How to Read Books When You Don't Like Reading

By Katie Azevedo, M.Ed.

It’s no secret that books contain some of the most valuable information in the world. From Greek mythology to religious texts, and diaries (Anne Frank!) to textbooks, our world relies on books to pass information to the next generation.

If you enjoy reading, consider yourself lucky, as many aspects of school are so much easier you don’t hate this primary academic requirement.

But what happens if you don’t like reading? The honest answer is that students who don’t like reading struggle more in school because the experience of reading is ruined by emotional resistance to the activity.

In this blog post, I share 6 tips for how to read books when you don’t like reading. I understand the irony of writing this as a blog post, because if you’re not a reader, this blog post won’t appeal to you. But here we go anyway.

This post is an extension of my post called “How to Get Through a Book You Don’t Like.”

How to Read Books When You Don’t Like Reading

Let me be clear about something important: Not everybody likes reading and that is okay.

This blog post does not attempt to convince anybody to like reading. If you’re an adult and you don’t need to read for your job, you can make the personal choice to never pick up a book. I hope that’s not the case for you, but that is your choice.

Instead, the tips below are geared towards students who have to read books for school. Whether reading a novel for a literature course or a biology textbook for science class, you’ll be required to read as part of every curriculum. So when you can’t escape a reading requirement, use the tips below.

1. Put Your Feelings Aside

I understand this tip may seem insensitive and weird. But hear me out because this is probably the most important tip of all.

If you have to read something for school, then whether you have negative feelings or positive feelings toward reading doesn’t change the fact that you still have to read.

Not liking reading doesn’t make the assignment go away. But repeating the narrative over and over again in your head that you hate reading will make your experience 1000 times harder than it needs to be.

You can “not like” something and still do it. The ability to do that is a superpower. So I encourage you to feel what you feel for a moment, get your “I hate reading” feelings out of your system, and then start reading despite your feelings.

This tip may seem easier said than done and I probably would’ve rolled my eyes at it when I was in high school. But I stand by the fact that if there’s one tip in this entire blog post that you try, it’s this one.

Reducing the drama around your feelings toward reading can have a massively positive impact on your reading experience.

2. Romanticize the Experience

Our external environments have so much power over us. When you have to read a book but you don’t like reading, do everything in your power to optimize your environment beforehand.

This is called romanticization, and it can be magic.

Here are some tips for romanticizing your environment while reading:

Go to a café
Go to the library
Read outside
Dim the lights and light a candle
Read while snuggling with a pet
Pour a cup of coffee or tea while you read
Read at a large dining room table (don’t knock it till you try it!)

In an effort to convince you that romanticizing the experience can make you hate reading less, I’m going to walk you through two analogies

Imagine you were trying to establish an exercise habit, but you’ve never really enjoyed working out before. Which scenario do you think would give you the better workout experience?

Scenario A: You wake up at 5 AM to go into your cold cement basement with a flickering fluorescent bulb and try to will yourself to do 100 push-ups and situps with no music on.

Scenario B: You move your coffee table to the side, throw on your music and turn it all the way up, open the shades, and do your workout in the bright and happy living room.

Obviously scenario B would give you the better workout experience. Intuitively we know this. But for some reason, it’s hard to apply that logic to cognitive tasks like reading.

Let’s look at another hypothetical example:

Let’s say that you’re trying to eat healthy. You’re not a fan of fruits and vegetables, but you know they’re good for you so you’re making the effort.

Which scenario do you think would give you the better eating experience?

Scenario A: You throw some wilted lettuce from the refrigerator on a paper plate and cut up a tomato that’s been getting soft on your kitchen counter for a little too long. You eat from the plate, standing up. Hm, yum.

Scenario B: You chop some crisp Romaine lettuce and put it into a pretty glass bowl with some fresh pre-chopped veggies and chicken you grabbed from the grocery store. You set a place at the kitchen table, light a candle, and eat your salad.

Again, it doesn’t take a genius to know that scenario B would enhance our eating experience, even if we didn’t like vegetables.

We need to apply this mindset to other activities we don’t like doing, which for you might be reading. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: our external environment and how we set up our surroundings plays a powerful role in our mood and motivation.

3. Know When You’re Going to Stop Reading

There’s nothing worse than doing something we don’t like and having no idea when it will end. A great tip for how to read books when you don’t like reading is to give yourself a stopping point before you even start.

There are a few different ways you could go about implementing this strategy. I will outline a few of them below.

Option A: Read for a pre-determined amount of time. Before you read, give yourself a time limit that gives you permission to stop reading when you reach that time limit. I suggest setting a timer if you use this strategy.
Option B: Read a pre-determined amount of pages. Figure out how many pages you’re going to read (or have to read) and put a sticky note on your target page number. Read until you reach the sticky note.
Option C: Use the Pomodoro Technique to read. You can use the Pomodoro Technique in combination with Option A or Option B, or you can use it on its own. Here’s my complete Pomodoro Technique tutorial where I teach you exactly how to use this 25-minute magic strategy.

4. Read Along With an Audio Book

Audiobooks aren’t for everyone, but they can certainly help you get through books when you don’t like reading.

The downside to this strategy is that not all books are available as audiobooks, especially textbooks. If you’re reading a non-textbook and are having trouble finding an audiobook, try YouTube. Many books are unofficially recorded as audiobooks by random people on YouTube who actually do a pretty decent job.

I usually suggest that students listen to an audiobook while simultaneously following along with a physical book because combining the two activities can decrease your chances of zoning out. (Does reading make you sleepy? Here are my tips for not falling asleep while reading.)

If you’ve tried audiobooks and insist they’re not your jam, maybe combining the audiobook while falling along in the actual book will be different. Like every strategy in this list, I suggest you don’t knock it till you try it.

Better yet, combine this strategy #3. Knowing when you can stop reading (or listening) can help you endure the experience better than if you had no end in sight.

5. Get Checked for Learning Disabilities.

ADHD, executive function deficits, dyslexia and language-based learning disabilities can all make reading ultra unenjoyable.

Even if you have the fundamental literacy and phonics skills to decode (which is the fancy word for pronouncing words), that doesn’t mean you understand what you’re reading. ADHD, executive function deficits, dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities can impact your comprehension or understanding of what you’re reading despite your ability to pronounce words on a page.

The point of this blog post is not to share strategies for increasing reading comprehension, as I do that in this video and this post.

Rather, the point of this blog post is to share strategies for how to read books when you don’t like reading. It would be an oversight on my part not to include a tip that recognizes the power of learning disabilities to ruin the reading experience for students.

If you suspect you have an undiagnosed learning disability, ADHD, or dyslexia, you can get evaluated. High school or college students should start by contacting your student services department. If you have ADHD, contact your physician or pediatrician.

6. Do Some Prep Work

We stretch before we before we exercise. We preheat the oven before we put in the cookies. We put the dishes into the dishwasher before we turn the dishwasher on. There are just things we do BEFORE the real thing we’re doing that make the whole experience more effective. Same goes for reading.

If you read a book and know nothing about the context, the story, the author, themes, plot, time period, etc., then reading can be so much harder than it needs to be.

However, if you follow any of these 5 strategies before you read, I promise your book will be less painful.

Final Notes About Reading Books When You Don’t Like Reading

It would be false and naive to say the 6 tips in this post will suddenly make you love reading. I mean, that’s the goal and I certainly hope they help, but that’s not my promise here.

Instead, my intention is to teach you strategies that have the potential to make reading more enjoyable, or at least less painful. When we face a required task that we don’t like – such as reading – we’d be out of our minds not to try everything in our power to improve the experience.

PS: Are you a parent whose child doesn’t like reading? Here are some tips for helping your child to read when they don’t want to.