Some people say that reading one book a day is a high hurdle. It’s only natural. In a sense, it’s impossible. For example, books like the “Bible,” “Das Kapital,” or Heidegger’s “Being and Time” are things that you can’t read no matter how you think about it. Even if you could read them, it wouldn’t make much sense.
Books that you can read one a day are either light in content or in your specialized field that you’ve been reading for a long time. My high school Japanese history teacher claimed he finished reading an Iwanami Shoten book in a café, but it was in his field of expertise, so he could just read the essential points, and the rest of it didn’t matter to him. It’s like skimming.
There was a technique called speed reading that was popular for a while. I’ve never tried it, but it’s training to broaden your reading perspective. It’s an old practice said to be done by former U.S. President Kennedy. I think it’s worth trying at least once, but it doesn’t mean that reading quickly is the goal. The purpose of reading should come first.
Of course, more information is generally better, but if it’s useless or irrelevant to you, then it doesn’t have any meaning. The key is to get information that you need and enjoy. The amount of information is something that naturally accumulates over time without conscious effort. So, I don’t think the goal should be to read one book a day.
Instead, what I would recommend is casually reading books about “the art of reading” or “reading techniques.” When you do that, you’ll realize that there are many reading experts in the world. People who write books about reading techniques have read a significant number of books. And they are sure to list recommended books. This will help you understand if there are so many enjoyable books left to read even if you were to read throughout your entire life. Here are some examples of such “reading books.” They are all easy and enjoyable reads:
• Takashi Saito: “Reading Power”
• Eiichi Yasuzawa: “Reading Expert”
• Kazuyo Katsumi: “The Evolution of Reading”
• Kinya Abe: “Building Reading Skills”
• Hiroji Seko: “Reading Techniques to Build Yourself”
• Yasuo Noguchi: “The Reading Method of 1000 Books in ten years”
• Minako Saito: “My hobby is Reading”
• Takeo Kuwabara: “My Reading Journey”
• Ryuji Tachibana: “Books I’ve Read,” “Software for Knowledge,” and others
• Ryuji Tachibana and Yu Sato: “How We Train Our Brains”
• Shion Kabasawa: “The Complete Guide to Input”
• Arthur Schopenhauer: “On Reading” and two other essay
