In 2018 I wrote about how I read. Eight years later the practice is mostly the same, while the tools around it have all been swapped out. Google Sheets used to hold the tracking, a job Google Play Books now does with its In Progress sort. Pocket is gone. I read in Reader instead, and the recall ritual runs on Readwise’s daily highlights.
Books I want go on a wishlist. When they drop to 50% off or better, they move into my Google Play Books library, where they sit unread until I pick one up. Papers I can get as PDF skip the wishlist and go straight to the library. The In Progress shelf sorts by how far along I am, and when I finish a book I start the newest one I haven’t opened. Within In Progress I read in short bursts—a chapter at a time for non-fiction, less strict for fiction. Before I pick a book back up I pause and recall the last section.
Articles arrive in Reader’s Feeds view. I scan them at bedtime and either save one for later or let it go. I read and highlight the saved ones on the tube or in odd gaps of downtime, newest first. Each morning Readwise sends me fifteen highlights from past reading.
I still read several books at once, though the count has changed. The 2018 “five to ten” grew to twenty while I was still on paper, and when going digital took the shelf limit away the number climbed past forty. At forty-plus the set had no real edge to it, which is when the sense of progress went away. What settled out is a hard nine—one set I can take in at a glance in Google Play Books. The method behind it hasn’t moved. I read in short bursts, leaving time between them for the chapter to settle, then come back with the section recalled rather than skimming to find my place. It’s a sanity cap, not a memory limit.
I still read non-fiction a chapter at a time, then set the book down and pick up the next. Fiction depends on the book. Sometimes the same discipline holds. Other times I get caught up and read four or five chapters at a stretch. The 2018 post never drew that line.
Short bursts, practised recall, and the days between still describe how I hold on to what I read. The science has caught up to what the 2018 post only guessed at. The spacing effect covers the first part, in that reading spread out over days sticks better than the same reading massed together. The neuroscientist Dr. Julie Fratantoni covers the second, and her advice to “close down and repeat back what you learned” is the ritual almost word for word. I can still recall books I read a decade ago. That’s what keeps me sure of the practice, even when I can’t prove it’s the practice doing the work.
The tools have all moved. I dropped the spreadsheet when I went all-digital. In 2018 I kept a readability score for each book in Google Sheets and sorted the list from the lowest score up. Google Play Books gives me a rough copy of that, since its In Progress list puts the books I’m furthest through at the top. That was the one factor doing most of the work in my old formula. Now it comes built in. The rest of the formula is gone—page area, pages left, font size, age. In practice the sort still lands on the right next book most of the time.
When Pocket shut down I had to find something else. What sold me on Reader wasn’t the features. It was the way it fits the rest of what I do. Feeds and one-off articles land in the same place, with my highlights carrying through to Readwise from there. I read on the tube and in odd gaps of downtime, and at bedtime I sort through whatever the feeds have brought in. Reader is what holds those habits together.
Recall itself hasn’t changed. Readwise just added a layer on top. The 2018 ritual still fires when I pick a book back up—pause, recall the last section, then read. Readwise casts wider, sending fifteen highlights from past reading every morning. The ritual waits for me to open a book, while the notification arrives whether I think about it or not. Whether that adds depth or just adds frequency, I’m not sure.
I pitched the method “for others” in 2018. Eight years on, I know it works for one person, though I can’t pull the method apart from the memory it runs on. If you try it—or already have—you’d be answering something I can’t. Does it work because of what I do, or just because of who I am?