I Read 80 100 Books A Year How Do I Remember What I Read It S Easy

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Oct 31, 2025, 12:10 PM

i read 80 100 books a year how do i remember what i read it s easy

This article was co-authored by Grant Faulkner, MA. Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story, a literary magazine. Grant has published two books on writing and has been published in The New York Times and Writer’s Digest. He co-hosts Write-minded, a weekly podcast on writing and publishing, and has a M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. This article has been viewed 65,434 times.

One hundred books in a year may seem like an impossible accomplishment. Where will you find the time? If you really examine your daily life and your schedule, you’ll probably find that you actually have quite a bit of time that is spent on activities that can easily be turned into reading... If you truly have a passion for reading and want to achieve the goal of at least 100 books in a year, you can definitely do it. "Audiobooks are a great option if you want to read more classics. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are meant to be performed or read aloud, so audiobooks truly enhance the experience.

Hearing the narrator’s tone of voice and emotional performance also makes the language easier to comprehend and more accessible for a modern audience." 2x LinkedIn Top Voice | Writer | 10+ Million Views Online | Interested In Spreading Good Ideas | Join My Book Club @ vincentcarlos.substack.com I read 80-100 books a year. How do I remember what I read? It’s easy. Here are 9 strategies I use: 1) I underline/highlight important passages in the book.

2) I write down any thoughts or questions I have in the margins of the pages. 3) I read in 25-minute intervals to not overload my brain with too much new information. 4) After I’ve been reading for 25 minutes, I write down a summary of what I just read. 5) Once I finish the entire book, I go back and put sticky notes on the most important statements or passages in the book. 6) I create a summary of the 3 most important ideas in the book. 7) I engage in conversation with people about the interesting ideas in the book.

8) I apply the information in the book to my daily life. 9) At specific time intervals after I finish the book, I go back and review all the stuff I did above. It’s not a perfect system, but these 9 strategies help me remember at least 80% of everything I read. Helping businesses and brand 10X their sales volume with Quality Visual Design Plans | Iconic graphic Designer | Motion Designer | Bonus tips: Get inspired😊 This is quite helpful to me. Have been thinking of how not to cause my brain information overload 😀

Reading is a skill that once you’ve learned, you probably don’t spend much time trying to get better at. (Not all that different from, say, breathing.) And yet, many of us don’t have to look far to see signs that there’s plenty of room for improvement. We only read at the end of the day—and only for the three minutes between cracking open a book and falling asleep. We’re halfway through about nine books. And our bookshelves are littered with titles that we remember reading but don’t exactly remember anything about. Shane Parrish is not one of us.

He cannot afford to read at a lackluster level. His site Farnam Street has become immensely popular largely because of his ability to mine a deep library for ideas that will help “you develop an understanding of how the world really works, make... It means plumbing the roughly 4000 books in his office to aggregate ideas into posts like 109 mental models, The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything, and The Munger Operating System: How... (His list of annual recommended reads usually lands somewhere around 80 books.) It also means that Parrish is uniquely suited to give you some actionable advice on how to optimize your reading—to read more, to get more out of that reading, and, most importantly, to give... “When you think about it, other than your elementary teacher teaching you how to read words or sound them out phonetically, you've never actually learned what to do with that reading,” says Parrish.

He didn’t learn until he went to work as a cybersecurity expert (on Farnam Street, he writes that it was for a “three-letter-intelligence agency” and that he “can’t talk about anything interesting without going... I am fascinated with learning new things and understanding concepts that help me be a more complete, productive human. One of the best ways I have found to expand our minds is through reading, which is perhaps the best way to learn the greatest ideas of all time. I think we can all agree that reading is important to personal development, keeping our minds sharp, and in general learning concepts that make our lives better. But with all the other distractions around us, it feels like there is never enough time to read. Life is busy.

How can we find time to read? In 2021, I read 100 books. This was while I was working full time, finishing my college degree, working on the house my wife and I are building, and hosting various podcasts. To say the year was full is an understatement. Yet I didn’t feel stressed or that my ability to learn new things was hindered. I learned that how busy we are is not the reason we don’t read more; the real issue is whether we create the proper habits and frameworks to make reading a natural part of...

Here are four, practical habits I use to read more books. Have a dedicated time each day you read. For me, carving out time each morning for reading has been huge. The key is making this into a habit, something that naturally fits into the flow of your day. If I’m going to read that morning, I make sure I leave my phone on silent and clear other distractions away. I find a quiet place where I won’t be interrupted and have a set amount of time committed to reading.

When you’re first building the habit, you can start small, such as only reading one or two pages till you get in the flow of the habit. I also pair the reading by making myself a latte, to associate the habit of reading with something else I enjoy. This connects the habit of reading with a reward to ensure I do it (a concept from Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, which I highly recommend). Make it as easy as possible to read. There are so many ways to consume books that having it always accessible is straightforward. Remove social media apps off the home screen of your phone and replace them with an ebooks app.

Use a tablet or Kindle to read. I personally prefer physical books when possible, so I always have good books I’m reading laying at various strategic parts of my house; whenever I have a few minutes available, instead of mindlessly scrolling... Two power moves to read more books each year. A quick intro and/or refresher on me. I haven’t always been a reader, a book worm, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve only been tracking my reading (each book) since August of 2019.

I need proof that I’m accomplishing things in life, that I’m moving forward. It’s just how I am – I like to see progress – and I like to look back and see what I’ve read and when. It’s crazy how my reading life seemingly has a different timeline than reality – but that’s for another time/post. I’ve come to love and enjoy reading much later in life than most people who consider themselves “readers.” While I do have an English degree, after I graduated college, I didn’t feel like I... I am definitely the dumbest one of my tribe and the least educated. I’m also the youngest by six years, so I try to use those extra years to catch up.

I read between 55 and 87 books per year (currently at 87 as of 12/28/24). Some of those are on Audible, most are on Kindle, and some are traditional books, so when I say “read,” I mean finish a book somehow. Movies and videos, of course, don’t count. Not that I do much of those – I had to give up most TV watching when I started focusing on my writing. It doesn’t really matter why you want to read more. You might be trying to improve yourself, like I am, or maybe you’re just trying to fill the time with something more meaningful than the boob tube, or maybe you’re trying to learn something.

The fact is, reading is good for you. It’s great for your brain, and even if you’re reading complete fluff, it gives you a sense of accomplishment that binge-watching Netflix doesn’t. As the end of the year approaches, many of us begin writing down our New Year’s resolutions. Among these goals, reading more books often makes the list—but it’s also one of the hardest to accomplish. Why do so many people struggle to reach their reading targets? Let’s break it down and discover practical strategies to help you read over 100 books in just one year.

The first reason we fail to meet our reading goals is that the goal itself can feel overwhelming. For my 2024 resolution, I ambitiously decided to read 100 books. It sounded impossible at first, but I made it happen by breaking the goal into smaller steps. I began by setting a much smaller target: just 10 books. Achieving this felt manageable and gave me the motivation to set another goal of 10 books—and then another. By focusing on incremental progress instead of the big picture, I was able to maintain my momentum and end the year with over 100 books under my belt.

A common mistake when setting a reading goal is sticking to one genre, author, or type of book. To keep things exciting and avoid burnout, explore different genres and styles. Don’t limit yourself to bestsellers or the works of a single writer—give lesser-known books a chance, too. You’d be surprised how much variety can make reading feel like an adventure rather than a chore.

I Read 80 100 Books A Year How Do I Remember What I Read It S Easy

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