I didn’t truly enjoy reading until my early adulthood. Now I love it, even though I read for a living (working in fintech). My rules that lead to being a book lover:

1. Read 20 min a night before bed. It’s relaxing and makes me tired. I leverage that.
2. Read what you like. Read the first third of as many different genres as possible. Libraries help with this, but used books are also dirt cheap. I prefer “hard sci fi”, where physics is obeyed. Also, I love a good “dude with amnesia” story because it puts you in the same place as the narrator.
3. Don’t guilt yourself for not completing a book. Who cares? Learn to enjoy the process, not the payoff. Bored of the book? Put it down. Move on.
4. There’s no test at the end. Don’t read like you need to know everything. Just try to absorb the story.

These work for me. I finish about 3-7 books a year but start many more.

Benefits I’ve noticed:

• Better attention span. As others have said here, books demand more commitment than other media.
• Extensive vocabulary.
• Gets me away from screens. Working in tech means I use a screen 8-12hrs/day. Going home to use screens for entertainment is a bummer to me.
• I connect with wisdom imparted by books. IMO, “The Daily Stoic” wouldn’t connect as deeply for me if it wasn’t presented in that packaging.
• The social aspect. I promise sharing the books you love with others will kindle relationships, and sometimes life long. That benefit exists whether or not you like the same genres as them.
  • Related: books are never lent; they’re given, and ideally have a long lineage of owners.

These are my opinions, not statements of fact.

Like most things in life, there’s no “right” answer. It just needs to be right for you at that time. Be patient and try to not judge yourself harshly for the things you do or don’t like, but do try as much as you have appetite for.

I recommend Andy Wier (The Martian, Project Hail Mary) and Blake Crouch (Dark Matter, Recursion) to anyone looking to read more engaging fiction.

I just loved 1984.

You probably have ADHD.

The difference between reading posts on the internet and AI slop compared to a book is the book requires you to pay attention longer to digest the story arc.

As someone that’s been making their way through a book at all times since I could learn to read, it’s worth it. Books have more impact than random internet blurbs. But you have to find stories that you like and you have to reprogram your brain from being hooked on quick internet endorphin hits.

Try non fiction. May be more your style.

This is normal don’t be ashamed, social media, chaos of this decade and phones have destroyed our attention span, keeping focused on an activity is so difficult for most of this generation especially if it’s as uneventful as reading is

My best advice is to try Manga, the visuals might keep you interested enough to hook you on the activity of reading, then you can try more text heavy books as you go, you have to be addicted to it to fight addiction of phones

You can also try Audiobooks but i personally find myself zoning out on them so many times, it’s like i’m consuming books without actually taking in it’s content

Have you tried reading a book that sounded interesting for fun and not just because you were forced to in school?

One of the biggest problems with modern reading is that nobody ever has an hour to kill.

As raw entertainment, reading can’t compete with screens.

My tip is to ban your phone from the bathroom. Shitting is just about the only time you’re sitting still with nothing obvious to occupy your mind. In this situation a shampoo label is interesting.

Those are more like conversations than actually reading a book. They’re also very short with immediate payoff. Sounds like some unbalanced brain chemistry around delayed gratification - do you have problems with that in other parts of your life? If so it could be ADHD.

I really struggle with books that sound like a narration and much prefer them when I feel like they’re in the room telling me the story. I’ve found it much easier to find this in young adult fiction compared to adult novels.

Some examples of books that hooked me right away as a kid and I read in a month or less:

• Holes
• Hatchet
• The Call of the Wild
• My Side of the Mountain
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians
• Artemis Fowl

Seems to me you prefer texts that have a fact-presenting or conversational tone rather than a narrative. Nothing wrong with that.

Have you tried short stories? Take a look here: !shortstories@literature.cafe

If you want to find a good physical book, just head to your local library and spend some time wandering around, trying different books. It’s OK to skim through books.

May be because of a short attention span.

Or maybe you need the constant feedback that an AI chat simulates.

I LOVE reading. Books, comics, Lemmy posts & comments too. Not AI conversations, those apps are relentless suck-ups.

But you don’t have to. My own kids I kept making them try books until they found stuff they like but 3/4 of them still like reading, one doesn’t, that’s fine - we are all different and it’s not like you are illiterate, you can read and write as communication.

• Are you aphantasic (unable to form mental images of things based on descriptions)?

• Have you tried audiobooks?

• Have you tried reading books of movies you’ve already seen (so you don’t have to keep track of characters and plot, and can focus on the elements unique to prose)?

66 here. I’ve read one book since I graduated in 1978. I’ve been retired for 11 years now and doing well. Books are like anything else. Either you’re into them or you’re not! It means nothing! You’re good.