Here’s last week’s post on Women Writing About Themselves; Men Writing About Other Things
I’ll be in Chicago next weekend selling Belt books at Printer’s Row. Come say hi!
On the week after Labor Day I still feel like I should be handing out syllabi. Maybe this link with all the books Belt is publishing over the next ‘two semesters’ would suffice?
I hate newsletters filled with advice about something on which the writer does not have expertise. Nonetheless, I am going to write one now! Maybe I kinda have expertise on the matter, I don’t know. At any rate, I find myself having this conversation a lot now, and people seem to respond to my suggestions positively on how to read more.
Apparently (I don’t really believe these stats, but it’s a starting point), Americans are reading for pleasure 40% less than they were two decades ago. And given the people I talk to in airports and Ubers and over drinks, this general stat is not surprising. I wrote about how English professors and writers and all sorts of people whose job involves reading books are also reading less for pleasure last year.
But the random conversations I have usually involve people wishing they read more. and that’s who this is for: those who want to read more for pleasure.
So first a bunch of advice, hacks, tips for how to read more (and I am speaking here of reading outside of my day job: all my adult life I have had jobs that require reading books, but what I’m talking about here is entirely separate from this. It’s about pleasure). At the end I talk a bit about why it is so meaningful to me.
Saying things like “I don’t have time” or “I think I must have ADHD” —which I hear a lot—don’t sit always comfortably with me. I mean sure, some people truly do not have the time! But lots of folks who say they don’t have time do watch tv or spend time on social media. So they are making choices about what to do with their leisure time, which is different than not having it. And the ADHD or inability to concentrate? Sometimes, sure! That’s the reason! But often: It’s not actually about you! IT’S THE DAMNED PHONES. It’s the phones. Not your brain. My simplest first suggestion for overcoming these two hurdles is to remove all screens from the bedroom. It’s simple, and, bonus, it’s freeing, even if you just fall asleep earlier than you would have otherwise, and with less of a screen headache, or wake up slowly while reading instead of checking email.
I do not think reading is morally good, creates empathy, or a duty. Take all that off the table. We’re just talking about fun here.
The above connotations put undue pressure on the act of reading. Instead, conceive of reading as pure, unadulterated pleasure. A hobby, a way to shift gears, a way to get away from the damned phone, a thing you can do in bed, an outlet for curiosity. A way to counter loneliness, a way to soothe, free therapy. Conceive of it in any way you can that strips it of whatever pressures, should’s, competitions you may have placed on it.
Read whatever the fuck you want to. Whatever sounds appealing to you in the moment. (One reason I love using an ereader is the freedom to download a book I feel like starting at 10:00 pm in bed, and be 1/3 through it by the time I fall asleep).
Get yourself some help getting off your phone: there are apps you can set up to block apps and websites off for you. That’s what Kate McKean does: “The evening routine is titled ‘Books Are Better’” is how she puts it.
Skip parts. There’s no test! This is about fun. Bored with the war scenes in War and Peace? With those long descriptions of trees? Turn the page. Or stop reading the book. The only goal is to have fun.
Get in the habit of bringing a book, in any form, with you. Read while waiting for a friend for dinner, or at the doctor’s office, or on public transit, instead of scrolling. Much more calming! One person I asked carries a book in their hand, instead of in their bag, to make it even easier.
Book clubs and other forms of communal reading are great, but might they sometimes get in the way of reading what you want to? If someone else chooses a book for your club that you don’t really want to read, and you keep putting it off and not reading other books you would rather read, is it cutting down on your overall reading pleasure? (This is one of the main reasons I have never been in a book club. I always just want to read whatever I feel like!)
On the other hand, some people work out reading goals with someone else to keep them accountable: one friend has one to do 10 pages a day. It’s not the book, but the act of reading, that is emphasized.
Have options. When you open up Netflix, you have hundreds of choices. How often do you say “I must watch this DeNiro movie tonight” instead of saying “hmm what do I feel like watching?” Set yourself up to have lots of choices as to what to read when as well. Buy print ones or check them out from the library and pile them by your nightstand, or do like me and download a bunch of ebooks from Libby at once.
Whatever you think of Amazon, you can get the first 10% of any book sent to you free to your Kindle. I sample SO MANY books this way. My ereader is stuffed with Kindle samples I can open up whenever I want.
Remember: pleasure fun hobby fun pleasure. Strip all that shit in your head away—your high school English teacher, the social media stuff about tracking how many books you read in a year, the folks who tell you it is political or resistance or moral or healthy like vegetables or a hack for getting ahead. It’s not competition. There is no test. It’s something you want to do. Full stop. God have we piled associations and connotations and pressures upon doing something fun and interesting. It’s burying us, and the books we desire to spend time with.
Consider physical reasons you might not feel like reading, and work around them. One reason I switched to an ereader years ago has to do with my eyesight. I wear progressive lenses, which makes reading print books more difficult. An ereader solves this problem for me completely. And as I always say over and over and over the ereader screen is not same as a phone or tablet or computer. It’s gentler; it’s not harsh. It’s not connected to the internet. If there are physical things that prevent you from reading, maybe you can switch things up. Another example: I have never enjoyed reading hardcovers, because I spend a lot of time reading while lying down on my side; hardcovers are awkward in that position. So if it’s a print book it’s always a paperback.
Listen to audiobooks instead of podcasts while doing the dishes or walking the dog or whatever. You can even switch from listening to reading the same book. An audiobook can offer you more immersion than a podcast.
Stop reading a book you aren’t enjoying or don’t feel like reading. Again: no test! Again: you probably do this with streaming all the time! It’s the same idea! It’s entertainment!
Here are some more suggestions from folks I asked on social media:
“The chair. It’s all about the chair. I have a reading chair I sue almost exclusively when reading a book for pleasure.”
“Before bed I end up reading comic books or something super light. Makes it easier after these stressful, exhausting days. For other books I end up reading in the mornings and early evenings.”
“When I get in a reading lull, I find a genre I liked as a kid and look for new books in that genre. Usually mysteries, thrillers, or sci-fi. It’s a good way to clear through any clutter of books I feel I “should” read” (I do this too, and it’s usually business history—like Bad Blood or the recent ones on Facebook and Conde Nast— or mysteries)
“The only thing that worked for me what I had lost the habit was scheduling reading time the way you would exercise of music practice. Sn hour a day is not hard and can be totally life changing. Try some in the morning —bedtime actually isn’t great because your mind can be too tired.”
“I actually read novels on my phone. CloudLibrary and Kindle give me a good selection to pick from. I let myself get obsessed and binge the last 100 pages in the. middle of the night if I want to.” (I do this sometimes too).
“It’s wild now few people have library cards. Get one and go browse! They usually have book clubs and county-wide reading campaigns, and you can get audio ebooks for free too. Loaning gives you a deadline and eliminates the cost.”
And now some of the reasons I read a lot for pleasure:
It was early in the pandemic that I began reading about twice or three times as much as I had been doing before. It was then I finally threw away all the “shoulds” —I should be up on contemporary literary fiction, I should read more of the classics I skipped doing my PhD, I should read that book on urbanism in the city I live in. They all went out the window. Suddenly, I was ecstatic! I could read anything I wanted to. Since then I’ve read dozens and dozens of mysteries, a bunch of dumb business history books, minor novels by beloved authors instead of the big novel by the famous author, and so many truly glorious books that offered me the most intensely wonderful active respite from the world while offering me portals of insight into this world, and myself.
I follow rabbit holes through books instead of doing it online. For instance, after the election in November, I found myself desperate to learn ancient history. I started by listening to history podcasts, and then I would read books on the people and topics discussed that I was particularly interested in. I read about Sparta and the French Revolution and Samual Adams and Cleopatra. I’d rarely read these big trade histories before, and now I have a gazillion more still waiting for me, and we might all agree that having something to look forward to is much needed these days. But if I don’t read any of them? That’s okay too! And if I already don’t remember anything about Samual Adams, after being obsessed with him for two weeks in January? That’s ok too! I had fun.
If I watch a movie about, say, Stalinism (sorry that’s dark but it’s my latest rabbit hole), and want to know more, I read a book about it. If I hear about a dumb buzzy book and am curious, I read it. I love Edith Wharton but had never read her less famous ones so I read all the ‘minor’ ones. They are great! Soon it became, well, kinda like when you have started to exercise more than have for awhile and it slowly starts to become somewhat addicting. You just want to more and more and the resistance falls away.
Plus, for me, leisure reading has always been connected to my mental health, but now it’s probably my baseline. For example, on vacation recently, I read voraciously, hours and hours a day, but since I’ve been back, I’ve started and stopped four books. I’ve scrolled in bed, breaking my number one rule. My mood, and mental health, completely tracks with my leisure reading.
But why, you might ask, do any reading? You don’t have to! IT’S FINE NOT TO READ. I do it because I love to, and because when I am deep in certain books I am absorbed. I am immersed. I experience a state of flow. I’m in the zone. It’s all-encompassing, and the pleasure can be so intense as to be physical. And to know that I have an infinite number of such easily accessible, free or cheap such experiences available to me, for the rest of my life, no matter how long or short it might be, is the greatest solace.
This advice may be ill-advised—who am I to give it? Isn’t the very idea of a newsletter of tips the very opposite of my pleasure only modus operandi? Yeah maybe. Feel free to sound off below.
Thanks for widening the excuses+shoulds toxic spill on reading enough for me to avoid the whole mess and start re-exploring how and why and what and where I like to read. Great suggestions from your circle as well. Many thanks.
I want to underline every word of this post. Reading should be fun. Plain and simple: fun. After decades of reading as an academic, I was overjoyed after quitting academia to be able to read without a pen in my hand. I still, years later, take no notes in a book, only occasionally dog-earing a page or typing a wonderful sentence out to save somewhere. I, too, read on an e-reader very often, in large part because of the freedom to bounce around and to abandon a book, a skill it's been hard for me to learn. I also acknowledge that I DO indeed have time to read--but I often choose to spend that time consuming narrative in visual form (because, ok, I love acting, so I love seeing that art form at the same time as the narrative). There's nothing morally bankrupt about my doing that. Nor is there anything inherently virtuous about the kind of narrative I consume, the format it's in, or how much time I spend on it at any given time. I want a book that makes me keep turning pages and makes me want to reread sentences because they're amazing. Thankfully, there are many of those out there!