Why I Love DailyLit: Books Sent to Your Email

Two common struggles I see readers dealing with the community are 1) getting through classics and 2) finding enough time to read at all.  DailyLit can help with either of these problems by sending bite-sized portions of your chosen (in the public domain) book to your email.  With just a commitment of a few minutes ago, you can finish a book in a month or so just by checking your email!

DailyLit gives you the option to customize your experience by choosing which days you want to receive excerpts (7 days a week? Just weekdays? Only Mondays?) and how long you want the excerpt to be (short, medium, or long).  You also have the option to have the next excerpt sent immediately if you find yourself really getting into the book and don’t want to wait for your next scheduled email.

For me, reading books this way gives me something to do if I’m having an exceptionally slow period at work, or it’s just a fun way to spend five minutes of your break.  Or it can be how you kick off the morning or spend your commute on public transportation or whatever.  It’s pretty low commitment because the excerpts aren’t that long (even if you pick the “long” option), but you eventually find yourself finishing books.

The one key for me is picking books that aren’t very long in the first place.  Personally, I like books I can finish in a month or so; I don’t want to spend half a year reading War and Peace over email.  I’d probably forget what even happened in the beginning of the book at that rate!  However, DailyLit conveniently tells you how many excerpts are in each book, and there are number of options that are fairly short: 70 excerpts or even 45.  The “short” except option is one excerpt per email, “medium” is two, and “long” is three.  I usually pick medium, so a 70 excerpt book that I have sent to me five days a week would take me about a month and a half to read, if I didn’t choose to have extra excerpts sent.

The options on DailyLit could be a little more extensive.  For instance, they have only one Agatha Christie novel.  However, my perceived “lack of options” is partially because I’ve already read a lot of the books they have, and I’m avoiding particularly long ones.  They do have more modern books and short stories, so it’s not all Jane Austen and Victorian literature either.

If you’re looking for a way to sneak a little more reading into your life, I recommend checking it out.  There are also a couple other websites that offer similar services.  I haven’t used them yet, but I suspect they might have different books on offer to increase your options.

Have you ever read a book by email?

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