Reading is an extremely important professional skill in life. We can enrich our life experiences by reading literature that is informative, creative, and inspiring. Like any other skill worth mastering, developing a reading habit requires a significant investment of time and effort. However, for those who want to pick up a book, the threshold for taking up reading as a hobby is not high. But it was enjoyable and rewarding.

Develop a Reading Habit

Improve reading skills. If you want to develop good reading habits and enjoy reading to the fullest, you should start by improving your reading skills. For example:

• Read the main content. When reading, focus on the main content and relevant arguments of each paragraph. When reading, use a pencil to outline take notes, and highlight the key points of each paragraph. This will also help improve your reading ability.
• Find words you don’t understand. Look up vocabulary in an online dictionary with a rich collection of words. For Chinese, you can use Xinhua Dictionary, and for English, you can use Webster’s Dictionary. You can use a pen to underline words you don’t know, or you can just list those words individually. When you get stuck on a new word while reading, look up the meaning of the word in the dictionary, and then go back and reread the sentence. In this way, you can not only understand the various uses of words but also know their specific meaning in the context.
• Find answers from context. When reading, it is inevitable to encounter new words or places that you do not understand. The context of literature, history, and philosophy articles gives more clues. Readers can infer from the context what the author or the characters in the article want to express. To have this ability to speculate, you need to search for information, do some research, and understand the context based on a certain understanding of the article.
• Be familiar with literary analysis methods. If you like reading novels or short stories, you need to master basic literary analysis methods. It is best to be familiar with writing techniques such as metaphor, hyperbole, parallel structure, personification, alliteration, etc., which will help you enrich your reading experience.
• Don’t rush, take your time. Whether you’re reading to learn or reading for fun, it’s not something you can do overnight. You have to take your time and develop your reading skills at your own pace. Don’t be discouraged if you’re a slow reader. It’s normal to read slowly when you first start reading. When you read every day, your brain uses previously learned reading skills to make reading more efficient.

Keep reading materials handy. Just like a basketball player can’t practice without basketball shoes and a basketball, reading, like other skills, requires preparation. Here are some suggestions for getting the latest reading material:

• Subscription materials: You can read the latest readings by subscribing to economic magazines or other magazines.
• Go to the library: No matter how small a place is, there will be a library full of books for citizens to borrow for free. If you haven’t been to the library yet, you might want to get a library card and see what books are in the library.
• Buy an e-reader. Amazon has a large selection of e-books for sale, and Amazon also produces the Kindle e-reader. Libraries also often offer free e-book lending services.
• Find resources online. University library websites often offer full-length books copyrighted online. For example, Project Gutenberg is currently hosted by ibiblio at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The project currently includes nearly 50,000 essays, novels, novellas, and short stories, with an average of 50 new titles added every week.

Integrate reading into daily life. If you make reading a part of your daily life, your reading skills will improve over time. The following methods may be available for reference:

• Join a book club. These clubs usually meet weekly or bi-monthly, which can inspire you to keep up your reading habits and meet like-minded people. You can talk about the books you read in the club, or you can chat with people who love reading and share the joy of reading.
• Download the news app. You may wish to download apps such as “Today’s Toutiao” and “Wen Wei Po” so that you can obtain news information for free; you can also download mobile reading software such as “Zhangyue”. They cooperate with major publishing houses and have extensive book resource support and powerful functions.
• Find the right time and place to read. Do you have a favorite seat in a coffee shop, or do you prefer to sit in a corner of your home? Find a reading spot that will help you develop your reading habits. Carry reading material with you and set aside a set amount of time each day to read.
• Set daily or weekly reading goals. While there’s no limit to how fast you can read, ambitious readers will be eager to finish the books on their list, so setting reasonable reading goals can help you get there. For example, set a goal to read for an hour a day, read a chapter of a book, or read 10 pages of a magazine.

Decide What to Read

Think about your interests and hobbies. Reading about topics that interest us often makes us more interested and satisfied.

Ask your friends to recommend some reading materials. Readings with good reputations are also good reading materials.

• You can chat with like-minded friends, or you can find book friends online to see what everyone is reading.
• You can also go to Douban to read everyone’s book reviews and recommendations.
• Check out your local bookstore. Most of the bookstore employees like to read, and they will be happy to recommend books to you. If there is an independent or second-hand bookstore nearby, you might as well check it out.

Read classics. If you want to be a qualified reader, you must first know what good writing is. There are many classic works that have appeared in China’s five thousand years of history. You can choose some to read. You can also:

• Find world classics to read.
• Explore the interpretations of writers from different periods on the social background, history and humanities of that time.

Listen to what the critics have to say. Although there are a thousand Hamlets in the minds of a thousand readers, and everyone can be a critic, mainstream trends are formed because certain cultural events resonate with most people at the same time. The benefits of reading reviews include:

• Find another way to improve your reading skills. Reading literary criticism can be very different from reading novels and other works. Try to improve your reading skills by understanding the purpose and role of literary criticism.
• You can get information about a book in advance without purchasing it. Browsing relevant book reviews can also help you determine whether it is necessary to buy this book. You can also learn some literary criticism methods by reading other people’s review articles, and then you can write book reviews yourself.
• Communicate effectively. Maybe you and everyone just read a book, but the book received a mediocre response on Douban. Then you can introduce the main points of this book review to everyone and start a discussion from there. See what everyone has to say and share your views.

Make a book list. Make a list of books, magazines, and blogs that interest you so you know what to read next after you finish reading the material at hand. Douban Reading is a platform you can make good use of. However, you can also jot a note in your diary to remind you of what to read later.

Maintain a Lifelong Reading Habit

Become a reading volunteer. Reading service volunteers are needed in schools, nursing homes, correctional facilities, and even shelters. The role of reading volunteers cannot be underestimated because:

• Not every child can develop good reading habits under the guidance of his parents. If there are multiple children in a single-parent family, it is difficult for the father or mother alone to take care of each child one by one, and it is also difficult to provide effective reading tutoring. As a reading volunteer, you can have a profound impact on a child’s future educational and career prospects.
• Not every adult can read either. For different reasons, some adults remain illiterate, which can affect their career development and ability to live independently. As a reading volunteer serving adults, you can also have a significant impact on their lives and help them build self-esteem and confidence.
• Help others learn for life. Older people may have vision problems that make it impractical to continue reading, and they will especially need your help. Especially since they have loved reading since childhood, reading to them as a volunteer can not only help them maintain the habit of reading but also increase friendships and learn from each other.
• Some communities also offer volunteer projects, and you can record readings from textbooks or other paper materials for blind people or people with reading difficulties to listen.

Conduct or participate in a book exchange. Follow related activities online, and you can also join a second-hand bookstore that conducts book exchanges.

• If you enjoy reading popular novels, romance novels, or science fiction, a book exchange is not only cost-effective and effective, but it can also fill your bookshelf.

Attend a book festival. Want to meet a new author or meet a familiar one? The Book Festival is a great opportunity, and of course, it has other benefits:

• Book sales. Book publishers and distributors attend book festivals, and attending authors have books for sale.
• Book signing. If an author has a new book published, they often attend book festivals to promote the book. A book signed by the author is a great treasure to have on hand and can also add to the pleasure of reading.
• Enjoy listening to someone read to you. Book festivals often invite guests to read excerpts from their recent works, and they also organize public readings to attract interest or commemorate talented authors.

Write a reading blog. You can write a blog to record the books you like, criticize the works you don’t like, and record the books you have read. Alternatively, read the blog:

• Make new friends. Make your blog public, share it with netizens, and listen to everyone’s opinions.
• Practice writing. Reading and writing are inseparable. You might as well use your talents to write or even imitate the writing style of your favorite writers. This method can effectively improve your writing skills. You also have to be your editor, read back your articles, and constantly improve them to ensure the quality of the articles.

Read foreign language works. If you always read Chinese works, you might as well change your taste and read original works in foreign languages. The following methods can be followed:

• Keep a foreign language dictionary handy. You can borrow it from the library or buy it from a bookstore.
• Start with children’s books. Books for school-age children often use simple language, use basic vocabulary that is easy to understand, and tell stories that are not only common but also easy to understand. Start with basic reading and gradually deepen the reading difficulty.
• Read poetry in translation. Choose a famous poet whose native language you choose and find original and translated versions of his poems. Read it carefully and compare the two versions to see what the subtleties of the translation are. This way you not only learn a new language but also understand a new culture.