52 books a year.

Every year there is a goal we set out to do. There is a way to go about achieving such goals and sometimes you just need a kick in the back to guide you right.

That way begins with a first step. That first step is laying out the plan. Then the next step is actually following the plan.

So here’s one of  my plans.

I plan to read a book a week. There are 52 weeks in a year (one just whizzed by) and thus I hope to read 52 books at the minimum this year. The reason I don’t find this daunting is because I LOVE reading books. I spend most of my income on purchasing books and thus sharing/reading/comparing notes with other book lovers is almost always welcome. There are 2 things that I’ll do at the start and end of the week, religiously.

a) List out a book before the week starts, so you know what book I am on and if you have comments, additional views, I’ll collate them together so that we can share views about the books like a really cool guy, Derek Sivers, does right here.

b) Review the book with notes, inspirational lessons drawn and if it’s just fiction then put up interesting quotes, author approaches etc.

To me,  reading a book -  besides the pure enjoyment of knowledge, is also about dissecting what the book has to offer. What the style of the author who writes it is, how do they approach the “idea” offered in the book.

I used to flood my reads with self help, inspirational, passion driven books. I found them largely overrated and almost any book that has no “real experience” is something I tend to avoid. It’s easy for people to give advice and talk about an ideal world. There’s no real learning unless there’s experience talking.

How to go about this

Julien Smith, of the popular book Trust Agents, has an interesting way of doing this. He managed to read a book a week for the whole of 2009. He gives some solid advice on how you can read a book a week for 2010. I’d recommend the read. Here are the salient points.

– Average book he read was about 250-300 pages. That’s less for me, I plan to not worry about the number of pages and just concentrate on finishing the book.

– 40 pages a day. His logic is this is not as daunting as thinking to yourself that you have 52 books to read. 40 pages in 24 hours, that shouldn’t be a big deal. So is 1 hour exercise in 24 hours but..

– Reads it first thing in the day: That’s easy for him because he’s not got a 9-7 job so I’m not sure if I can implement this, but definitely crunch in time. He calls this Stacking Habits. Where you put all daily routines together, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, drinking coffee and reading 40 pages.

– Use Every moment: I commute almost 2 hours daily. That is such a collosal waste of time. I plan to rectify that or pray that the damn metro actually gets built. However in the time that I have I usually get back home around 9 pm, and sit up till about 12 to finish reading the daily quota.

There are 2 other great links that I came across to help me in this quest.

How to read 462 books a year- Los Angeles Times.
How to read 70+ books a year by Scott Young.
Speed Reading techniques that I recommend and follow.

The book I plan to read this week is Dean Karnazes‘ Ultra Marathon Man.

So you in too? What books you reading? Let me know and if you live in the NCR region perhaps we can swap books too and get more read and money saved!

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