How to Read

And what is your reading list (for this summer)?
ideas
books
Author

Aleksandra

Published

July 19, 2026

  1. Like my 5-year-old son: letter by letter.
  2. Like we were taught at school: from cover to cover.
  3. Like poetry: just a chapter, sometimes just a phrase.
  4. Like notes: slow down for the harder parts, pay more attention, and go over them more than once.
  5. Not to get “stuck on a book”: if being unable to finish a particular book is stopping you from reading, put that book away and start another one.
  6. In layers: fiction/non-fiction/fiction/non-fiction.
  7. In a group: viva book clubs!
  8. Seasonally: A Christmas Carol in winter, The Secret Garden in spring, Evil Under the Sun in summer, and a campus novel for autumn
  9. Locally: Paddington in London, Jo Nesbø in Oslo, The Doll in Warsaw – you get the point
  10. Over someone’s shoulder.
  11. With a torch, under the blanket.
  12. Backwards: starting from the last sentence of the last chapter.
  13. Again: we change, but books don’t.
  14. Read however you like. Just read.

It is the summer holiday season, and I am happily putting together a list of books I would love to read this summer. I will likely not even get halfway through it, but that is rather the goal. An overambitious reading list is excellent insurance against point 5. Feel free to share your own types, the comments section is now open.

Instead of sharing my summer list, I am sharing something even better: books for which I gave up sleep, took a day off, or cancelled social arrangements. Or all three at once. I don’t think of myself as a particularly jealous person, but if you still get to read one of these for the first time, I am genuinely jealous:

• Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

• The Redbreast by Jo Nesbø

• Jo confesso (es) / Confessions (en) by Jaume Cabre

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

• Kingsbridge series by Ken Follett

• Dorothy Hodgkin: A Life by Georgina Ferry

• Faraon (pl) / Pharaoh (en) by Bolesław Prus

• Bieguni (pl) / Flights (en) by Olga Tokarczuk

• Czarne Liście (pl) / Zwarte Bladeren (nl) by Maja Wolny

• Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

• Hot Chocolate on Thursday by Michiko Aoyama

Happy reading and thank you for reading.

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