What Is Your Reading Style?

Here is How I Decide What to Read

This article is a reflection on what I read, how I read and how reading habits change overtime.

I am a prolific reader with 50 or more reads per year (not that the amount counts!), so maybe some of these thoughts will help you reflect on your reading habits.

Just me enjoying a book and a delicious Belgian beer in the garden :)

What Do I Read?

I really love learning, so non fiction is an obvious choice. It is not always easy to pick a good non fiction read (there are so many repetitive books with no real value out there), but when you find a captivating book it’s all worth it.

I also read profession specific literature, in my case books related to legal innovation and legal technology.

It is not all facts and business though: I absolutely love some good fiction. I do believe that works of fiction teach us just as much (if not more!) than non fiction.

Because of my background, my main focus with fiction is global literature. Two reasons here:

• I am fluent in English, German, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese and it is important for me to read in all these languages. With each new language you learn its culture, and so reading the literature of those countries allows me to interact with their reality and cultural values.
• It feels like the mainstream publishing space is heavily influenced by the US and UK publications (look at all the conventional “most anticipated books of the year” lists). We need to hear the voices from all over the world, and to open our minds to the experiences different from ours (which may be not that different after all?).

How Do I Read?

I have what feels like the only possible way to maintain a reading habit in the fast paced, full time job life routine: reading in bed on Kindle for up to 30 minutes before going to sleep.

With the addition of a puppy to our family I am also listening to more audiobooks, so I am on track with my reading routine when taking care of the teething monster.

Here is a flat white in a cosy Brooklyn coffee shop

Your Reading Habits Will Change, And It’s Okay

I don’t read every day, nor do I steadily alternate between all the book genres I listed above.

Some days or weeks, I don’t touch my Kindle at all.

Other weeks, I am so into a book I can’t do anything else before I finish it.

My reading choices also depend on my mood and needs:

• Back in 2020, I really focused on non-fiction and devoured as many non fiction books as I could find. Back then, I was reflecting on a major career change (which I did end up making with all those books’ insights!), and so this focus was clearly based on my personal needs in that time.
• In 2021, I have had enough of dry non fiction. I craved some novels and prose, and I decided to make that year a “travel across the globe”: for a month or two, I read literature in German, then I moved on to the Latin American reads, then I enjoyed some Eastern European books, and so on. It was a fantastic reading year.
• In 2022, I kept more focus on world literature but started adding more non fiction books again here and there. I went more with the flow and would sometimes pick more random books based on recommendations on Goodreads or Instagram.
• 2023 is the year where I would like to finish the long list of the books that I saved as “want to read” in the past years but never read. It is a very diverse mix of books and I am excited for this reading year. And if I don’t finish this list, it’s perfectly okay.

We change, our reading habits change, and our lives are hectic. But it is so comforting to come back to a good book once in a while 📚✨