with borrowing rather than buying is that it sets a time limit on when to finish reading, which we’ve already established is problematic for me. Still, I make neverending attempts at borrowing physical books or using Libby app. Most of the time the books sit accusingly in my house for weeks before I ultimately return them, feeling quite embarrassed.

Reading

Everyone has idiosyncrasies when it comes to their daily habits and routines, and I’m no different with reading.

I typically have several books in progress, one for each form factor:

• Audiobook: Used for commutes, household chores, and walking the dog. I can only really ingest nonfiction books in audio form because I’m multi-tasking and only half paying attention. Typically, I am listening to a book about science or technology.
• Ebook: The default mode of reading, extremely convenient to access any time I have some downtime. I like to have something on hand that can fill any amount of time, from dedicated hours during a weekend to short 10-minute gaps between one activity and the next. I usually will be reading fiction, to balance out the content with nonfiction audiobooks. If I’m re-reading a book, such as refreshing myself on a previously-read series ahead of the next release, I’ll use the Kindle plus audible sync to finish faster.
• Physical book: A mix of fiction and nonfiction, depending on what I’ve acquired at the bookshop. I have small stacks of books scattered throughout the house, various ongoing research topics to return to when it suits me. Sometimes older or out of print books are only available in physical form. I also have found certain kinds of fiction very difficult to read digitally: epistolary writing and experimental literature simply work better for my brain if I can physically hold it. I also always have one fiction novel by my bedside to wind down for sleep.

I do most of my eBook reading on my phone in the Kindle app, of course. I’ve been trying to switch to using my iPad at home, mostly because I think I’m developing a mild carpal tunnel by holding my phone in a demented claw grip for hours on end. I also own a separate e-ink reader (the Boox Palma!) which is a joy to read on, especially when I want to avoid the endless distraction of smartphone screens.

One of my superpowers is that I can read pretty much anywhere. I especially love trains and planes because the lack of distractions. The only place I have trouble reading is in the car since I always get carsick, even with motion accessibility settings enabled. Luckily audiobooks and podcasts are suitable alternatives.

But if was up to me, the best places to read are:

• Cozied up at home on the living room couch, with lo-fi jazz playing in the background
• Seated in a squashy chair at a coffee shop, sipping a flat white
• Curled up in the window seat of a cabin, snow silently falling outside
• Sprawled on the grassy slopes of a beautiful park at golden hour, in late summer when the hottest days are over, with my dog nosing around me

Our living room, a local coffee spot, and hanging out with the dog at the park.

Record-keeping

Over the years, I’ve cobbled together and invented much of the record-keeping for my reading habit.

I’ve been tracking my completed books using Airtable since 2016. I think any spreadsheet app would work just as well, and eventually I might migrate if they ever change their pricing plan to start charging me a monthly fee. Airtable does have some nice-to-have features like form integrations for my annual book gifting but it’s not crucial to have it consolidated into a single system. I don’t use Goodreads or StoryGraph because I simply don’t need any of the social features with my own custom discovery pipeline.

I currently have 361 books tracked in a database. For each book, I simply record the following:

• Title
• Author
• Type (fiction vs nonfiction)
• Genre
• Personal rating (1-5)
• Date completed
• Year completed

I used to also write down personal notes and other attributes, too, but I found that I never went back to look at those details. And since I do my holiday book lists every year, it’s not so long that I’ve forgotten the crucial parts of the books. For past years, I can always consult my past write-ups if I need a reminder of my top book picks.

I don’t track books I did not finish (DNF) for a few reasons:

1. It adds extra work when I am only focused on books I plan to actively recommend
2. I occasionally do return to DNFs and complete them
3. It just harshes the vibe–I’d rather not think about books I dislike or found merely ok

I will track DNFs for book series though, since some of the books were good enough to read to completion. It’s interesting to reflect on why I stopped partway through. I keep certain series in a “paused” state with the intention to return during a reading lull.

Snapshot of the state of various book series.

The part of record-keeping I’m most proud of is how I collect quotations and my favorite book passages. For years, I had a gigantic collection of notes that I never looked at. I’ve personally never been interested in memorizing quotes to regurgitate later, so I have no need for Readwise and it’s spaced repetition offerings.

Instead, I’ve built this elegant (and free!) workflow:

1. Read across ebooks, audiobooks, and physical books
2. Highlight/annotate across different apps
3. Add to my quotations sheet
4. Revisit using Recite extension

For Kindle and Audible, I use the highlights and clips features in the apps. For physical books, I use the Highlighted iOS app which uses OCR to easily scan pages and save them as text quotes.

The app also provides a nice overview of the physical books I’ve recently read and highlighted.

So I built a Chrome extension called Recite which uses a simple Google spreadsheet to display a saved quote on each new tab page. It’s a really low effort way to see quotes from books I’ve read, and I always get a small frisson of delight when I see a great quote from a book I haven’t read in many years. Since building the extension in 2023, I’ve already accumulated 600+ quotations and highlights using this system.

Recite in action, displaying one out of hundreds of saved quotes.

---

I hope you’ve enjoyed this braindump of my reading practice. I’d love to hear about what works for you too, so shoot me a note at hello@vivqu.com.

I’ll end with these great words from Blackbird Spyplane:

Our appetite for life is so big that living just one life doesn’t always feel like enough. We want to know what other people’s lives are like, and we want other people to live some of our lives, too.

A book is, we know, an unrivaled technology for living more life.

---