The reading practice that changed me most was forcing myself to finish books I hated. I did this for two years in my early twenties on the theory that books I initially disliked would open up if I persisted. Some of them did. Some of them didn't. But I learned something important from both categories.

From the books that opened up, I learned that my resistance was sometimes about the book requiring a kind of attention I hadn't yet learned to give. Middlemarch required patience I didn't have at 22. The Dispossessed required political imagination I hadn't developed. Coming back to both at 30, I understood what I'd been missing.

From the books that didn't open up, I learned that not every difficult book is difficult because it's asking something real. Some books are just bad and the difficulty is not a signal of depth. Knowing the difference is a skill that takes time.