These Are My Reading Rules For 2026

For roughly five thousand years, humans have been writing things down in books. 

You can, at the snap of your fingers, talk to the wisest people who ever lived.

Sadly, too many people are not taught how to read well, how to actually extract something usable from the books available to us, how to dive into the rabbit hole of knowledge to master a topic.

That’s what I want to talk about in this email: some rules for reading that great readers follow, that I try to follow in my own practice, given that I am effectively a professional reader (that’s what you do as an author and bookstore owner).

These 31 rules by no means make a complete list, but if you implement even a couple of them, I’m comfortable guaranteeing you’ll not only be a better reader for it, but a better person too.

–It is not enough that you read. You have to read well. You have to read the right books. You have to figure out how to process and retain and of course apply what you read. As Epictetus said, “I cannot call somebody ‘hard-working’ knowing only that they read.” He said he needed to know what and how they read. He needed to know that their “efforts aim at improving the mind.” Because then and only then would he call you “hard-working.” Then and only then would he give you the title “reader.”

–You should always be carrying a book. Phone, wallet, keys (as Adam Sandler says) and book. If you bring one, or have one loaded on your phone, you’ll read it…instead of using your phone. I’ve read at the Grammys, before surgery, on planes, beaches, in cars, lines, helicopters (see above), at the White House, as I waited for the anesthesiologist before a surgery, at the DMV, backstage before talks, while waiting for a table at a restaurant, in waiting rooms, and on and on. Use every pocket of time you get.

–If you’re not reading with a pen, you’re not really reading. And if you’re not finding something to note or mark up…it says something about what you’re reading. Reading is a conversation. Great readers underline and make notes in the margins. They ask questions. They put the author on trial. They talk back. They put books through the wringer.

–Books are not precious things. It should look like you’ve read the book. Mark it up. Fold pages. Beat them up. Books are not precious things. As an author, I love it when people hand me a book to sign that has had real miles put on it. When people hand me a pristine copy and tell me it’s their favorite, I assume they are just flattering me (or lying). It’s obvious what my favorite books are…because they’re falling apart (here’s my copy of Meditations for instance).

–Spilling food on a book is a sign of respect. Some of the best meals of my life occurred over a book…and the stains prove it (lol, here are some pictures.) I love to read while I eat, especially when I am alone. 

–Forget the news, the best way to understand what’s happening in the world is by reading books…usually old books. As Truman said, “the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” Find a book about a similar event in the past. Or read a really great author that writes fast. 

–A lot of people read, not enough people re-read. Don’t just read books, re-read books. There’s a great line the Stoics loved—that we never step in the same river twice. The books don’t change, but you do.

–Re-reading is the best way out of a reading slump or dry spell. I’m always able to get back into a groove by re-reading some of my favorite novels. What Makes Sammy Run? The Great Gatsby. Ask the Dust. The Moviegoer.

–Don’t be a book snob. I find myself sometimes reluctant to read the latest super popular book. That snobbishness never serves me well. More often than not, when I get around to those bestsellers I kick myself—they were bestsellers for a reason! They’re great! 

–Never read without taking extracts. Pliny the Elder said that 2,000 years ago. Keep a commonplace book. Capture any quotes, stories, ideas, and observations that strike you. (Here’s a video on my commonplace book method).

–If a book sucks, stop reading it. The best readers actually quit a lot of books. You turn off a TV show if it’s boring. You stop eating food that doesn’t taste good. You unfollow people when you realize their content is useless. Life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy reading. 

–The rule for quitting books is one hundred pages minus your age. Meaning: as you age, you have to endure crappy books less and less. I give books a little more time than my 95 year old grandmother does. 

–Good writers (and good books) are not hard to read. A student once bragged that he’d made his way through the tense writings of Chrysippus. You know, Epictetus told him, if Chrysippus was a better writer, you’d have less to brag about. 

–A long book must justify itself. Robert Caro earns every page (I have read 6,149 pages of him.) So does Ron Chernow (I once counted I’d read 4,626 pages of Chernow books). This is not bragging. It’s credit to the authors. It was a joy to spend all those hours with them. I’ve quit many long books because life is short and the writer should have done their job better. 

–“What’s a book that changed your life?” is a question that will change your life. Ask people you admire for book recommendations. Emerson’s line was, “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”

–Cool titles usually make for crappy books (I wish this wasn’t true but it is). Conversely, some of the best books have terrible titles (we just did a video on this of some of my favorites).

–Don’t judge a book by its cover…but also you kinda should. Especially newer books. It tells you something about the author. It tells you something about the leverage they had with their publisher. It tells you who they think will like this book.

–Look for wisdom, not facts. We’re not reading to just find random pieces of information. What’s the point of that? We’re reading to accumulate a mass of true wisdom—that you can turn to and apply in your actual life.

–When great readers read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?

–In every book you read, try to find your next one in its footnotes or bibliography. This is how you build a knowledge base in a subject—it’s how you trace a subject back to its core.

–When you find an author you love, read ALL the books they’ve written. 

–If you see a book you want, buy it. Don’t worry about the price. Reading is not a luxury. It’s not something you splurge on. It’s a necessity. Even if all you get is one life-changing idea from a book, that’s still a pretty good ROI.

–Speed reading is a scam. You just have to spend a lot of time reading.

–Your aim as a reader is to understand WHY something happened, the what is secondary. Before I start a book, fiction especially, I almost always find a summary to get a sense of the plot and core themes. It saves me from spending half the book in the dark, trying to figure out what’s going on.

–Your nightstand should be ambitious. Don’t just build a library, build an anti-library—a stack of unread books that humbles you and reminds you just how much there is still to learn.

–Read like a spy in the enemy’s camp. Wisdom is wisdom—take it from wherever it comes. And you should read books and writers your disagree with! 

–If you only find yourself underlining and agreeing with the authors you read, you are not reading diversely or critically enough. You should be arguing with the authors you read. You should know enough about the topic to spot when they are wrong too. 

–“Don’t be satisfied just getting the ‘gist’ of things,” is what Marcus Aurelius learned from his philosophy teacher Rusticus. Go deep!

–Good things happen in bookstores. So many of my favorite books are just random things I grabbed at bookstores. That’s what bookstores are for, what I’ve tried to build mine around. It’s a discovery engine better than any algorithm.

–Prefaces and forewords are there for a reason. Don’t skip them! They often have a ton of helpful and interesting stuff about the context around when the person was writing, who the work ended up influencing, and other tidbits that sometimes stick with you longer than even the work itself.

–If a book is really good, recommend it and pass it along to other people.

It’s the last one that I follow the most. I’m proud of the books I’ve been able to champion and turn people onto over the years. I feel like I am paying forward what the Gregory Hays translation of Meditations did for me (I loved it so much I put out my own edition you can grab here).

I love looking around my bookstore and seeing titles that I don’t see in other bookstores very often. Ann Roe’s publisher of Pontius Pilate told us they had to do another printing because we’d raved about it too much. I heard something similar about William Seabrook’s Asylum. I bought up all the remaining copies of Pushkin Press’s edition of Zweig’s Montaigne because it’s that good (I believe we sold literally 1,000 copies last year). 

That’s the job of a reader and a writer—to find great stuff and suck everything you can out of it as you read it and re-read it.

And to help others do the same.