Over the last year or so I have read The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. The Dispossessed in particular describes a communist society - like, an actual stateless, classless, moneyless society - and is really very moving and insightful imo. Le Guin’s background was in anthropology iirc so she had some really fascinating things to say about people and culture, even if I don’t agree with all of her politics (she was an anarcho-syndicalist).

I mention it because I had been struggling to get back into reading but both of those books absolutely captivated me, again especially The Dispossessed. She really looked unflinchingly at what she saw as the challenges and potential shortcomings of her theoretical communist society which is really compelling and made it feel very real.

I also read “Coming of Age in Karhide”, which is a short story in the same setting as tLHoD that examines gender through the eyes of a human society that was genetically modified in the distant past to eliminate all sexual dimorphism, to the point that they are serially dioecious (all individuals can produce both sets of gametes and carry young, just not at the same time) and that was interesting, to say the least, although potential trigger warning as it’s extremely about Gender and I don’t think I’m well positioned to notice stuff that other people might find disturbing in that context.

Just keep practicing, it gets easier. Try to read a little more each day.

This advice applies to non-fictional non-philosophical works only:

1. Read the Wikipedia article on the text (if it exists)

2. Read the Wikipedia article on the authors of the text (if it exists)

3. Read the intro chapter and concluding chapter

4. Read the first few paragraphs and the last few paragraphs of every other chapter

5. Skim over the rest

You’ll be able to decently answer “what is the text about” and “why is this text important enough for the professor to assign.” And if you actually need to read the text for real, your reading speed will be a lot faster since you already know what the text is about and are somewhat acclimated to the writing style of the author.

Don’t fall into the trap of needing your eyes to absorb every single word or punctuation or else it doesn’t count as reading. Save that for the philosophical text and text that you actually enjoy reading. Skimming or even skipping unimportant chapters is fine. Just don’t skip too much lol

You also don’t have to read every chapter in sequential order. After reading the intro/concluding chapters and the few opening/closing paragraphs of every other chapter, you can always jump around if a chapter drags on for too long. If a chapter proves to be too difficult or boring, it’s better to skip to the following chapter (or putting the text down and starting another book) rather than mustering the willpower only failing to do so since if you had the willpower, you wouldn’t be stuck in the first place. Just say “It’s not me. It’s you.” and move on to the next chapter.

Read novels about cool talking spiders and shit until you rebuild your focus, then switch to the dry shit.

PS2?

Try different genres. I had to force myself to read my first fiction book. Then a friend gave me freakonomics and I destroyed it in two days. I’ve also discovered that it was the author of the fiction book (Anthony Pierce, and it was not the xanth book made famous by the stand-up comic) cause I can read the fuck out of dune.

But seriously, don’t force yourself. Try and get a couple books that you think u might like from the library. If you don’t like it within the first 20 ish pages, don’t feel obligated to finish it. Just return it and try another book.

i’m kind of the same as you. i never read anything voluntarily until after i graduated college and started doing reading groups on lemmygrad dot ml. i don’t know your major so this might not apply, but for me there were a lot of professors who would assign readings and then the lectures would cover all the important material anyway. there were a lot of textbooks i never even opened. thank god for anna’s archive.

obviously you’ll have readings you can’t skip. besides skimming, which people have already mentioned, i liked to go to a different place to do readings and homework. it helped me focus when i was able to go to a specific place to lock in. i tried to leave my phone in my bag or out of reach, so i wouldn’t be able to get it without moving. it sounds stupid but if it takes even a tiny bit of effort to go on my phone i do it a lot less.

as for your peers, i would imagine how many books you’ve read isn’t the most important thing. unless you’re joining a classic literature club, there’s far more important stuff. obviously i don’t know your school or your situation but i would imagine people have other interests besides books. shared interests are far more important for bonding with your peers than the academic stuff. universities tend to be large enough that everyone will fit in somewhere, but no one will fit in everywhere.

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While you are getting the hang of it, go put your phone away. Make sure you are reading in a place that is quiet and free of distractions.

And the fact I’m noticeably behind my peers in amount of books read makes me feel like I don’t belong.

First off, this is probably not true. Reading is down to its lowest rate since 1992. And this is the results from the national report card website:

How to learn to love readings books

Start reading fantasy, science fiction, romance, drama, and comedy interspersed with your actual reading assignments for class. To love reading, you have to enjoy the subject.

get immersed or enter flow state or whatever, and also retain information? Is it some kind of talent or superpower?

Use SQ4R, it is a form of active reading and study strategy designed to improve comprehension and retention of text-based information. The acronym stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Relate (or Record), and Review. Whether you are reading in physical or digital format read actively and be sure to use a highlighter or pencil to take notes. When you are reading for literature, philosophy and drama be sure to annotate and tag things that stick out to you. Pay attention in class, because often the instructor will tell you what to look for. Read about the author, their life, their beliefs, and the time they lived in to help you have a clearer picture about why they wrote what they wrote. You can also read with an eye towards marxist ideas. Marxist analysis can be used to make sense of literature. It might not work as well with say, Shakespeare; but there were artists and writers that were marxists or had specific themes of class rule and worker struggles. You can also analyze things from a feminist lens, or other ideologies.

If you read digital copies or PDFs, download and install hypothes.is. It is an annotation tool that lives in your browser and lets you annotate everything. I used it all of grad school and it saved my life. You can highlight, annotate (what you should be doing the most) and take page notes (connected to the document or webpage, but not a specific sentence); you can also tag comments to help you organize your comments into parts for your essay and homework assignments.

I don’t have a lot to add to this discussion, but I had undiagnosed ADHD for decades that made focusing on reading (even stuff for fun) very difficult. I struggled a lot in college and did a lot of weird shit that didn’t make a lot of sense (frequently skipped class on a mandatory attendance economics class, getting a C despite turning in A work; missing a final exam for another class for no reason except forgetting about it; skipping the lecture portion of a chemistry class and only learning the material in the labs; etc). I didn’t even do anything fun when I skipped class, just kinda rotted around doing next to nothing.

If trying the tips that other people suggest don’t work and you’re still confused, there might be some stuff going on with your brain!

Go read some books by Daniel Pinkwater. The Education of Robert Nifkin or the Snarkout Boys books or Borgle. They’re hilarious.

And look, one of the things about being a freshman at a good college is you get all nervous and compare yourself to the other dipshits that are there. I was a big reader as a kid, and came to absolutely hate the fancy college I went to because either I felt like I’d never catch up with all the books that I should’ve read or I was pissed off at my classmates because they didn’t freaking read anything.

Just be you and you’ll be fine. You’ve got a whole lifetime to read. But yeah work on it now.

Edit: also, academic writing almost universally sucks ass and is horrible to read. It’s part of the hazing that The Academy puts you through. If you don’t like reading that shit and are aware of it, you’re honestly ahead of many of your peers who spend their time convincing themselves that it’s good. (If you want some good academic writing check out linguist Ray Jackendoff [I know I know])

My partner is a professor and has always preached 2 things about academic reading:

1. Skimming (you get assigned so much reading that it would take up most of your waking hours to thoroughly read and consider every single word
2. Annotating (this gives your reading purpose and also helps you retain information)

It’s not your job to be someone who enjoys learning so much that you attend lectures in your free time and will engage with the material as if it were a hobby. Some people are obsessed with their topic area and they tend to become subject matter experts whether they do that through academia or not. Most people aren’t like that and it’s not your job to pretend that that’s you if it’s not. Just get good at what you do and get through your schoolwork.

I think trying to love it is not going to work. I love reading but find it difficult to stick to.

Instead, it’s more important to make it a routine - like 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, before bed. It’s when I stick to a routine that I read more. Loving it comes later - once you have a routine you can try different books out and see what makes that routine easier.

I’ll also say that I would go in being perfectly okay to just stop reading any book at any point if it’s not keeping you happy. You keep the routine but just substitute other books in. Forcing yourself to read something uninteresting will make it even harder. Try not to judge yourself- it’s okay to not like something others love or to change your mind after reading something again.

I read between 15 and 30 minutes a day, but pretty consistently. The key is to be consistent, and eventually time takes over! If you feel you get distracted, try focusing on your environment, maybe light a candle, make some coffee or tea, snuggle under a blanket with some pillows, anything!

As for what to read, I say focus on fiction! Whatever interests you. I recommend trying something modern, one of my favorite modern titles is Piranesi, and it brought me back to my childhood with how immersed I got. Once you develop a habit and a love of reading, gradually expand to non-fiction, theory, etc. I also recommend reading 2 books at a time, one fiction and one non-fiction, at set times in the day.

That’s what works for me personally!

Something that might help is to adopt a “one for them, one for me” mentality. If every time you try to read you’re just reading dry academic textbooks, you will come to associate reading with dry academic text. For every work or school book you want to commit to, also pick out something that is strictly for entertainment or on a topic that doesn’t really effect you but that you find interesting. I got myself from like a decade of not reading anything to reading at least 30 mins a night doing it this way, switching between fiction and marxist theory/history.

For academic materials (especially textbooks!), if you aren’t skimming first, you are doing it wrong. Somebody else described skimming in depth in the comments.

I really benefit from using the pomodoro technique. The default split is 25 minutes work to 5 minutes break, but you can adjust the work bit to be shorter if 25 minutes is too much.

With reading for pleasure, you can do audio books if it helps. It is morally and intellectually equivalent to paper books, although don’t try to multitask audiobooks with anything more complex than cooking a recipe you already know, cleaning, or driving.

Another thing to try is setting a page or time limit. You don’t necessarily have to sit down and read an entire chapter. Just set your bookmark 5 pages in and read until there. If you get to the five page mark and you want to continue, keep going! If not, take a break.

It is important to find a genre or author you actually enjoy if you want to build a habit of reading. Like others have mentioned, don’t torture yourself with a book you aren’t enjoying. I am a big fan of Haruki Murakami. My favorites of his are Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The genre is magical realism, in which the fiction is grounded in reality until something intriguing and possibly supernatural happens.

For entry-level bite-sized reading, I really liked Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and its sequel. Very intriguing premise; you can go back in time, but only at a specific seat in a specific cafe, and if you don’t get back before the coffee gets cold, bad stuff happens.