Features | Reading books you don't want to read

Features | Reading books you don't want to read

• Thursday, 10 September 2015

I am currently in the extremely stressful process of writing a personal statement for university, which means I have to do a lot of reading around the subject I'm applying for (economics if anyone was wondering).Obviously since I want to study it at uni I enjoy it a lot, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't rather be reading fiction. Back to school means a lot of reading books that you wouldn't necessarily choose to read. It can be really hard to motivate yourself to do it. However, I have some useful tips for helping you to get through it!

Read in a time when you have nothing better to do
For me, this means reading on my half an hour bus journey to and from college, when there's nothing else I can really do anyway. If you have nothing else to do, you'll be less likely to stop reading and get distracted and you can make more progress.

Set time limits
Set aside a length of time that you think you can concentrate for and read for that length of time then stop. If you tell yourself you are going to read for that amount of time then you will actually get a lot done instead of picking it up, reading a few pages and putting it down again.

Skim read
Kind of an obvious one, but worth mentioning. This is something I still struggle to get the hang of, but if you can skim read. Its saves so much time and chances are you didn't need to know everything anyway.

Don't read the whole book
If it's a fiction book you can look up the plot online or watch the film, then read the relevant sections. (I'd only really recommend this as a last resort because there is a risk of missing out on things)

Read a fun book at the same time
If you only read the boring book, you might be reluctant to read at all, and then you could end up being stuck in a reading slump which can last ages. Reading a book you want to read breaks up the monotony.

If none of these tips work, just do what I did; write your GCSE English coursework without having read the books its on! (Joking, please don't do that it's a terrible idea - although I did still get an A. I don't know how either)
Have fun with any reading you do have to do!
Katie x