Every year, I read over two hundred books.

In the seventh grade, a boy was going around in my social science class and asking my classmates how much they read in a year. It was for a statistics assignment, and when he came to me, I scrunched my nose and thought about. I told him about two hundred and twenty books. It was true—ever since I’ve started tracking my reading habits, I’ve been consistently hitting about that number.

But my classmates gawked at me when I said that, looked like I was an anomaly. I was. I was the sole outlier in his study. Most people read very very little. I stopped reading in high school because I studied writing at a specialized high school and then saw it as a chore. In college, I picked right where I left off and still hit over two hundred books per year.

This has been an interesting habit to sustain in the era of TikTok and what it means to be a reader on the Internet. For the longest time, I was called a nerd or someone to avoid because of how much I read and wrote about writing, but then when I started seeing BookTok become a thing, people were actively talking about reading and how many books they were buying.

Granted, I think it’s absolutely wonderful that people are reading books and talking about supporting authors, but the writing for most popular BookTok books is something I’m not a fan of. Kudos to those who enjoy it though.

Here’s how and why I read two hundred books in a year.

Less screen time, more books.

I genuinely hate social media, which is ironic for someone who works in marketing. I think social media is such a waste of time, although it is a great way to connect with friends and family all over the world.

But I’m antisocial and never text people to begin with, so what I tend to do is throw something onto my Instagram stories and call it a day. I don’t have TikTok or Facebook, and rarely check Twitter besides to post. Because of these habits I’ve managed to cultivate, I don’t really use my phone as much as a lot of people my age tend to do.

Instead, I read. I am constantly reading something, whether it’s The Atlantic or a hardcover I picked up from my local library. I make a point to read when I wake up in the morning nowadays and before I go to bed, which has helped my sleeping habits.

I unfortunately have to switch over from my iPad to my old Kindle or a physical book though, as I now get headaches when I stare at screens for too long. I also bring books to read when I’m at the doctor’s or dentist’s office, and the old people in these offices have mentioned that I’m not like the youths because of it.

Knowing who I am as a reader.

Because I’ve read so much over the years, I’m acutely aware of my tastes. I know that I have to really like the writing style in order to keep going, and if I don’t end up liking something immediately, I drop it if the next fifty pages aren’t doing it for me. I just recently dropped a book I was convinced I was going to love because the first one hundred pages didn’t click, and that’s perfectly fine.

I think it’s important to give books a shot and not drop them immediately, hence why I instilled the page rule for me to drop it unless it’s absolutely horrible, as it teaches people that books can get really good in a second or third act.

But yeah, knowing my taste and why I like things the way I do has been really beneficial for me over the years. It has allowed me to find certain subscriptions or websites that I subscribe to for book recommendations, such as Asian Literature Now.

I find the rarest books I would’ve never found through these kinds of online content. Some of my favorite books have really come from these kinds of sites, and if I had never known I like certain things and cultivated a niche for myself, I would have never thought to seek out such platforms.

I see reading as a way to study the market of publishing.

I’m a writer. I’ve published since I was sixteen, and I like to study business and markets. It’s what I got my undergraduate degree in, and it was fitting because of that. But as a writer, you really need to understand the market of publishing as a whole.

My joke was that 2020 and 2021 was the year of dead mothers in memoir, as everyone’s mother seemed to be dying in a memoir. This is a publishing trend; we see a lot of them in the industry. Even book covers tend to fall into the trap of becoming trendy.

So I tend to pick up books, especially poetry ones, to understand what’s getting published and why. It doesn’t always mean that the writing and novel is good—sometimes the content isn’t good at all, it’s just trendy and what people eat up on social media.

But having this framework is beneficial in understanding how the industry works and why things get published or picked up at a certain time. It takes a hot minute for books to come out, even years upon signing that contract.

Understanding artistry and craft.

This goes hand in hand with the previous point. You need to be able to read as a writer and critic, understanding why things work the way they do. How is this narrative structure unique compared to the others books you’ve read recently? How this this poet defying the expectations of the genre in a contemporary setting?

You need to read what’s being published to keep up with the recent developments in the literary world and industry, but you can take as many writing courses and pay a ton of money as you want. Some of the best remembered writers taught themselves.

How did they do that, you ask? They read a lot. I think people get caught up in the capitalism aspects of the writing world that have seeped into it even more with the advent of the Internet, so they think they have to get an MFA or do XYZ conference to get the most out of their writing career.

Sure, the connections are great and they’ll get you published, but that doesn’t mean you’re a good writer. Recently, after reading a Riku Onda book (the review is here), I had a revelation about art. It’s not a competition, nor are we striving for all the gold stars. I want my art to be a conversation about the world and help people feel understand, continuing hard conversations in spaces that need them. You need to know good writing and ethics to do that.

Running this book blog helps me read more.

This is a duh moment, but I read a lot also nowadays for this book blog. I started receiving advanced reading copies (ARCs) of books at the beginning of this year, and that has been such an exciting experience for me.

I have about fifteen outstanding books to review by the time I’m writing this, but I never expected to be someone who got book PR in the mail. I have an axe to grind about consumerism of books, but this blog has pushed me to go out into my local library and see what’s new.

I’ve read a ton of books for the sake of knowledge or learning about a certain section of the world, and the bonus is I get to right about it. I started this blog as a mode to reflect on all the reading and research I do in my life, especially during my gap year, and now it’s suddenly become monetized.

That’s awesome, but at the end of the day I just love doing book, film, and television reviews for the sake of remembering things I know I would forget otherwise.

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