I’d previously overlooked fiction, so a year ago I set myself the challenge of reading an average of two fiction books per month throughout 2018. I’m happy to say that I reached the goal and not only have I found a new appreciation for fiction, I believe it’s helped to improve my scientific work – an unexpected benefit!
An article based on this post has now been published in Science. Yes, that Science. Read my separate article on how I did it here.
Why it’s made me a better scientist:
1. Reducing stress
Reading allows you to briefly switch off from your day-to-day life. I’ve found reading fiction in particular to be an amazing way to gain some separation from the potential stress of a PhD because your mind has an entirely different world to explore.
In a similar way to watching a thought provoking film or TV show, I’ve found myself thinking about the stories away from my time reading the book. Plus some time away from technology and other distractions is a positive!
2. Increasing enjoyment of reading
Perhaps the most important aspect of doing a PhD, and research in general, is staying up to date with the academic literature. This is the basis of all research and one of the most counterproductive things you can do during your PhD is to not regularly reading new papers.
The problem is that quite often they’re so dry and difficult to read that the prospect of reading them isn’t compelling. As soon as you begin having negative thoughts about doing something, you’re of course less enticed to get on and do it.
I’ve found that mixing in some enjoyable reading has really helped to create a mindset that reading can be fun, thereby creating a hack to help digest more academic papers.
3. Improving reading skills
I read over 10,000 pages of non-academic books this year, which is likely more than my previous five years combined! Undoubtedly all of this extra reading has improved my reading skills.
Though I’m not quite geeky enough to have tried to quantify how my reading speed has progressed throughout the year, it has certainly increased. Not only this but I believe I’ve become better at picking out the key messages which clearly translates across to academic papers.
4. Increasing empathy
There is a lot to be learned from reading fiction. Many of the best books I’ve read this past year (detailed below) were historical fiction, meaning that the story itself is fiction but it is set in a realistic scenario.
It may sound like hyperbole but this has helped me to appreciate some of the modern struggles facing other people, including current and potential STEM students. This has made me more conscientious and motivated to take action in an effort to reduce discrimination.
5. Breaking down goals: 27.4 of anything per day = 10,000 a year
I couldn’t help but run some analysis on my reading in 2018: in total I read 10,173 pages this year, 9107 pages of which were fiction.
This equates to almost 28 pages per day. I had no idea until mid-December that I was anywhere close to having read 10,000 pages! Had I not mixed in a few non-fiction books it would have made for a catchy title to have read 10,000 pages of fiction. It goes to show that doing a little of something often can add up to a lot over the course of a year.
Have a few minutes to kill in which you’d otherwise procrastinate? Maybe there is something more fun and productive you can do in this time.
We’ve probably all heard of the idea that doing something for 10,000 hours will make you into an expert. Well there aren’t ten thousand hours in a year, but if you do something 28 times per day you’ll have done it over 10,000 times over the course of the year.
Say you set yourself a new year’s resolution to more exercise: if you did 28 push ups every day you’d have done a staggering 10,220 of them in a year’s time. I think this is a really powerful idea to help break down goals in to manageable chunks, both academic and non-academic, and would like to pursue it more in the future.
My 2018 reading list
In case anyone is interested, here are the books that I read:
- Brick Lane – Monica Ali*
- A Thousand Splendid Sun – Khaled Hosseini*
- Germinal – Émile Zola*
- The Wind Singer – William Nicholson
- Slaves of the Mastery – William Nicholson
- Firesong – William Nicholson
- An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
- Across the Nightingale Floor – Lian Hearn
- Grass for His Pillow – Lian Hearn
- Stormbreaker – Anthony Horowitz
- A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry*
- Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi*
- Northern Lights – Philip Pullman
- The Subtle Knife – Philip Pullman
- The Amber Spyglass – Philip Pullman
- La Belle Sauvage – Philip Pullman
- The Castle of Adventure – Enid Blyton
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain*
- The Glass Room – Simon Mawer*
- Golden Hill – Francis Spufford
- The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
- Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
- The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Short stories:
- The Flood – Émile Zola
- The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka*
- The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories – Angela Carter
Non-fiction:
- Storm in a Teacup – Helen Czerski*
- Happiness – Matthieu Ricard
- The Choice Factory – Richard Shotton*
- The Art of Possibility – Rosamund & Benjamin Zander
*These are the books I’d particularly recommend.
You might notice that some of the books are aimed at teens (and younger): for the most part the intention was to find easy to read books to encourage myself to stick with it, not to go on an intense literary journey.
Plans for 2019 & beyond
Looking towards 2019 I certainly plan to continue reading fiction but at a slightly slower pace with more non-fiction mixed in too.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed some of the short stories I’d read this past year and quite fancy having a go at writing some fiction: I’m sure this will also help to improve my academic writing skills.
Do you have any book recommendations, or goals that you’re reaching using this approach of little and often? I’d love to hear them in the comments! You can also subscribe here:
