Books & reading, the habit of getting your attention back
Updated: 2026.07.12. | Created: 2026.07.12.
Here I write about the books I read, going back to the habit of regular reading in my 40s.
Prologue
Our home was always full of books. When I was little, I had tons of books to choose from, and I inherited the love of books from my family. Later as I grew up, computers stole my attention, but I still read some books here and there. I wasn't fond of mandatory reading in schools. Skipped most of them, if the interest isn't there, I suffer.
My mistakes with the weekly reading challenge
This page is not like my previous challenge of reading one book a week. In hindsight I made a couple of mistakes. First, I started with a non-fiction book, which was much more heavy. Yes, I am interested in psychology, but it was really hard to read, most of the time.
I also made the mistake of trying to set a strict goal of one book a week, cause some can be longer, others are shorter. Instead it should have been really just 52 books a year, which would allow me to choose shorter or longer stories. I also knew that I like to focus on one book at a time, but maybe reading 2 or 3 parallel, could have helped the real goal.
I feel like building a consistent habit of reading should have been the priority, and I seriously underestimated reading in the modern, digital age. How our attention span shrinked to a minimum, with shorter content.
Then I found this guy, Randy Ray
Youtube sometimes has really good recommendations, and one day I found Randy Ray, an older guy, who has a channel purely about reading. Great guy, has some book clubs, and regularly makes videos about reading, his goals, etc. He is very open about changing the culture, by example. One of his videos, was "what happens when you read one hour a day?", and it made me think: is one hour really that much? Can I do it?
Interestingly I got a random recommendation on X, Crichton's "State of Fear", which sounds more like a Tom Clancy title. Anyway I like the book, but I had trouble keeping my attention and the scientific jargon could be challenging at times. Maybe I just wasn't interested. So I jumped back to my all time favorite book: Jurassic Park. I haven't read it for 20 years, probably. I felt that if I wanted to get back to reading, doing with a familiar story might be more beneficial than starting with a new one.
And I was right! With my casual reading speed, and consistently reading every day, I managed to finish it in 12 days. I took my time, even when I was at real page turner period in the book, I focused on reading every day. Honestly I could have probably finished it in 6-8 days easily, but my goal is now, to read every day. If it's 10-20 pages, so be it.
I also tried to read both Crichton novels parallel, but it looks to me like my mind is not really born for that. I was always a single book reader. Most of the time I could go through books in a couple of days, especially if they were interesting. It doesn't mean that I won't try reading more than one book at a time, but not now.
I don't have a fix goal at the moment, I think my brain is not built for artificial goal of reading x books in y amount of time. I built my daily yoga habit, not buy doing 30 minutes a yoga per day, but I do yoga every day. Even Mr. Ray said, consistency is more important, and I fully agree with him, through experience.
The future
What I also couldn't do in my previous challenge is doing reviews, sharing my opinions of the book. I admit, I didn't write notes, and sometimes it was overwhelming. I really want to write at least some short post about what I read.
