Thanks to my job, it’s pretty clear how much I love books. And I hear from a lot of adults that they also love books and reading (book nerds of the world, unite!). But what I also hear often (and feel myself, to be honest) is that even though many of us love to read, we don’t do as much reading as we’d like to or as we used to.

It’s just hard to squeeze it in sometimes, you know? (Although I’m always amazed at how, when I have a really good book that I can’t put down, suddenly I can find several extra hours a day to read it.)

If “read more” is on your to-do list or is one of your resolutions, I have a few little tricks that help me get through my ever-growing TBR list. I thought I’d share them here in case they might work for you!

  1. The Kindle app. The Kindle app is the best thing that ever happened to my reading. I resisted getting a Kindle for ever (“it’s just not the saaaame as a book with real pages!”) until my partner, Josh, convinced me that my piles of grad school reading would be so much easier if I had one. Post-grad school, I don’t read so much on my Kindle anymore because I never remember to charge it (#adulting), but if I have a book in my Kindle app on my phone, it’s sooo much easier to resist the siren song of mindless Instagram/Facebook/Pinterest scrolling. I go straight to the book instead.
  2. Skim, skim, skim. The Internet is full of so many interesting things to read! But skimming is your friend here. Most things don’t really require an in-depth read (same goes for magazines).
  3. Read on your break. A while back I read something that’s really stuck with me as the primary caregiver of small children. It was something to the effect of: claim your breaks! Meaning, a normal office-type adult worker gets a couple of short breaks and maybe an hour for lunch every day, during which she/he doesn’t have to work. So (theoretically at least) I also aim for a couple of short, child-free breaks while I’m home with the girls every day. Sometimes this looks like me standing next to the pantry speed-stuffing graham crackers into my mouth while I procrastinate trying to make naps happen… but on my better days I crack a book and read for 20 minutes while my kids entertain themselves.
  4. Have a few different books you can read. This one probably depends on the person—I know some people are “one book at a time” readers—but for me it helps to have at least a couple of books that I’m reading at the same time. That way, I can read whatever I’m in the mood for at the moment. Sometimes, if you only have one book there and you’re not interested in it, you’ll just not read. And at least for me, it’s so much easier to make time to read something that I’m enjoying rather than something I’m kind of slogging through (this is the part where I confess that I have one book I’ve been reading for A YEAR. It’s not even a long book! Or a bad book! I just can’t seem to finish it).
  5. Keep a reading list a la mano. One of the most frustrating things is to suddenly find yourself with time to read but then realize you have no idea what to read. And for me at least, because I have limited reading time, I definitely want to make sure I’m not wasting it on mediocre books. So keep a reading list! And (very important) keep it on-hand. I use the Notes app on my phone so that it’s easy to pull up if I’m in the library or in the airport about to board a flight (the two main times I panic-search for a book).

I think about adult reading a lot, mainly because I think about kid reading a lot. And one thing I know for sure is that it’s super important to model reading for your chiquitos because of course, if they don’t see you doing it, they probably won’t think it’s that great, either.

And it’s not just about the kids, either—reading is fuuun! I mean, tell me what’s more pleasant than an hour spent with a great book on the couch while it rains outside / in the hammock in the sunshine / in bed on a lazy Saturday? NOTHING, that’s what.

I’d love to hear what helps you read more books! I’ve also heard of people keeping track of how many books they read each year, which is something that I haven’t tried but I think would be super interesting (or maybe more like “oh desilusión,” not sure).