Guide

How to read more books

You don't need more time. You need a small page goal, a fixed moment in the day and permission to quit books you don't enjoy. Ten pages a day adds up to a lot of books.

By Pawlygon - Game Master · Updated November 9, 2026

Count pages, not minutes

"Read for 30 minutes" sounds simple, but minutes are easy to fill with rereading the same paragraph while checking your phone. Pages are honest. You either turned them or you didn't.

Pick a page goal you could hit on a tired evening. Five or ten is a good start. It feels small. Do the math anyway: ten pages a day is about 3,650 pages a year, which is roughly a dozen average-length books.

Read at the same moment every day

Habits stick when they hang on something you already do. Pick one anchor and keep it:

With your morning coffee.
On the train or bus.
In bed, before the lights go off. Put the book on your pillow when you make the bed.

Keep the phone out of reach while you read. A book can't compete with a feed that's one inch away. Our guide to reducing screen time has ideas for the evening scroll.

Pick books you want to read

This is where most reading habits die. You pick a book because you think you should, it's slow, and you stop reading anything for a month.

Start with something easy and fun. A thriller, a short novel, a book a friend loved.
Give a book 50 pages. If you dread it after that, stop and choose another.
Keep the next book ready. Finishing one and not knowing what's next is the most common way to stall.

Read with attention

A few small tricks make the pages stick:

When you finish your pages, say one sentence about what happened or what you learned.
Underline one line per session that you like.
Read fiction and non-fiction in turns, if one starts to feel like work.

Reading also trains focus. Ten quiet pages is a short session of single-tasking, which helps if you're working on deep work.

Daily Reading quest art from XP Tracker, Druid version — Daily Reading: read the required number of pages. No phone. No distractions.

Eight classics to start with

If you don't know what to read, older books are a good bet. They've lasted because people kept loving them. These eight are in the public domain, so you can find them free in many places. In XP Tracker, each class comes with one of them, and you can read it inside the app.

Book	Author	Class in XP Tracker
Treasure Island	Robert Louis Stevenson	Warrior
The Happy Prince and Other Tales	Oscar Wilde	Bard
The Jungle Book	Rudyard Kipling	Druid
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood	Howard Pyle	Outlaw
White Fang	Jack London	Hunter
Ecclesiastes	Traditionally attributed to King Solomon	Shaman
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde	Robert Louis Stevenson	Necromancer
Tao Te Ching	Laozi (James Legge translation)	Monk

Short and quick: The Happy Prince, Jekyll and Hyde, Ecclesiastes. Long adventures: Treasure Island, Robin Hood, White Fang, The Jungle Book. Slow and worth rereading: Tao Te Ching.

Track it

Tick a box each day you hit your pages. Write the title and date when you finish a book. A list of finished books is a strong motivator by month three.

In XP Tracker, Daily Reading is one of the core daily quests. You set the page goal to fit your reading, and every day you hit it earns XP toward your next level. If you want a dedicated page about tracking reading, see our reading habit tracker page.

The short version

Set a small page goal and read at the same moment every day.
Quit books you don't enjoy, and keep the next one ready.
Phone away. Track pages and finished books.

Questions people ask

How many pages a day should I read?

Start with a number you can hit on a busy day, like 5 or 10. At 10 pages a day you get through about 3,650 pages in a year, which is roughly a dozen average-length books.

Is it okay to stop reading a book halfway?

Yes. Quitting a book you don't enjoy is one of the best ways to read more. A boring book makes you avoid reading altogether. Put it down and pick up one you want to read.

Do audiobooks count?

For enjoying stories and learning ideas, yes. If your goal is to build a quiet, phone-free reading habit, keep at least some of your reading on paper or an e-reader.

What books can I read in XP Tracker?

Each class comes with a public-domain classic you can read inside the app: Treasure Island, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Tao Te Ching, The Jungle Book, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Ecclesiastes, White Fang and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.