The best reading advice I've received is also the simplest: read books you love twice before you read books you've heard are important but don't love. This advice came from a professor who had clearly read everything and had no patience for performative difficulty.

Her argument was that rereading a book you love teaches you what books can do — you're reading with attention to craft because you're not reading for plot, you already know the plot. Rereading trains the reading capacity. Reading difficult prestigious books trains the ability to say you've read difficult prestigious books.

I've thought about this for fifteen years. I think it's right, with one qualification: it matters what you mean by 'love.' A book you find comfortable and pleasant is not the same as a book you find necessary. The rereading advice applies to the second kind.