34. | How do I read?

I have been planning to write this article for a very long time. I have started it several times: as I look at my files, the last time I started it was almost a year ago.

What gives the occasion for this article now? In the post About my loneliness, I already indicated that during my journey – and I hope throughout my life! – I will have a companion, namely reading.

Let me show you the world in my eyes!

What can be done differently when reading?

In my experience, quite a lot.

Once we got to the point of reading, we had to overcome a few obstacles. The obstacles to overcome were mainly the excuses, which can appear in quite a variety of forms due to the diversity of the activity. I will show you a few frequently heard examples:

• I don’t have time to read!
• The e-book reader is so foreign to me!
• An audiobook doesn’t give the same experience!
• You have to choose who reads the book!

Maybe I started like everyone else who loves to read, who has been reading since childhood. Back then, there was no other form of reading than books. At least we didn’t have to deal with choices!

That’s why for a long time I also said – without trying anything else – that I needed the feel of paper and the smell of a book.

Then in 2010 I bought my first e-book reader, so I’ve been reading electronic books since I was 34. Two things made me make this decision. The first was convenience. It’s just easier to take a 200-gram device on vacation than one or two longer books. The second thing was the rate of return. A good e-book reader costs about the same as 10-15 books. There are a lot of books available legally for free, so the price of the device is return very quickly. Not to mention that nowadays books are also available specifically in e-book format, at a much more affordable price than in print.

I have been listening to books since 2019. Since then, I have listened to 218 books, and I have some experience in taking a position on the subject.

Since 2021, I have been listening to a book that was not recorded by a person, but read to me by a software. Out of the 218 books, exactly 101 were the ones that I listened to this way. So don’t let anyone tell me that Android’s reading style is unbearable!

A little more about reading methods

Why do I deal with this question so much? I believe that reading books increases the reader’s literacy. I really like the saying that you are as many people as the books you have read. I have often experienced that new, unknown worlds open up to me when I read a book. I am a committed believer in the idea that every person should read books!

For me, reading has one purpose: I want to get to know the given book. Whether this book is entertaining, self-development, a textbook or anything else. From this point on, the form of reading becomes secondary for me.

I will briefly present what the forms of reading mean to me:

1. Reading a paper book

The oldest form, we have been practicing this for a few hundred years. However, books have to be bought, borrowed, borrowed from the library and even stored. I have 987 books in my apartment in Győr (Jesus! It should have been 13 to make the magic thousand!). I can’t take this amount of books with me on my trip. I don’t even dare to think about how much I spent on these books. (By the way, I spent 2.200 USD over 30 years.). I received many books as gifts, I brought many from places that offered them for free. So I don’t have to beg, I don’t have to borrow, and if I never buy one again, I will still own enough for two lifetimes. All I have to worry about is storage. A few years ago I bought a 14-meter-long bookshelf, but that’s not enough for this amount.

So, despite all its beauty, there are many problems with traditional books – as detailed above.

I still love reading traditional books. I won’t write more about that now.

2. Reading an e-book

If you accept that this is a more convenient form and no worse than a real book, another world may open up for you. That’s how I did it. I can save money with this method. I can always keep it in my bag. In fact! Even on my phone. I have read many books on my phone. For example, if I go on a hike in the forest for days, I will not pack a book in my 13-kilogram backpack, and I would be sorry to expose my e-book reader to nomadic conditions. But my phone is always with me.

In the beginning, I had a noname reader. It lasted me for 7 years. Then I used a Kindle reader. Since 2018, Remarkable has been my tool. With it, I also take notes in the books I read, which I usually transform into another form with my own underlining. I still read books on my phone. I have also read one book entirely on a monitor, and on a CRT monitor.

After 14 years of reading e-books, I think this form of reading is modern and no worse than reading a traditional book.

I have 3,740 e-books in my digital collection. That’s almost four times the number of my traditional books I have. It takes up 80 GB of free space on my storage system. That much data fits on about 2,065 square millimeters of surface area on a typical SSD. Thanks to AI for helping me with the calculations!

3. Listening to an audiobook

Yes, it’s really a cuckoo’s egg, if you look at it that way. After all, it’s really not reading, but listening. But I indicated: for me, the goal is to make the book my own, and I don’t care about the form of the process.

I listen to audiobooks on certain occasions. When I’m driving alone, outside the city. (The intensity of city traffic doesn’t always make it possible for me to pay attention to the book in an understanding way, so I usually listen to music when driving in the city.) When I’m traveling alone by public transport. By plane. While doing housework. Believe me, I can pay attention to a book perfectly well while peeling potatoes or cleaning. During a twohundred-kilometer bike ride completed alone, I can complete 2 books.

So we’ve arrived at why I do this form. In the past 5 years, I’ve gotten to know 316 books. Of these, 204 were listened to and 112 were read in some form. If I insist on reading – without listening – I would be 204 books poorer in 5 years.

My life also demands a thousand things from me. If I only picked up a book when I “had time”, I would be two-thirds richer in knowledge now.

I don’t want to argue in favor of consuming audiobooks. It’s really a different form, it’s really not reading, but it achieves the goal. At least for me.

There are people who record books well. There are those who are difficult to listen to. Because let’s say they’re not good. There’s Android as a reading software. If you can turn off the part of your brain that deals with how someone reads aloud, then you’ve won. I can turn off this part.

I have 298 audiobooks by the way, 58% of them I’ve already listened to. If I insisted on human reading, my selection would be narrower. I actually started having books read to me on my phone a few years ago because I have a lot of e-books that I want to read, but they don’t exist in audiobook format.

How does all of this become a digital nomad toolkit?

If I do nothing else, I still read. It brings me joy. If I feel lonely, it goes away. If I want to relax, it helps. If I’m in a boring place – for example, I’m exiled to an airport lounge for hours – it helps to drive away boredom. If the trip takes a long time, I often don’t even notice the passage of time, because I’m reading. Or I sleep. Or I do both alternately.

I always prepare 10 books in advance on my phone. By the time I read the tenth, I’m already planning what the next 10 will be. There are always a dozen other books in the Remarkable storage. And it’s all there on my computer. I think I’ll never be without a book.

With this equipment, it will be difficult to get bored anywhere.

Some more statistics

I created two charts showing my reading results over the past 5 years. The first shows the number and format of books read, the second shows the number of pages read.

Read too! Let’s read together!