10 Tips on reading books

Reading is an idle pleasure; pour a glass of wine, put your feet up on the sofa and drift through a novel. Not any more. That attitude is so 20th century. Nowadays, reading is about productivity. Do you do 20-minute reading sprints? How about readathons? Have you signed up to Victober, the online challenge to read as many Victorian novels as possible in October? What about your goals on Goodreads? Are you falling behind? There's an awful lot of anxiety about reading. "How could I read more books?" asks the BBC. Lifehacker will help you trick yourself into reading more. Huffpost tells you how to make reading more of a habit. Bookriot promises to boost your reading productivity.

Here are ten of our favourite reading tips from gurus across the internet, some helpful and some rather mad.

1. "Become physically fit, to give your brain more oxygen"

2. "Skip from the left hand page to the right hand page and back again … Somehow this tricks my brain into reading faster (perhaps it has to work harder to infer the meaning)"

3. "Take a book into stressful or high-pressure situations. I play badminton every week. About halfway through, I get jittery from the adrenaline and my play dips. So I started reading during break … Now I take a book into any competitive situation. Even if I don't feel much like reading, I have an extrinsic motivation"

4. "Always be reading multiple books to accommodate any possible mood"

5. "Buy cheap. Ninety percent of the time I use Amazon to purchase my books. I will even purchase a used copy if it's available. Having a larger budget for more books allows me to purchase more. Purchasing more books allows me to read more"

6. Read books while practising yoga

7. "Read in sprints. Some days my attention span is less than others. During these days, I set 20-minute timers and read in 20-minute sprints"

8. "Form a speed-reading team with friends"

9. "Get bored. My early life was very boring. Reading was a good way of filling in great tracts of tedious time"

10. "Rather than thinking that you need to sit down and read for an hour at a time, try to make use of small amounts of time. Read for 20 minutes while you are waiting for dinner to cook. Use every 15-minute gap"

10 Rules on how to read a book

1. Remove distractions as far as you can (windows, food, the phones, etc)

2. Maintain silence as best you can (find a library if you need to)

3. Make sure there is enough light (use glasses if necessary)

4. Get the book flat and the right distance from your eyes

5. Sit comfortably, making sure you are warm but not too warm

6. Give yourself a target (number of pages, a chapter or a set period of time)

7. Aim to get from the end of one line to the start of the next with minimum eye movement (when reading on a kindle choose the narrowest setting for text)

8. Concentrate

9. Underline or make notes

10. Take a breather after a set time

Reading and Prayer

Reading is feeding
And prayer is air.
Miss one you're bleeding,
Miss both, you're in a snare.

Bible reading

How vital to persist
In the daily reading of the Word.
No, no, never desist
From the daily reading of the Word.

Bible Intake

Read, study, remember, meditate, apply -
Don't let God's Word simply run past your eye.

Busyness

When you are too busy
Rushing off here and there
The things that go, sadly,
Are the quiet and solitary
Like planning, thinking, reading, prayer.