So…onto the next read perhaps. I’ve been re-reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, though that’s on paper and I need something on my Kindle app to read in those little chunks of time, or when I’m sitting in the dark (putting the toddler to bed). I’d also like to find a novel since I prefer to have a mix going.

I never feel good about abandoning a book, or even putting aside a book for a while, especially when I know it’s a very good book. I just also know that if I’m not feeling like I want to read a book — and certain themes can do that to me — then I won’t be particularly motivated to pick it up. And if I’m not motivated to pick it up, I won’t make progress, and time has an opportunity cost. I could be using that time to read through something else that I’m in a better head space for.

If I live for 50 more years and read 50 books a year, that’s 2500 books. That is a small enough number as it is. I wouldn’t want that number to be even smaller because I tried to soldier through a book that I wasn’t feeling motivated to read.

Have you abandoned, or at least put aside, any books recently?

In other reading news: I’m currently reading Richard II (no, not Richard III – I already read that one) in my Shakespeare reading project. It’s not really one of Shakespeare’s most memorable, but I did find myself nodding in recognition to those lines I read this morning about “This happy breed of men, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea…” which culminates in Gaunt’s tribute to “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” I remember this well from some airline commercial decades ago. I don’t remember which airline, but it did make me want to fly to London!

Photo: We are always choosing how to spend our time. As the bracelet says, “Choose well.”

The good news is that it is quite possible to do that. I believe that even busy people can find time to read. And I also believe that when busy people choose the right things to read, they magically start finding more time to dig into their books!

Hence, the creation of “TO BE READ: Ready-made lists for the ambitious reader.” Get my new reading guide now by signing up below.

I think that one of the things that stops busy people from reading more is that figuring out what to read takes work. If leisure time is already scarce, who wants to invest some of that leisure time in plotting out the rest of it? But one of my great discoveries in life is that fun sometimes takes effort. I decided to accept that, rather than fight it. Now I build in 30 minutes every 2 weeks or so to figure out what should go on my “To Be Read” (TBR) list. I look at suggestions from blogs (particularly Modern Mrs. Darcy), and from publications (O magazine runs many reviews, as does the Wall Street Journal). I started reading through lesser known works by authors I’d enjoyed in the past. Now, if I find a new author I like, I’ll read through everything she’s written. I’ll look at Amazon’s algorithms and see which other authors are suggested as being similar. If I’m reading one non-fiction book on a topic, I might read another book on the same topic to give me a different perspective. I’ll also read through books mentioned in other books I’m reading!

Now, I always have a good idea of what to read next. Good books make me want to read. When I’m reading a good book, I turn what would have been magazine reading time into book reading time. When I’m reading a good book, I do less of other things (email checking, puttering around the house), and more reading. The key is just figuring out what I would really enjoy.

This brings me to the goal of this reading guide. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year figuring out what to read next. I want to save you some of the effort! This reading guide has seven ready-made TBR lists with suggestions of books to read in sequence on certain themes. Each of these lists should occupy you for at least two weeks (unless you read really fast!) and often closer to a month. They explore a concept from multiple different angles. They sometimes stick with an author for a while so you can get a sense of his or her style.

Here are the seven lists, which themselves need not be read in sequence, though I’d suggest reading each individual TBR list in the order suggested:

• Travel
• Place
• 1925-1927
• American Originals
• Embracing or Escaping the Small Town
• Your Best Life
• Encounters with the Absurd

A few notes on the suggestions. First, I really, really enjoyed reading all of the books in the guide (and in two cases, writing them!). There are plenty of books out there that you might know are important, and accomplishing something exciting in a literary sense, and yet you still find yourself counting pages. Those books are like eating spinach. That is not the case here. I promise that all these books are highly readable.

In some cases, I deliberately chose one book by an author, and not others, because the chosen book is more accessible and immediately pleasurable than some of the author’s other titles. If you find you really like an author, please do go read his or her completed works! Likewise, feel free to supplement any of these TBR lists with other books (post a comment below or drop me a line — lvanderkam at yahoo dot com — because I welcome suggestions).

I know your time is limited. I want reading to be fun. I also know that when reading is fun, you will spend more time reading.

Get my new reading guide now!

To receive “TO BE READ: Ready made lists for the ambitious reader” simply sign up below.

(NOTE: Some folks have reported that the form is not showing characters as you type them in to the fields. The good news is that if you do type your name and email address in the boxes, even if you can’t see them, it will let you download the guide!)

And so, as he wrote, “It’s been years since I woke up in the morning saying, ‘I need to write a book, I wonder what it should be about.'”

I almost choked reading that, because this is exactly what I woke up this morning thinking. 168 Hours (which Seth graciously blurbed) came out in late May, and now it’s time to come up with the next book idea. Not just because I’d like another advance, and not just because I want to say something. I write lots of articles and blog posts, and those are great fun, but I really like writing books.

Seth’s announcement has me trying to put my finger on why. Books are extraordinarily inefficient. I have spent several years working on 168 Hours in some form, and yet fewer people have read that than read my USA Today op-ed on lawns which ran last week (which, incidentally, got mentioned in the print version of Time on the Verbatim page – very exciting). I know many people have heard of 168 Hours — say, the several million who watched my Today Show appearance in June. But looking at my sales numbers, millions of viewers translated into roughly an extra 500 copies beyond the normal burn rate. While people may pay $26 for a sweater without thinking about it, paying $26 for something that then requires you to think and invest several hours in its consumption is a tough sell.

But… Here’s what I love about writing books, at least in theory. I love the length of them. I love delving into a topic deeply, for far more words than someone will tolerate on a machine that also lets them check their email. I like having the time to polish my prose (sometimes; I did once ghost write a book in 6 weeks). There is a certain word-made-flesh satisfaction in having ideas formed into a physical product, a physical product which then goes places that are separate from my desk. I love reading books for many of the same reasons — being able to inhabit another writer’s head for many hours and taking in a long story that goes where a blog post can’t. If a book is important enough to me (ones like Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek — such an example of prose done as craft!) I want to see it, embodied. If you think about it, this is the same reason we give gifts, rather than just telling a host “thank you.” Ideas feel more important when we give them a physical form.

Of course, I know all of this is not entirely rational. I love my Kindle and its ability to get me my books instantly. I also know that the book industry is suffering, perhaps for not setting itself apart enough. I get review copies of at least a dozen books a month, and many don’t contain an idea that’s big enough to justify a magazine story, let alone hundreds of pages, and the writing craft has been shoved to the bottom of the priority list, way below some version of platform. Or the fact that a person who has been on television was involved. The time lag between when a writer finishes a manuscript and the book comes out is crazy in a world where H&M can stock their stores with fashions inside weeks of design. And I’ll just note a rumor that some publishers (not Portfolio) still have authors make changes on their galleys in colored pencils, like we’re hanging out with Gutenberg himself.

Still, I hope books will remain part of the mix in the marketplace of ideas. Seth writes that “my mission is to figure out who the audience is, and take them where they want and need to go, in whatever format works, even if it’s not a traditionally published book.” It may not be. But I think books are still a pretty good way of doing this — or at least are easier to wrap as a Christmas present than a blog post.