3 Fantastic ways to read a book a week (yes, even with ADHD!)

Reading is a problem for me because I tend not to grasp the meaning of the words, the overall concept of what the book is telling me and that is no good because that is what you are reading the book to get.

Most of the time when I read I end up re-reading and sometimes even when I re-read I still don’t quite understand what the book is telling me.

So maybe it’s just because I’m out of practice with reading?

No I don’t think that it’s because I am out of practice I think there’s something deeper going on. For some people with ADHD and/or autism it is very easy to read. I am not one of those people I am one of the people who want to read everything but can’t read anything.

Sure I don’t mean that I can’t actually read but what I mean is I may as well not be reading for the time it takes me to read a book is about 3 to 6 months.

I have only ever read two books cover to cover this far and I am currently halfway through my third.

For those of you in this predicament, I have a few solutions:

Solution 1) ADHD friendly publishers

The DK books are very good because they are like book versions of infographic charts, they explain quite complex topics with quite simple and I catching, aesthetic diagrams. Their catalogue is huge! So go over there and have a browse. Note: books don’t have to be by DK, this is just an example, but DK is a fantastic place to start!

Solution 2) E-Readers

a woman reading an E-reader, with a pool in the background.

I think the kindle is a great thing.

Kindles are very good because you can read them in bed at night without a night light, they can carry an entire library in your pocket, you can highlight words as you’re going along and add them into your “to learn” list.
Kindles have a feature that allows you to change the font size, type and colour. I find it easier to digest the words when there is ample spacing, larger font sizes and in an ochre-like yellow page colour.
OpenDyslexic is a font that is brilliant for people who struggle to read, this is an included font type on the kindle, it seems to accentuate the features of letters to make them more easily recognisable – plain fonts may cause your brain to work harder to distinguish them, perhaps.

Solution 3) Audiobooks

a fluffy material with a pair of headphones and a phone on top. the phone displaying an audiobook.

I like to augment my reading with audiobooks.

My listening speed and comprehension far outperform my reading speed and comprehension.

With Audible you get one free credit per month and that can buy any book on the audible platform.

Admittedly, I haven’t finished many audiobooks but I am able to listen to many simultaneously because of the accessibility.

I have about 45 audiobooks. I’m currently listening to about five of them.

I like to listen at between 1.2 and 1.7 X speed. This allows me to get through about 100 pages per hour with more comprehension than I would reading at my current reading speed of about 40 pages per hour give or take.

There is an important thing that I do regardless of whether it is an audiobook or a physical book.

This is to make notes – I have listened to a few audiobooks in the past and I’ve watched hundreds of YouTube videos but alas, I couldn’t tell you much about them-why? Because your brain deems them un-important.

To make something worthy of staying in your brain and for the long term it must be subject to repetition.

Notion.

Notion is an app that is used for free. It is an organisational app that is used for many things. (I will do another post about Notion separately) This is the place where I store my book insights.

Conclusion

I think that it is very important to read physical books.

It is very important to read physical books because it focuses your mind on reading the words and comprehending the words, this is good for reading comprehension in general.

One of the most important points of reading is vocabulary building; I think that it is the number one way to build your vocabulary. It is indubitably the best way because not only can you read the words and understand them in context but you can see how they are spelled.
For vocabulary building purposes it is important not to choose a book that is too easy, nor too hard for a few read a book that is too easy you won’t be gaining many vocabulary words – if you are reading a book that is too difficult then you will lose the context of the words and be unable to learn them as easy, you might as well just learn them straight from the dictionary.