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.