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How to Read a 350-Paged Book in One Day
Techniques for an average reader to finish reading one book in 24 hours
In 2015, I finished reading Sidney Sheldon’s 363-paged Tell Me Your Dreams in one day. Since then, I’ve made 24-hour book runs a part of my reading regime.
Basically, I choose one book to read in a day, and I’m done with it in 24-hours. This doesn’t necessarily mean I finish it before I sleep at night. But I keep a deadline of 24-hours to read a complete book from page-to-page. Till now, I’ve successfully replicated it to read one-book-a-day for several books. This not only ensures that I don’t linger around a book much longer, but it also allows me to read a lot of books in a short time. I’ve come to love these a-book-a-day runs.
In this article, I’ve shared the details of this technique. If you’re an average reader, you can use this approach to read any book up to 400-pages in 24-hours in the most immersive way possible.
What You Read and When is Important
The book I chose in 2015, Sheldon’s “Tell me Your Dreams”, is one of the best page-turners I’ve ever read.
Some other books I’ve read fast using this technique are Sandra Cisneros 110-paged A House on Mango Street, Albert Camus’s 123-paged The Stranger, and Agatha Christie's 256-paged The ABC Murders. I tried doing the same to Virginia Wolfe’s 110-paged A Room of One’s Own recently but it took me two days to finish it.
Based on the various books I’ve experimented with, below are my observations.
Fast-Paced Books Work Best
Pick a fast-paced book. Murder mysteries and thrillers are perfect. Agatha Christie, Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, and Stephen King are some favored authors you can look for. You can also choose any other book that you find interesting. As long as you’re comfortable with the genre and you find the book exciting, it works.
Judge the Book from its Meta
If you look carefully, you can tell a lot about a book even before you read it. I learned this lesson the hard way.
