A (2:40)

Yeah. And I think we need to acknowledge a couple things off the top. We do this professionally so we can build it into our days differently. But we didn't used to Rebecca, and I think we read more and differently now. Well, that's not true in certain, but we certainly read differently now and we have different motivations. So if you're out there and we've gotten some emails and reviews from people about the show saying, you know, I want to read more, I've been meaning to do this, but if you're not working in a book related industry and the, I don't know, the claims of the world on your time, attention and energy are so overwhelming that it's hard to do it. I mean let's acknowledge that right away. It's very hard to do also if you're getting to this new I think some people are more or less inclined just to choose reading as part of what they do. I think that makes us a little bit different as we were reading as teenagers through college, as young adulthoods when we weren't working in this industry. And if you have a little proclivity for it anyway, that makes a lot easier. And I'm guessing if you're listening to the show, you at least have a little bit of that. But everyone isn't built the same and you may have different strategies that work for you, different needs and requirements. I don't think most folks are going to read 150 books like you or I will in a year. That's totally fine because as you note here, most people don't read. So already giving it a shot, making it a part of something you care about even if you don't even turn the page. You are in a hallowed minority and we salute you.

B (4:01)

Yes, yes we do. And I'd say philosophically, neither of us believes like it's a core principle of ours and a book Riots in general that you don't need to always be trying to read more. This is not like startup fundraising where your stats have to or the economy where it's always. Where it always has to be growing. I think there's a sweet spot for every reader and it's different for every reader of how much book, how much space books take up in your life and you get to decide what the sweet spot is. We have different sweet spots. You know, you typically, you read faster than I do and in most years you read like 25 to 50% more books than I do. I don't think that is any value judgment on my reading life.

A (4:46)

Yeah, it only makes me about a 10% better person. It doesn't really scale. Right, Rebecca?

B (4:51)

Right, yeah, sure. We've got a colleague who reads 500 books a year. Like that's not what we're trying to get at here. Just if you are looking for more out of your reading life and that can be achieved with one more book, it can be achieved with the same number of books that you've read, but having a feeling of deeper engagement with those books or feeling that you're picking better books, higher quality reading, even stuff that's just a better fit for you. So there's not a one size fits all about what it means to read well. And nowhere in today's episode will you get a list from us of what you have to check off in order for your reading life to be a good one or, you know, a valuable one. That's up to you.

A (5:30)

I think you can even see in the title of the show zero to well read that it's a continuum and that well read is a ever. It's like the, the, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You're never going to quite get there. You could run faster towards it, but it's always going to be a little further off in the distance and it's the journey. So there's really three levers if you want to read more and better and maybe richer. I mean, that's one term that we've were introduced to us this year of psychological richness. Life in three dimensions shouts to Professor Oishi for writing that. But the idea of richer. Right, so there's, there's three. I think there's three levers that you can pull to get you towards reading more richly. One is just volume, which we're going to talk about. The second is title selection. And I think that argument is implicit in what we're doing already. Not all books are the same. And that doesn't mean they're better in sort of an abstract sense. They do different things. And I think people who want to read more better, the kind of people who are even interested in listening to this show or even interested in thinking about listening to the show, are looking for richer reading experiences. However they may define that. And some books lend themselves to that and some don't. And we're trying to pick those we have found ourselves that that makes a difference to the kind of reading experience you have. I'm very being careful not to make judgments here, but I find this to be what I am looking for. And I think, Rebecca, you're looking for it too. And that's another thing you can do. So there's more. There's select different kinds of reading experiences, the different kind of books, and then to do different kinds of reading while your eyes are moving over the world. So we're going to kind of take those step by step. Does that about COVID it, Rebecca? Is there anything else people should know before we get into the specifics?

B (7:11)

I think that's right. There's just the how to read more, how to select titles and then the skill set really or a toolbox you can put together that will enrich your reading life in some way. I do want to touc back on something you mentioned at the top of the show about most people not reading. Like if you're listening to this, you probably did see the headlines that circulated earlier this year about a 40% drop in pleasure reading among Americans. Just to ground that it showed that only 16% of Americans read for pleasure on any given day, down from 28% in 2004. So that was a drop of 40%. But the thing to note there is that even at the high point, even in 2004, at the peak of when this data was collected, and that's not to say the peak of all American reading, but this is what we have data on. 28% is still nowhere near a majority of Americans reading for pleasure on any given day. So we're we've always been a minority people who are reading for fun, but down to 16%. So if you're here and you're reading for pleasure at all, or this is a thing you're gonna pick up, you have already taken a step toward having this be part of your Life.

C (8:17)

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B (8:48)

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A (9:47)

Yeah, and I think that pleasure term, I mean in their leisure time, in their free time. Because I think something other than pleasure is very much something you and I are concerned about. Is it pleasurable to read Oedipus? Well, I think for some people maybe it is. I wouldn't say that's the primary experience I have, but it's meaningful, it's deep, it's engaging, and it's unlocking other things other than my pleasure sensors. Because there are kinds of reading. And this has been a very welcome development in the world of books and reading really over the past 10, 15 years. Is that especially categories like romance where people are reading it for things other than the great books and getting an A on exam or whatever have that is that is a welcome. That's an affirmed and meaningful thing people can do with their reading lives. That's not we're really talking about here. We have other podcasts and check out book riot.com if that's something you're looking for. And pleasure is a virtue. Like Fran Leibowitz gives us great quotes like I'm so sick of people telling me something important. Tell me it's fun. Tell me I'm gonna Have a good time reading it, and that will get me there. And that is welcome. I think you and I don't have much trouble finding ways of engaging with books that we sort of read for fun. You. You and I both love Dan Brown, for example. That's a different kind of a reading experience than we're talking about on the show, and that is okay. It's just different.

B (11:07)

Yeah, yeah. There's room for all of it. And, you know, again, we're not here to say that people who read more are better or that people who read certain kinds of books are better readers than other people. Like, I'm not interested in judging your reading life for you, but we. We just want to help you out today, get closer to your reading goal. So let's start with the Read more. And a guideline that we use often at work together is the great what gets measured gets managed. So I think a perf starting point, as you're thinking about your 2026 and reading is take inventory of where you are. If you have been tracking what you read, great, you can go back and take a look. How many books did you read? What is working for you in that book selection? How many of the books you read this year are you glad you read? Like, what's your satisfaction percentage? That's huge. Because there's the. Like, in the moment, I had a book to read, and so I was happy that I was reading. But when you look back on it, are you glad that if you had 10 reading slots this year, that book got of them? Like, what would you like to do more of? And what's missing that you want to incorporate in your reading life? And that can be all kinds of things. It can be genres. It can be reading more diversely. Like, maybe you look at your list and you realize that they're all by white people or that they're all by men. And you're like, man, I'd like to explore more variety in my reading life. We can take a minute and plug Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge for that meant explicitly to.

A (12:39)

And I should say Read Harder is named for a reason. This is not easy to do necessarily. Again, you're not going to dive into the archives or something like that, but you're gonna have to do a little bit more work to get out of your comfort zone. For some people, getting into a book at all might be getting out of their comfort zone for Book Riot, where people coming to that site, most of them, have reading as a part of their daily bread, so to speak. And so reading harder for them, they gonna. It's like, it's like my son who's a runner, he's got to run a lot harder than I do to work up a sweat. So basically where you need to be to work up a bit of a sweat is something the Read Harder challenge can get you to do. You know, if you haven't read something that's published in the last 10 years, maybe you haven't read something that's older than 25 years old. All of us have different kinds of reading proclivities in finding them, challenging them, expanding them. If you want to expand your mind, that takes work that's effortful, it has labor. And it's not all about pleasure, it's not all comfort. And that's to be expected if you want to do the kinds of reading. I think again, if you're listening to this show and this episode specifically, you're going to be interested in. I've got another sort of sub point. These are all suggestions. We don't have a seven point plan to be a better reader. We don't believe in prescriptive stuff like that. These are invitations, these are questions, these are tactics. Some of them may verge on to be grander strategies, but find one of these. If one or two or three of these feel interesting to you, take them. One thing I consider. I was just talking, we were just talking about the Book Riot podcast yesterday. Number of books versus pages read is an interesting dynamic, right? I, given the choice between two equally attractive books, will choose the shorter one. I just will. And that is not so that I can pad my stats. I'm long past that. I used to care about the number of books I read. I'll admit that now I don't really care about the number. I used to be able to tell you exactly in a given year how many I read. I can actually tell you that right now, which is growth. It's getting older. Also my memory's going, so it's just kind of everything going at the same time. But I do think about my time as being constrained. And really what I'm feeling is reading time is how many pages I'm going to get through. And. And by extension, how many kinds of reading experience do I get to have per thousand pages, per 5,000 pages, for 10,000 pages. And for me, I find number count within that constraint helps me because I like a lot of different things that are curious a lot about the world. So if you read, if you're solving for. And this goes back to Rebecca's point. What gets measured gets managed. It sometimes can. The tail can wag the dog. Because you think I want to read 12 books this year and there is a book you really, really would love to read that's 800 pages. But you know it's going to take you six weeks. You're going to choose against that because it doesn't help you get to your goal. Is that what you really want or is pages more interesting? So that's another way of thinking about it, Rebecca. And I don't know too many people who think of that, but I think it'd be quite helpful.

B (15:35)

Yeah, I think pages book count but you could also just like you get to decide what kind of targets you set. Like the next step after you take a look at where you currently are, take your inventory is set what your targets are and it could just. I want to read five kinds of books I've never read before. And then you can read as many or as few in and around that as possible. I want to explore five books inside this genre or five books about this topic that I'm really excited about. Like that it can. This can be whatever you want it to be. And just because the Internet tends to be built around tracking pages or tracking the number of books, like make your own spreadsheet. And that's one thing I was going to ask you. Like how do you think about what your reading goals are are for the year?

A (16:22)

I don't really have reading goals. This comes down a little bit. I like that. What I try to avoid is a long dry spell. I'm in the middle of one right now. Just because work has happened in holidays and a bunch of other things. If I'm reading consistently, that's what I care about. And I find if I'm reading consistently, the sort of pages take care of themselves. You're going to hear me quite a few times refer to going to the gym because that's my version of wanting to read more is going to the gym. 90% of it to me is getting out the door and getting to the gym. Right. If I get there, I'll do it. It's getting there that's hard. So for books for me that's that's ambient. I just tend to pick it up. But I can get out of the habit pretty quickly. And there's some ways to avoid those dry spells that I'm going to impart or at least my own experience. But I don't really set reading goals. I only really write down or keep track in a spreadsheet what I've read so I can remember it honestly, rather than as sort of a deer head that I get to put on my above my fireplace. What I've taken it down. That's really what it means to me anymore.

B (17:21)

That's also where I am. I have a pretty simple spreadsheet where I know what I've read. I do keep track of author, gender and some basic demographic stuff so that I'm reading as diversely as I want to be, what the genres are. I keep a page count because that's just interesting. But I'm not shooting for a particular number of books in a given year. And that to me, is fun because then I get to be curious about what's going on as my count goes up and down. Number of books I read shrunk during COVID and a couple of years after Covid and I expected it to maybe contract this year because we were reading big books, like thinky books, stuff I really had to spend time with. And I was surprised to see that actually I will have. I'll end this year having read more than I've read in the last several years, which points to me for the fact that better reading often leads to reading more. And you get this for me, there's a virtuous circle there that comes. That can feed itself. So so far we've got track and inventory you're reading and set some targets. I really like this next point that you have that to pick something up, you have to put something down. There's an opportunity cost to our time.

A (18:31)

Yeah. And you have a. You have the specific example a little bit down the page. I think most people are fighting, but I wanted to abstract it just a little bit because it doesn't have to be what we're going to talk about in a minute. It could be anything. But it's very easy to say, I want to read more, but it's going to take up time. Right. Are you going to sleep less? You know, there's that sort of terrifyingly dystopian thing that the CEO of Netflix said once, which is like our number one competitor is sleep. And I was like, oh, my God. I mean, I understand that. Right. That's bleak. But you could spend every waking minute of your leisure time plugged into the algorithm, to tv, to whatever it could be. Or you could be cooking, or you could be talking with friends. You could be staring into space. You could be rage posting on Reddit. You know, there's so many things that you can be doing, but if you're going to do more of one thing. It makes sense. You have to put something down. So I think it's helpful to think of both sides of the equation, right? Like, okay, I want to add more reading time into my day, my week, my month, my life. What, what, what is it going to displace?

B (19:36)

Yeah. Where's it going to come from?

A (19:37)

Where and where is it going to go? And then that can help you with another thing that I have here, which is think copy the tactics of habit formation. Right? The apps, duolingo, they're trying to get you to teach, you know, learn Turkish or there's apps trying to get you to sleep more or meditate or whatever. And there's, you know, if you use one of those apps, you might look at the strategies they use. But one that I find very interesting is to start a streak of one page per day. Just one page per day. Anyone can do that. That doesn't really have to displace any time, Rebecca. But it gets you to do the hardest thing, which is to open your Kindle app, open your print book, turn on your audiobook. One page per day on audio is a little tough. Make it, make it two minutes, make it five minutes, audiobook listening, whatever you want to do. And then keep track of that streak. Manage that because you, I think you will find, because we are weirdo beings that like that, that, that will become an invitation, an expectation, an admonition to do 9% more reading kind of for free.

B (20:36)

Yeah. And I think that's a special important thing to point out here. Reading more is just a habit like anything else. There's not really a magic secret trick that you can do in your life that helps you read more. That wouldn't also help you do more of like taking walks, hanging out with your kids, baking cookies once a week, whatever it is that you want to spend time doing. And you can track this manually. There are apps where you can put in your own streak goal and you could keep track of it that way. Have an accountability buddy as a friend, like, whatever. But I do, I love the idea of lowering the barrier to entry to like, the smallest possible unit of reading. And what will probably happen if you're picking good books for you is that you'll read one page and you will be hopefully be looking for ways to keep going, that your one page a day minimum is just the way that you can get over the hump of like, and now it's time to read. But there's all these other things competing for my attention. You get your One page in, you keep going. And it. It does feed itself. When you are enjoying the act of reading or you're finding it to be enriching, you will want to do more of it. It's like anything else that gives us pleasure or satisfaction, we will start to seek more of it.

A (21:50)

And some of you might put some of these piece of advice or I guess instructions for trying into the bucket of making the removing as much of the friction as you can to reading. And some of that is like your own expectations of what you're going to do in a reading session. Like you don't want to be in a case where in order you have to think of I'm going to read more sitting down for four hours in this specific chair at this specific light with this specific mode where all my to do list is done. That's never going to happen, right? Like that's our, that's our platonic ideal which is actually a fantasy of how this works. I think if you embed it more, you make it more like just picking up a pen or drinking a cup of coffee or getting your just make put them around, make it easy on yourself. And again, in terms of friction formation, if you are the kind of I only read in print or I or I never read in print, I think you might find that the barriers to your reading as part of your daily bread. Different reading shapes can feel different kinds of time, right? Maybe like I hate reading on my phone, I get that. But if you're standing in line at the DMV and you have a Kindle book going, you don't have to have remembered your hardcover or have the right bag or something like that. You can flip it open for five minutes and check off your streak and I guess you'll find you get through the chapter. Maybe you start reading a little bit more or you don't really like audiobooks, you've never really tried one. Well, not audio. Audiobooks are the same. But you can do them while mowing the lawn, you can do them while cooking, which you know your eyes are otherwise engaged. You can do something else. So reducing friction means finding different tools that can different fit different holes in your life. We both talk about abundance, mindset. One thing we both have is a lot of books in our lives. And that's just pleasure. They're just around. But that matters too, Rebecca.

B (23:45)

It really does like just having books available to you. And you were talking earlier about being in a dry spell right now. And one of the times that we hear from readers that that is most likely to happen to them Certainly one of the times it's most likely to happen to me is when I finish a book and I don't have I don't necessarily need my next read picked out and lined up, but I need a men choose from when I When I'm done with one book and I'm in the momentum, I want to carry that forward. So like several good strategies for that Give yourself a very large library holds list. Just request stuff with reckless abandon and go pick it up whenever it comes in and you will have your stack of holds and you can get to them as you get to them. Cheap ebooks on sale are a great way to do this too. Whatever. Like wherever you get your ebooks, whether it's Amazon or Bookshop or Kobo, watch for what's on sale. Snag something you're interested in. When it's $1.99 or sometimes they're free, then you just build up your library and you have something that you can peruse so that whatever you are in the mood for when you finish one book, there's something that you can get to next. And then I find just physically having a book around, like combined for me and we'll talk about screen time in a little bit with like, especially when I get up in the morning, if my phone is in a different room and my book is on the coffee table when I get up and I'm doing my morning stuff, then I'm going to go through sort of my morning routine and the first thing I'm going to reach for is my book. Rather than mindless scrolling that, you know it's mindless because tech companies want it to be. We should, and we just reach for it automatically. So set yourself up with your options right away. But having books available to you when you finish one, you can move right into the other one. You don't end up in that sort of like morass of like, but I don't have something. And now you've got to go look and think about what to read. Just have your pick right there, I guess.

A (25:35)

A note on your expectations of experience. If reading regularly is not something you've been doing of late or at all or ever, do not expect it to feel natural right away.

B (25:45)

It's a great point.

A (25:46)

You know, you pick it up. You know, let's say you January 1st. We're releasing this on December 30th for a reason. January 1st you have a reading resolution. We know a lot of people do. And you're saying, okay, I'M going to do it in that first couple days. Maybe you do it. Do not expect after three days for your neural pathways to rewire themselves. It takes some time. And you may not even find those first 3, 5, 7, 10 reading sessions pleasurable. You know, like, you don't. Maybe you don't like, you know, I don't really like. This isn't what I thought it was going to be. It's more difficult. I'm having trouble focusing. Yeah, you're doing work. Think of it as like, your brain hasn't been to the gym in a while. And one thing that I found, and I get back into the gym, it takes me a couple weeks, and then it builds momentum. It's my own. I'm used to it. I like the routine. So, you know, maybe not every day. If an initial goal for the whole year, but start for 14 days, right. Do it for 14 days and see where you are. But it's going to take some time. It's not magic, right? There's like, the books are magic and there's a great. Makes for a great quote. But a. Books are not magic. And even if they were, you are a human being and you bring your own stuff to it.

B (27:00)

Yeah, yeah. Just be patient with it. Expect it, as you're saying, to take some time and then have a buddy. You know, one of the great joys of doing this podcast and of getting to read books together for the Book Riot podcast is like, there's accountability built in. I have to finish this book by a certain day because Jeff and I are going to talk about it. But I can't think of a time that we've read a book together that I left the conversation not liking it more than I did before. Like, I always have.

A (27:29)

Even books we really don't like become interesting if you get to talk about.

B (27:33)

You get to talk about them. And like, this could be. It could be a version of what we're doing with each other where you find a buddy who's interested in reading the same kinds of books you are. But it doesn't have to be if you just have a buddy who is a reader or who wants to be a reader. Just set yourself some. Like, on Fridays, we're gonna text each other or send voices, voice notes, or get together and have drinks, and we'll each just talk about what we read. Like, I very recently was in my local Barnes and Noble and I saw two young women just standing in the romance section, holding up books they had read recently and talking about them to each other. Like, oh, you would like this one. It does this thing. You'd like this one. It does this other thing. You can do that with a bookish friend. You could do that with your book club. If you're in a book club of just like. Rather than being tethered to specific titles, it could just be sort of show and tell of, here's what I read, here's what I thought about it. People can ask you questions and then they can tell you what they've been reading lately. I think be expansive in how you think about these reading goals and in what it means to. To have a reading buddy or to be part of a book club.

A (28:32)

Yeah, the other thing you might do and a reading buddy can be part of this. But I. There's this, you know, we've read so many books that are like, have a bunch of studies in them and sometimes they fall away and they, they melt like snow in the sun. But one that's really stuck with me is a study about people who wanted to try to quit smoking, which is notoriously difficult to do. 4% of people who try to quit smoking do in a given year, which is ridiculous. And that's a whole nother conversation. But those who told the people in their lives that they were trying to quit smoking were two to three times as likely to quit smoking as those who kept it to themselves. I don't know why that is. I don't really remember. I think it's a combination of there's some reinforcement, but also you don't want to be seen as a failure. You like, get some social pressure to like follow through on the thing you fell through on. And that's one of those situations where I think one of the reasons say things like booktok have taken off is you get a bunch of social proof and social kudos for doing this thing that people think is good. You don't have to start a Book Talk account or Bookstagram if you don't want to. You can get those kudos and maybe we both think you should get those kudos more in your real life than your digital one. But that can start with one person or conversation. Who in your life, you know, do you know, likes to read at all or has a resolution? Talk about books. Make books. Something you ask people about. Not just what TV show did you watch, but have you been reading anything recently? Have you heard about any good books? Build it in to your life and that makes it easier to do. I'm tempted to clear out for you for the next one because that leads us into the, the 800 Hz gorilla in the ether here, which is. We've got to talk about your screen time. This is not a particular problem for me, and that's not a virtue. It's just. It just isn't my, My, my, my. My regular obligations and inclinations get in the way. But it is not my phone, Rebecca. But for most people, I think it is their phone.

B (30:20)

Yeah, I think for most people, your phone is the thing competing for your attention in all of. With competing against all of the other things that you pay attention to or that you. You want to pay attention to. I'm, like, better at this than I used to be. Actually. I feel like pretty good about where I've landed on it now. But it has taken focused work because we work on the Internet and there's a certain amount of paying attention to the Internet that I just have to do on a given day. And the Internet is sticky and just wants you to spend more and more time in it. So I've developed some strategies. Like, but before I talk about strategies, I do just want to say, like, 30 minutes a day of reading instead of screen time would add up up to two or three more books per month, just depending on your reading speed. It could be more than that if you're a really fast reader or if you're picking shorter books. Like, that's incredibly motivating to think about. Like, what are you really getting from the scrolling that is better than what you would be getting if you're a person who's listening to this episode about how to read more and better. So I think that's helpful math. Like, you don't have to throw your phone into the sea, much as we might all want to do that. Sometimes you don't have to give up your favorite apps. You don't have to stop scrolling forever. But if you can rein it in a little bit, chop off 30 minutes a day, you can pick up a couple of books per month and then think about setting yourself up for success, similar to having books around you or loaded up in your E reader or whatever. When you finish one book, you're ready for the next one. Make yourself a good reading environment. Think about something like the Brick. I love the Brick for being able.

A (31:52)

To no free ads, but yes, yes.

B (31:54)

Yeah, no free ads. I do love the brick. If you want to sponsor a show about books and reading, holy cow, get at it.

A (31:59)

No kidding.

B (31:59)

Yeah, But I really do love the brick. And you could combine it with like a screen time management app, like Freedom or Focus Friend so that you can use your phone as a utility. Your texts can come in if you need to receive important messages while you're reading. But you can't pick up your phone and just find yourself mindlessly scrolling because your phone is bricked. The thing that works for me is I keep my brick in a different room of the house than what I'm where I'm normally doing my reading. So there are just a ton of those methods, but make it add friction to the process, make it harder to do the things you don't want to do, like scrolling, and easier to do the thing that you do want to do, which is read more.

A (32:39)

Yeah, there might even be a preparatory streak someone might try. Because we're saying there's sort of two actions that happen at the same time, which is to either literally or figuratively put your phone down or your close your laptop or shut off the streaming app or turn off whatever YouTube or something that you want to be doing less of. And then we're suggesting then you just go, sort of go immediately do the read thing. I think there might be a case to do 10 days in a row where you sat in a room with no digital crap. And I don't care what you do. You can wrap presents, like that's what we're doing right now. You can cook, you can knit, you can talk, you can play cards, play solitaire, maybe sit and just think about your day. Write a letter to someone. But that I think, yeah, journal, right? Yeah. Do something what doesn't have a computer, a digital presence connected to it for X number of minutes, for X number of days in a row, and get used to how it feels and then think about how you want to spend that time. Then can you extend that to be more? Are you finding that to be rewarding? I'm guessing most people will.

B (33:45)

Honestly, I'm guessing you'll probably be itchy at first.

A (33:50)

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

B (33:52)

But I do think you'll find it to be rewarding and like to be very granular. One of the things that I do is like, take advantage of the ways that our technology can help us limit use of it. IPhones and I think a lot of different Android models now have like, you can set a whole bunch of different do not disturb context. I have one called reading. And when I am in that context, there are three people who can make my phone send me a notification and everything else is silenced. So, like use. You know, your mileage varies on how many people, what would cross the threshold to being important enough. But for me, there are only a couple of people on any given day or on most days that are likely to need me in a way that is urgent or emergent. And. And if my phone is there, because they can get me if they need me, but I know nothing else is coming through, it's very helpful.

A (34:42)

I'll do a specific example. For me, I do enjoy running or taking a walk or driving and listening to audiobooks or podcasts. Now, audiobooks, that's a liminal one for the. The project we're doing here. I'm not really trying to listen to more audiobooks, but I am looking for places where it's easy for me just to not be doing something other than being in the moment and giving myself a chance to think and feel, reflect or otherwise. Sort of, I guess, just unplug, you know, turn off the podcast. I hate to say that for people that we want to listen or do it some of the time, go for a walk without your phone or anything in your ears, you know, drive without the radio on, without your podcast on, and just be there. If someone's in the car, just talk to them, you know, I think it's even hard for most of us to see how our minutes and days are constrained and shaped by this stuff and notice it first and then take an action. You gotta do something different to get a different result. I guess that's another way of putting this whole thing.

B (35:45)

I think that's a nice transition into how to pick better books for you. What does read better mean, Jeff?

A (35:51)

I don't. I mean, it's interesting that we have like two sub bullet points here and I think I know it when I see it, but for us, I would say it means picking your reading for the thing itself, not for that. You want to know what's going on, not coverage, because other people are reading it. You have here, get outside the algorithm. Again, I don't know that most people who want to be reading more need to be picking, say, outside of Obama's favorite books of the year that just came out yesterday, that could be a way of picking better books. It's depending where you're starting from, right? If you're looking for a book like Parable of the Sower or Never Let Me Go or something that maybe isn't already, you know, something that a lot of people know, even if they've never read it, like it's different than Shakespeare or Austin or. Yeah, I guess those are the bigger ones we've talked about so far. Butler and Ishuguro are Certainly extraordinarily well known, but maybe not in the mass culture, like something like a Shakespeare is. You might be already reading, quote, unquote, better books by just getting to that. But I think, you know, don't. Don't let the bestseller list or what's at the end cap at Target. I think one step deeper for most people of signing up for a newsletter, talking to a librarian, going into the bookstore and reading the recommended shelf talkers, I think, are all super. The indie Next list is a really good one that look at. Just take a look and see what the people who are doing more of them. It's not really gatekeeping, but it's more of the curating. Right. Of saying, hey, you know, of all the books that are out there, but those really tend to be very frontless. Rebecca And I think that's one thing we found so pleasurable and interesting about this project is there's backlist to last a lifetime. And I kind of think if you pick anything you've heard of as being great, you're gonna have a great experience. Maybe it's as simple as that. I don't know. Maybe I'm naive. Yeah.

B (37:41)

I mean, I think you could go to, like, look at the list of National Book Award finalists. You could look at Pulitzer finalists. You could look at Booker Prize short lists and long lists, the New York.

A (37:52)

Times 100 Greatest Book of the Century, or the Reader's Pick. Those are all interesting books.

B (37:56)

And like, PBS did a Great American Read several years ago that also has a top 100, and there's a lot of overlap between all of those. So if you're looking for, like, you want to beef up on the books that are considered to be great books. That's a good place to go if you're just looking for books that have been sort of vetted as high quality, but you can pick your own genre favorites or subject matter favorites within those great choices. But I think this is really where booksellers and librarians shine. Like, the thing that booksellers and librarians do that the algorithm can't do is hear the thing under the thing when you talk about what you liked in a book. When I say I'm thinking about H is for hawk by Helen MacDonald, because I got to reread that recently. And when I say I loved that book, an algorithm is likely to throw me recommendations.

A (38:47)

Bird books. Bird books, yes. Yeah.

B (38:48)

Other memoirs about people who loved birds. But what that book is really about is grief and obsession and what happens when you channel your grief into what starts out seeming like a productive obsession, but is actually destructive in some ways. And a bookseller or a librarian would give me a richer text. They might give me David Grant's book of essays about people who were obsessed with things. They might give me Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, another great book about.

A (39:18)

Green Lab Girl by Hope Jarin. Or, you know, a lot of the things that we like at the same time.

B (39:22)

Yeah, like a good bookseller, a good librarian, and librarians are trained in this will be like, what. What did you like about that? Was it the language? Was it the ideas that they were exploring? Was it they. They know. These are human readers who know what it feels like to read the book, what the vibe is of the book, and they're very good at helping you if you want to maintain that vibe. They can give you something else that feels that way. If you want something adjacent to it where you're like, oh, I really liked how this author was exploring grief, But I'd like something that's a little more edgy. They can also do that, like ultimate sort of combinator situation of pick your variables and talk to somebody who knows what they're doing here. And I just don't think it gets better than a bookseller or a librarian.

A (40:08)

Yeah. One of our favorite annual traditions on the Book Riot podcast is our listener recommendation show. And people really enjoy that. I think it's a fun, fun hang to do. But the kind of attention we give to their questions and trying to read around it and see the thing behind the thing is a lot of fun and makes people very seen. But also realize that most of the time what we like about a book is not really capturable in a blurb or a LLM generated summary thereof. You know, you and I have been thinking about how we can, you know, what a live version of this show would be. Maybe we need to do a monthly, you know, a live thing through the Patreon. Could be for everyone. Doesn't have to be for a prayed tier where, you know, we just, we take recommendation requests and then we do it live and people can submit their own suggestions because I think that's another kind of space that would be fun. The aggregate is going to know any more than one person. Even if a great librarian or bookseller can't know all the books at the same time. I think the second one is very tricky because when to stop with a book, when to let a book go. I've gotten a little bit better at this over time. I used to finish everything no matter the amount of not wanting to continue existed. On the other hand, I've also taught difficult books where it was required and you just didn't need to get through it because you need to know it for a test. And some of the books we've read this year, this season so far, there are moments where if I didn't have to get through it, I maybe would have considered an off ramp. And I will make this distinction, Rebecca. And I don't know if this is helpful because I think if you're reading to get more out of your reading life, you need to expect it not to be comfortable all the time. I think there's a difference between being uncomfortable and not liking something for a stretch of pages versus suffering. And if you could describe your reading experience at a moment in a book as suffering and extended, you know, 50 page, 100 pages that you feel like you're suffering through it and it's really killing your reading momentum. And you won't pick up the book because you just don't like it. I think that's when you need probably to let it down, put it down. I think.

B (42:07)

I mean, I think there's a time for dnfing and that what that time is is determined by what your reading goals are. So if you're listening to this show and you want to be reading along with us and you're finding that some of the books we're picking up are challenging for you, maybe the this feels like a slog is not your gateway to now. I'm going to DNF the book because your goal is to have that reading experience and then draw some conclusions about it. But if your goal more fun out of my reading life, more momentum with my reading life than a slog, no matter how good we say the book is, is absolutely the moment to dnf. So it's all particular to what you're trying to get out of your reading life. But the top headline of put a book down if it is not serving your goals, I think we cannot state strongly enough. I know a lot of people feel resistance to this for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's like guilt that, you know, an authority author spent time crafting this book. And so I owe them that. I will finish it like that is.

A (43:10)

Number one on my do not care about that list. Yeah, that's me for just an example. I'm sorry, they did the that's a sunk cost fallacy for someone else. I have enough problem with sunk cost fallacy for myself.

B (43:20)

Right. Also, like, they have already gotten the book sale or the library credit, you know, like it has counted for that, that you have picked up their book already. It's fine. Like, do not squander your life on books that aren't serving whatever it is you're trying to reach with your reading goals, is what I'm saying. Like, whether it's guilt or like you just feel like you have to finish, people have all kinds of reasons for this. But like, if your goal is greater satisfaction out of your reading life, whatever your personal definition of that is, giving yourself permission to put a book down when it doesn't meet that definition is critical.

A (43:57)

Yeah, it's tough because it's a fine line between and as we said, especially as you're getting back into a habit or extending a habit or in a practice, the richest books are going to have moments that aren't about liking it or pleasure. And you want to get through. You want to take. It's not just even getting through those you want to experience as part of the journey. But at some point the flip, the switch does flip to a different kind of experience. And you're going to have to let your conscious be your guide or your own sense of what's going on to be your guide. Because there, there is value in a lot of this stuff. But I just don't want you to suffer. I don't want you to get put off your practice of reading. Maybe you come back to it later. Maybe you just throw up your hands and chalk it up to it was the wrong time or place, there's too many books in the sea. But you know, go a little bit about just being com. You know, go a little bit past comfortable for some of your reading and some of reading time in a specific book. But again, I feel like if you're saying I'm suffering and it's really damaging my relationship to reading, that's when I would put it down.

B (44:57)

Yeah, that's time. So good, so good, so good.

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B (46:27)

And then how to sharpen your skill set.

A (46:29)

Yes. So while you're actually reading. While you're actually doing the thing.

B (46:32)

Yes. You're getting more out of your reading. One of the things like that we both do for this show. One of the ways I always like to read is with I think of it as a student's mindset. Like, there's pen in my hand. I like to read for this kind of project. I do some E reading for other things, but for books like this, I like a print edition so that I can underline things and make notes to myself and like, you know, then when I'm done with the book, I can flip back through it and transcribe some of my notes and look at the themes. Sort of have everything there together. If you're a person who collects books, that's also lovely because later on in your life you'll think about that passage from that George Saunders book that would be great to read at your friend's wedding and you will be able to take the book off the shelf and flip through and find the thing that you underlined like your book is yours. If you've bought the copy, annotate it, take notes. If you're reading an ebook, like, depending on how good the annotation tools are in the ebook app, you can take notes there or read with a notepad at your elbow and take notes for yourself as you're reading. But really an extra layer of processing that's not just sitting down and putting the book into your brain with your eyeballs or with your ears, but that you are doing some additional layer of interaction with it, I think really enriches the reading experience.

A (47:49)

I've had. This is much more granular in terms of tactics and practice. But I've had kind of a breakthrough of how I read for this show. Now I have found that If I read in Apple books on my iPad, that's where I do most of my reading for this and most of my reading with my eyes at this point. I underline a lot, right. And then I can export the whole everything I've underlined or highlighted into a document and I have it there and that serves for me a skeleton towards processing. Right. So because I've never been a good annotator of like putting anything other than like I just want to remember or this is interesting. Like any additional information is just too much for me to capture at the time. And some of it is I don't always have a pen or I'm not, you know, if I'm standing in the line for a grocery store, I'm not ready to like annotate. But I can highlight and that just saves it, captures it quickly. It's kind of like how your iPhone camera again, I know it's slogging iPhone. The best camera is the one you have with you. The best annotation strategy is the one that you can do consistently when you. When you want it. And then I export them all and then I have a big batch and I keep that whole thing and I link to it in our. In our document for our episodes. But then I curate out of that. Like what Sometimes like what the hell did I highlight that for? I have no idea. Sometimes it's super obvious. Sometimes then looking them like I'll have 40 or 50. You see in the document I have quite a bit, especially the longer fun to see. Then I can start making connections between them. Right? Then you go read that as sort of a post processing and it can become a really good take a moment after. And I think we're both saying the same thing. Review when you're done. Take a moment after you're done with the book to do something else. Right. Just don't pick up. And I don't really care. I care that you do something. I think it matters. But what that specific thing matters less than you do a little something extra. It fixes your mind. You have a deeper relationship with it it. And then it becomes more a part of your head can. And I know that's the wrong use of that particular term. I wish it was different than what it is.

B (49:40)

But your internal book, it's just going.

A (49:41)

To make it stickier for you. And then you could have something to review later. Like it's really cool to see. I do love looking at things that I highlighted in high school and college and sometimes like what a syncopatic jerk this kid was like, oh, that was pretty good. That was. That was astute to notice that at the same time. And it could become a super interesting document. I'm going to skip down a little bit here. I do keep a commonplace book, though. It's a digital one. If you don't know a commonplace book is. It's just a collection of phrases and sayings and quotations. It can come from anywhere. And that's a good way to kind of like, memorialize your reading experiences. Can you pick one thing from this book that's worth going into your commonplace book? And we now have infinite time, if you like to scrapbook or journal and, you know, make beautiful things by calligraphy. Congratulations to you. I honor you. I am not that person. But. But go with God and do that. But I do think it can be fun to, like, what's your postcard version of your trip to Italy for this book? And what can you make out of that?

B (50:36)

Yeah, one. To go back also to, like, talk to somebody about it as part of your processing. And like, my husband has very different reading taste than I do, and so it's an. It's interesting for him to live with a person.

A (50:47)

You learn a lot about the high seas when you're from his reading.

B (50:50)

It's. Yeah, I know a lot about tall ships. But when I'm cooking dinner or we're walking the dog, sometimes I'll just be like, I just need to talk for five minutes about this thing that I'm reading. Because I'm also. I'm a verbal processor. Like, I. Good thing I found podcasting.

A (51:05)

You mean verbal processors.

B (51:07)

I know, I know. But just like, I need to make words about this thing that I'm reading. And he'll just hang out with me and ask me a couple questions while I'm like, this is what's going on. This is what I liked about it. And sometimes that's kind of all you need. It doesn't matter that the other person hasn't read the book. So, like your spouse, kids around the dinner table, just like your friend when you're having lunch, like, can I just take a minute and tell you about what I've been reading lately? And then you could take five minutes and tell me about whatever it is you're into, whether it's books or another hobby. Like, those are just nice ways to process. And I find that then I also remember them more because now I've got, like, that extra input to the neural network of. And I had conversations about this. You are a great looker upper of words and phrases when you read. I think you're much better about doing this than I am. I have the intention to go back and learn what a word means. But like we have the Jefftionary on podcast. So what's your do you interrupt your reading to do that?

A (52:04)

Well, I used to. Now since I'm on my iPad, it's super easy. I actually don't know when I used to do most of my reading in the Kindle app. I'm looking out there because I'm trying to remember. And that's where memories live up there. Rebecca for those of you who may be watching us on YouTube on the Kindle, I think if you did a long highlighted and long press, it would pop up a definition. I like to collect the words I don't know because I don't remember it right away. So I have sort of a commonplace books for words I don't know. And now that I have kids who are tweens and readers and working on vocabulary and the long aerobic preparation for standardized testing, I just like words. You know, I like to think about words. It's. It's super easy to me to do. If you're not, that's okay. Most of the times you can pick up the meaning from context. Very few moments in life. I guess if you're reading something super historical, will the lack of the knowledge about the specific meaning of one word be the fulcrum around your misunderstanding is pulled or pushed. But I just find it interesting. And again, it can be a post processing thing. If you're annotating highlight, we can, you know, look them up as a batch or something else like that. I guess that kind of goes into surrounding contextual reading. I don't like to read reviews of a book before I've read it, especially something that's relatively recent, like the last 10 years. But if I'm reading in a different culture, I'm reading in a different time, a different place. If there's an introduction, a Wikipedia page is sometimes enough honestly to give me context about who this person is in their historical moment. I like to do that before reading the book. But I don't want to know too much about that book. Book I really like after reading the book, to read a review, to read a take, to read what people think about it. I don't want to read good read reviews. That way lies madness. But if I can get a thoughtful consideration of that book, what I really like to do is go back after the fact and find an interview with that author. About that book. And that can be really satisfying a little bit. Oh, I got that reference like, you know, Captain America, mean. But you also might find other things unlocked for you that. It's so tough. I mean, we've talked about this. One of the great conundrums of talking about books is there's really two audiences for any particular discussion of a book. Someone who has not read it yet and someone who has. And those are radically different people. It's like there's people who are alive and people who are dead. It's really just like, one adjective. But it matters so much. And one of the great problems of book publicity and marketing is it's hard to get people to care about the book they haven't read because there's really no equivalent of, like, a movie trailer or something else like that. And so how do you talk about it? How do you do a live event? How do you do a review? It's very, very difficult. But you know what? As a reader, that is not your problem. That's the marketer and book and book media's problem. Welcome to the club. If you. If you're one of those people, we have pins and jackets. But as a reader, you get to pick when you want to do it. Okay. It's enough for you to have gotten to read the book then after the fact. What helps you enrich that experience at the same time?

B (54:51)

And I think what we're really talking about is a more robust reading experience that begins with context and background. I find this.

A (54:59)

And intentionality. Yes.

B (55:00)

Yeah. I found it especially useful if we're reading something that is really old or that is from a different culture. The author's from a different cultural context than I'm coming from, where I just want to make sure that I pick up the necessary pieces as I'm reading. And I might not get it because they were writing to readers that would have understood the references that they were making. So, like Penguin Classics, which I've shouted out a bunch of times on this first season. No free ads, but we love a Penguin classic. Norton Critical Editions are also really good. Harper Perennial and Harper Collins have the olive editions of books. Like, if it's more than 10 years old and it's relatively well known, there is very likely some kind of anniversary edition. So go looking.

A (55:44)

Sometimes a paperback or a subsequent printing will have a new introduction from the author. You might look at that when you're flipping through paperbacks or looking for things online. That can be very helpful, too.

B (55:52)

You want an introduction. You want some cultural context. Read those things first. Like they will allude to some of the stuff that happens in the book. But because you have not read the book yet, I don't find those to be spoilers. Like, it doesn't change my reading experience and it's very helpful to have that grounding. So give yourself the context before and then enrich the, extend and enrich the experience afterwards by whatever your version version is going to be. Find a podcast interview with that author, look them up on YouTube, maybe just find them on social and see what they're up to. A lot of authors have sub stacks. So like, do like authors today. So do you want to see, do you want to get more of what they're doing contemporaneously? There's just so many ways that when something is working for you, you can stay more connected to it. And one of those pieces too is letting yourself dwell in moments of books that are moving, interesting, exciting, whatever it is, to linger, to slow down when, when, when it feels like something is happening for you with what you're reading.

A (56:57)

Yeah. And you know, you don't have to have trained to be an English teacher or spent a long time at all or recently in an English course to slow down and just try to notice. That's what close reading essentially is, is slowing down and noticing how the thing is put together. Re, read, read, go back. And it could just be something that catches your interest. It could be a question, it could be something that confuses you. But take a moment to slow down. This will, this will act as a counterbalance to the reading for measurables. Right. Slowing down inhibits your page count. But remember, the page count is only a means to an end. The end is to have a richer, meaningful, sustaining, awesome reading life. And you can do that reading six books a year, and you can do reading 600. But I think slowing down, no matter how many books you read, can give you something that you can't get and most people don't get otherwise. Related to slowing down, I would also ask you to slow down, hold an abeyance, put in the parking lot, liking, not liking as your primary heuristic for encountering a book, a work of art, a person, an idea, but especially in this context, I'm not saying that you should like everything that you read. That's not what I'm saying at all. But if you can put that on, if you can pause that for a moment for the whole reading experience, I think that opens up space for a lot of different kinds of encounter. And like we have Read books that we don't like and wouldn't recommend together. But talking about them, thinking about them, creates this second thing that I do like. Right. And that thing is always creatable as long as you don't stop, shut down, or foreclose interrogation, exploration because you don't like a book or that you loved a book. Yeah, it can happen to both.

B (58:55)

Yeah. If you can get just outside of that rubric, I think your reading life will expand significantly. And once you're outside of that, what are you supposed to fill the space with? And that's things like, what is this book about? What is the author trying to do? What are they interested in? Are they trying to get me to think about something? Are they trying to get me to ask certain questions? Are they trying to offer answers to certain questions? What are the big ideas here? And then you can start to do your own analysis of how well does it get to those big ideas? How successful is it in making me think about these things or in making me feel these things or in building an argument? Some fiction is building an argument about something. How well does the author do it? I find that to be just a much. We keep using the word rich, but just a much more satisfying way of reading. That also makes me like a book more, usually. And if it doesn't make me like a book more, it makes me appreciate it, like, to go several years back when where the Crawdads Sing popped and was everywhere. We decided to read it together in a like, what is it about this book? Like, why do people like it so much? And if you can come from that place, you can still have an interesting conversation, even if, as for us, the book itself doesn't work for you because it gave us the challenge of, okay, this isn't working for us, but what do people like about this book? Why is it working? Why is it working? Working now, Romantasy is an interesting thing to toss out right now. Why are these kinds of books working for people right now? What is it about the books and what is it about the readers? And that will help you ultimately also find more books that you do like that fit within your own reading goals. But it gives your reading life, I think, an elevate that's an elevated approach to your reading life is not, will I like this or not will, but will I get something interesting and meaningful out of it?

A (60:55)

Rebecca, I think that's a pretty damn fine place to wrap up anything you have on your sheet that you want to clear before we close the book on this episode. And our podcasting for Zero Red for the year.

B (61:07)

I don't I would love to hear from listeners about how you are thinking about your reading goals and what it is that you're looking for from your reading lives in 2026. You can do that. Shoot us an email at @02 well.

A (61:18)

Read@Bookriot.Com yeah check out the Patreon for the free newsletter and then there's other membership options there. That's patreon.com 02 well read again. You're probably listening this in a podcast player. It's in the show notes. Just look at there. You can swipe over or up or down depending it's overcast or Apple podcasts or whatever. You can find the links to those things and also Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Those are all at the same handle. Zero to well read if you want to go right into those particular algorithms even as we were admonishing you to avoid them. We will try to be mindful of what we put in there, but that's where people find out about stuff so we got to dip our toes in a little bit. Thank you so much Rebecca. Thank you all so much for listening as we close the book on this. I know the calendar year is a bit of an arbitrary place, but this is our last non single title episode for a while. We're gonna have a really great run of stuff coming January 6th, 6th Tuesday. It's been a few weeks since we recorded the episode that will be coming on January 6th, but it's holiday ish, a turning of the page, a classic that I had not read in a long time. But I think like with most of these things, we really enjoyed getting to talk about.

B (62:27)

It's a really fun. I had a great time with the episode. I'm happy that it's our kickoff of the second season. I think listeners will be excited to see it and God, we just cannot say enough how thrilled and grateful we are for the reception. Yalls reaction and support to this first season for going along on this experiment, for sharing it with your friends. We know you must be sharing it with your friends because we're seeing the show grow. We're so, so happy to get to continue doing this. So thank you so much.

A (62:57)

All right. And with that, Zero to well Read is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network and thanks to our our coworkers at Book Riot for helping us get this thing off the ground and making some space for it and going out of their way. Really appreciate it. Happy New Year to you all. Talk to you later.

B (63:13)

Have a great year in reading.