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How to read more books

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Recently I started posting on social media the books that made a strong impression as I read them, and a friend of mine wrote me asking how do I manage to read so fast, especially taking into consideration how busy people are with their jobs, family and social life. I get asked this question quite often, so this post is an attempt to answer this question.  I want to start by writing that I do not include the easy tricks that can be used to get the reading frequency up (there are plenty of blogs and vlogs about that issue already), since I do not see reading as a competitive sport or a way to self promote oneself. Some of these tricks include switching to shorter reads (thinner books), switch to audio books, divide longer books into their equivalent partial chunks (like some people could divide Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings into three books and count each one of them separately, for example), include work or study literature on your reading lists, etc. In some cases it can be just

Bookworms January 2024 list: why do we read fiction?

When I was 17 years old, I met a friend at highschool that was a bookworm like myself, so we naturally gravitated towards each other and started discussing literature. After a while, he surprises me with the revelation that he never read fiction, because he meant that only non-fiction teaches something, while fiction is just for entertainment and time-passing. This month's list is a late reply to this claim. For one of my present book club meetings, I chose five titles that, in my eyes, are five absolute masterpieces of fiction literature, because of their originality and thought provoking content, mastery and artistic use of the written language, and width in geographical and historical context. They both entertain, teach you and make you wonder.     So, here is the list: 1. Das Parfum: Die Geschichte eines Mörders [Perfume - The Story of a Murderer] ( Patrick Süskind , Germany, 1985)     - This is, until now, the best debut novel from an author I have ever read. Superbly well wr