How I Learned That Loving Books Is Not the Same as Reading Well

Photo by the author: part of my home library in Taipei.

As an avid reader, I have always wanted to know how to read better.

Not faster for the sake of speed. Not more books for the sake of numbers. Better.

I read across a strange but satisfying range of subjects. Right now, for example, I am reading the I Ching, The Seal of the Unity of the Three (Cantong qi), music theory, historical thrillers by Steve Berry, The Story of Mankind by Van Loon, Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary, and whatever else catches my attention at the right moment.

My home reflects that habit. There are books in the bedroom, books in the study, books in the living room, books in the dining area. Stacks on tables. Books beside the bed. Books waiting in corners like quiet companions. I live surrounded by them.

And yet, for all that reading, there are still books I bought decades ago and never read, books I got halfway through, books of which I have read only a few pages, or books I skimmed once long ago. I know how far I got in each one because it either has or does not have a bookmark inside; some bookmarks are more worn than others, placed closer to or farther from the cover.

Some of them travelled with me around the world for decades; others joined me halfway through the journey: from Taipei to Philadelphia to Hong Kong to Legazpi, and now back to Taipei.

I remember where I bought them: mostly from Amazon, some from bookstores that have already closed.

Each time I pass by these unread or unfinished books, I feel like an irresponsible parent facing children adopted from an orphanage — I once wanted to treat them properly, but for reasons I no longer remember, I failed.

Ironically, those unfinished books are still near the top of my list — or, more precisely, on my bucket list: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; The Upanishads; A Course in Miracles; The Kybalion; The Story of Art; Guns, Germs, and Steel; A History of Reading; 1421; The Historian; The Satanic Verses; and a long list of books I have yet even to name.

It seems I have fewer problems with Chinese books, perhaps because I read faster in my native language. Perhaps because, when I see a Chinese translation in a bookstore, I tend to buy the English original instead. I am not sure.

What I do know is this: 95% of the books that make me feel guilty are English copies, and many of them are turning yellow as time goes by.

I cannot quite remember why I bought those books in the first place, but I often remember the bookstores where I found them. And I never forget the excitement of bringing them home, flipping through them, and placing them on the shelf for the first time.

But why couldn’t I finish them?

I found myself asking a set of basic questions.

How do I choose books more intelligently?
How do I stay attentive when my energy is uneven?
How do I understand what really matters in a book?
How do I remember what I read without drowning in highlights and notes?
How do I build a real reading life that fits adult time, adult fatigue, and adult responsibilities?

How Read Better Was Created

That curiosity became the starting point of this project: a learning guide aimed at helping book lovers choose and read books more effectively.

I wanted practical answers, so I started looking for them online.

Not to replace reading. Not to think for me. But to help me think more clearly about reading itself — from motivation, to the act of reading, to comprehension, to memory.

What came back was more useful than I expected.

The responses were structured, thoughtful, and surprisingly realistic. They were not about becoming an idealized super-reader. They were about becoming a better reader in real life — a life with distractions, limited energy, changing interests, and too many books competing for attention.

I found the material genuinely helpful. More than that, I found it worth sharing.

So I turned the ideas into a project: Read Better.

I call it a project quite deliberately. It is not a grand literary manifesto. It is a practical, reader-centered exploration of how to read with more clarity, more intention, and more enjoyment.

What I Found

What I liked most about this work is that it does not romanticize reading. It treats reading as something that should serve our minds and our lives, not our guilt.

Here are a few ideas that I found especially useful during the process.

1. Choose books more intelligently

Not every book deserves our full commitment.

One of the most useful shifts is learning how to choose books with more intention: what season of life we are in, what kind of energy we have, what kind of reading experience we actually want, and whether a book is worth our attention right now.

This sounds obvious, but many of us still choose books by habit, impulse, or vague obligation. Instead, we should first consider what kind of reading experience we actually want the next time we choose a new book.

2. Pay better attention while reading

Attention is not just discipline. It is design.

Sometimes the problem is not that we are lazy readers. Sometimes the book is wrong for the moment, the session is too long, the environment is off, or our mind is simply tired.

Better reading often comes from adjusting the conditions rather than blaming ourselves for lacking attention.

3. Understand more of what matters

Not every page, and not every book, carries equal weight.

A better reader learns to notice the spine of an argument, the emotional center of a story, and the structure beneath the details. That is different from treating every sentence with the same level of seriousness. Reading well often means sensing what is essential and what is secondary.

This was one of the mistakes I often made — I sometimes wanted to capture too many factual details in a historical novel and ended up destroying the joy of reading it.

4. Remember more without over-highlighting or over-note-taking

This point especially spoke to me.

Many readers highlight too much and retain too little. The same goes for excessive note-taking. The project offers a more selective framework for remembering — a set of questions built around identifying key ideas, making light connections, and letting understanding do more of the work. It helps readers recall the key points of books more effectively.

5. Build a reading life that fits real adult energy and time

This may be the most important point of all.

A good reading life should fit the person we truly are, not a fantasy version of ourselves.

Some days we may have deep focus. Some days we may have only twenty attentive minutes. That still counts. In fact, twenty good minutes may be far better than an hour of distracted reading done out of duty. We do not need an aggressive reading plan that we will never be able to sustain.

The 7-Day Action Plan

What I wanted most was an actionable way to improve my reading approach. One of the most useful suggestions was a 7-day action plan.

It takes the ideas out of theory and turns them into something practical. Instead of merely explaining how to “read better,” it gives readers a short, manageable structure for changing how they approach books. I liked that very much.

It is concrete. It is realistic. And it respects the fact that most people do not need another impossible system. They need a better rhythm.

That, to me, is the strength of this project. It is thoughtful without being fussy, useful without being rigid.

Why I’m Sharing This

I made Read Better because I was genuinely curious about how to become a better reader myself.

Then I realized other book lovers might enjoy it too.

So if you love books, live among books, buy more books than you can immediately finish, and still want your reading life to become sharper, calmer, and more intentional, this project (available on Amazon) may speak to you.

Not as another system to follow, but as a way to read with a little more clarity and a little less guilt.