20 Ways to Read More in 2021 (When You Just Don’t Care Anymore)

So you want to know how to read more in 2021? Interesting. Did you know we’ve been in a global pandemic for nearly a year? Have you noticed that there’s a coup happening? Perhaps you’ve heard about the many ways white supremacy is destroying us?

Maybe you should have a little break. Cut yourself some slack. Read when you feel like it and don’t feel bad when you can’t manage to read. The world is on fire and you don’t need to stress yourself out trying to do more of anything.

If you insist on continuing down this path, be forewarned: these are absurdities concocted by a cheerfully nihilistic nerd with a dark sense of humor. The tongue-in-cheek suggestions below started in the brain of rioter Jamie Canavés and then were built upon by several other hilarious persons. (Any suggestions without attribution are mine. Refer back to the warning.)

How to Read More When You Don’t Care What You Read

1. Accidentally select 6-day checkout instead of 21-day checkout at the library. ~Jamie Canavés
2. Let your cat walk across your device and speed up the narration on your audiobook. ~Jamie Canavés
3. Become super invested in reading baby board books to yourself. ~Jamie Canavés
4. Listen to multiple audiobooks simultaneously—literally play them at the same time. ~Danika Ellis
5. Put those audiobooks on double speed. ~Danika Ellis
6. Why stop at double? Try 4x speed. ~CJ Connor
7. Read a print or ebook while listening to those audiobooks. ~Danika Ellis
8. Follow a bunch of twitter accounts that tweet out books one line at a time so that every time you go on twitter you accidentally read a chapter. ~Danika Ellis
9. Tape book pages around your house, especially on the refrigerator door. ~Danika Ellis
10. Pay someone in your house to punch you if you don’t read everyday, à la Nick Miller on New Girl. ~Julia Rittenberg
11. Keep a book in the bathroom at work to read while you cry on your breaks.
12. Listen to audiobooks while you sit in the shower and cry.
13. Listen to audiobooks of children’s picture books on double speed.
14. Read only the first and last pages of every book.
15. Listen to audiobooks while driving aimlessly just to get out of the house.
16. Hide a book in your lap during your endless succession of Zoom meetings.
17. Plaster your ceiling with book pages so you can read while lying awake at night pondering your existential dread.
18. Cover your mirrors with book pages so you don’t have to look at the quarantine zombie version of yourself.
19. Toilet paper shortage? Use book pages and then read them. Or…reverse that.
20. Replace all of your televisions with ereaders.