If you’ve ever told yourself ” I want to read more books,” but never stuck to it – you’re not alone.

As a beginner reader its easy to go for self-help, business books or educational non-fiction books because we think reading should be “productive,” I know i did. But then very quickly what was meant to be a fun new habit starts to feel like homework, motivation drops, and the reading habit disappears before it even starts.

Here’s the lazy genius truth:

If you want to become a reader, start with fiction

Fiction is the easiest, most enjoyable shortcut to building a reading habit – and surprisingly, it still improves your brain, vocabulary, focus, and emotional intelligence.

Let’s break down why fiction is the ultimate beginner reading hack

Fiction Feels Like Entertainment, Not Work

A big reason beginners quit reading is simple: reading feels like effort.

Fiction is exactly what the doctor prescribes for that problem as it turns reading into an experience instead of a task. Stories trigger curiosity, its like gossip but better. Once you care about what happens to a character, you’re roped in, and your brain naturally wants to keep going.

Research shows that when we read fiction, the brain often treats the story like a real experience. It activates emotional and social brain systems similar to real-life interactions, which makes stories deeply engaging. So, you’re not forcing yourself to read – you’re following a story you want to finish.

And the thing about habits is they form faster when they feel enjoyable.

Fiction Naturally Builds Vocabulary and Language Skills

If you’ve ever thought that you need to study vocabulary to improve your language skills, that’s a lie.

Picture this, you’re a lawyer and your boss calls you in his office, and he tells you some big news – that you have a new client and he’s bringing in the big money, and you’re in charge of him, so naturally you’re excited, but on your way out he says, ” keep in mind that his divorce was tempestuous, okay?” And now you don’t know whether to be excited or nervous because you don’t know what that means.

Reading fiction will expose you to:

• new words in context,
• natural sentence structures
• dialogue and real communication patterns

In time as you read fiction you naturally learn meaning of words from context and improve both your writing and speaking skills.

I wasn’t going to leave you hanging, tempestuous in this context means that very strong and intense emotions, especially anger are involved.

Fiction Builds Emotional Intelligence and Empathy

One of the most underrated benefits of fiction is emotional growth.

Remember when we said that stories trigger curiosity. As you read fiction you are stepping into people’s lives, thoughts, emotions, decision making skills or lack of. This activates brain regions linked to empathy, perspective -talking, and social-understanding.

Inevitably, fiction readers often become better at :

• understanding emotions
• recognizing social cues
• seeing situations from multiple perspectives

Because you’re immersed into the character’s life and life choices you end up understanding their pain, trauma and fears and how they’re living their life from this perspective and without judgement you find yourself rooting for them to be better, do better. Their wins start feeling like yours and their heartbreaks too.

It is a beautiful thing to have this bird’s eye view of them and naturally it’ll translate to having more compassion for your own life, and others and your own choices as life ebbs and flows.

Fiction Is Perfect If You “Hate” Reading

If you still aren’t sold, and you feel like this is still not for you, may i submit for your consideration that you probably haven’t found the right type of book.

Fiction offers endless options:

• Romance
• Thriller
• Fantacy
• Historical fiction
• Mystery
• Science fiction

No one is left behind, there is almost always a story that matches your interests. So the hack is simply, to find fictional books that align with your interests, African fiction is where it’s at for me, and I just discovered it last year, it feels like I’m playing catch up every book is literally so good.

Final Thoughts: The Smartest Way to Start Reading

Start simple. Pick a book that is interesting to you, read reviews of it online to make sure you’re picking something good. 9/10 times I find my book recommendations on TikTok, I pick books based off of reviews, the color of the cover(love a colorful book cover).

To build a habit you’re going to have to set 10 – 20 minutes daily in order to build consistency, or even, commit to read 5 pages daily, overtime this will increase.

And just like there’s many options to fiction books, there’s also multiple formats to enjoy these books: if you like a hard copy like me cause you’re intentionally trying to build your library, or you enjoy an audiobook or you can invest in a kindle. Find what works for you, make it fun and go on forth and build a habit, be a reader.