I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

by Anne Bogel

Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves. How could it be otherwise? —ANNE FADIMAN

You’re looking for a book that reminds you why you read in the first place. One written well and that will feel like it was written just for you—one that will make you think about things in a new way, or feel things you didn’t expect a book to make you feel, or see things in a new light.

To hand you a great book, I don’t just need to know about books; I need to know you.

the teetering pile on your nightstand,

We are readers. Books are an essential part of our lives and of our life stories. For us, reading isn’t just a hobby or a pastime; it’s a lifestyle.

They call it the comedy gap, that gap between what we expect to happen and what actually happens. Or, in this case, what we expect a person’s reading life to be like and what it’s truly like.

I choose what to read based on a whim and friends’ recommendations, by publication date and library due date. I don’t carefully plan exactly what I’m going to read next, and in what order.

(I never leave home without a book, even in an emergency.)

Chris Voss’s Never Split the Difference

Right book, right time.

don’t relish crying over a book, but I’ll say this: it’s not easy to earn a reader’s tears—and if an author writes well enough to earn mine, I’m in. Pass the tissues. It’s time to read.

Can every devoted reader point back to the book that hooked them on the story? I’d like to think so. Not a book they appreciate, or grudgingly respect, but the one that captivated them, the one they didn’t want to put down, the one that made them decide, for themselves, to make reading a part of their life, forever.

bookshelf envy.

I inhale books like oxygen:

A good book allows me to step into another world, to experience people and places and situations foreign to my own day-to-day existence. I love experiencing the new, the novel, the otherwise impossible—especially when I can do it from my own comfy chair.

if my real life reminds me of something I read in a book, I’m reading well—and I’m probably living well, too.

We’re both longtime believers in bibliotherapy.

I’d been bossy. Book bossy.

Not all book bossiness is equal: in the lower levels, “bossy” looks like bookish enthusiasm gone ever-so-slightly awry. Most of us don’t set out to give orders to our fellow readers about their reading lives, but that’s where we end up. This stage is characterized by unsolicited book recommendations,

Mid-level bossy territory: taking an unrequested book to a friend, dropping it in the mailbox, bringing it by their house, placing it in their hands over coffee.

Advanced book bossiness is characterized by specific and unsolicited troubleshooting of any aspect of a person’s reading life. What books should they read to fill the woeful gaps in their education, or cure the glaring issues they’re clearly having in their personal life?

When I’m book bossy, I want to see myself as helpful, or knowledgeable, or loving, or smart. But what I’m doing is making judgments, delivering reading recommendations for books that will never be read, not because they weren’t on point, but because of how they were delivered.

The harder I push a book on a reader, the less likely she is to read it.

Your library holds all come in at the same time.

You pack twelve books for a five-day vacation because you can’t decide what to read next.

You are one-third of the way into a good book, and you realize you accidentally purchased the abridged version.

Your To Be Read list holds 8,972 titles, and you want to read every one.

Your TBR list is unquestionably too long to finish before you die.

Drop Caps hardcover

You are full of bookish joy, but still woefully short on shelf space.

the ideas I got from books formed the interior architecture of my mind.

indulged in the pleasures of filling the inexplicable gaps in her book-filled childhood,

Who blazed through all the Harry Potters in ten days, because they were that good.

Reading a new-to-me author, falling in love, and binge reading everything she’s ever written in a week,

As a devoted reader, I know what it means for books to shape you—the person you are, the person you were then.

A deadline—apologies to my library patron friend—isn’t an obstacle to my reading life. (My fines might tell a different story, but never mind those.) In the face of overwhelming options, a deadline clarifies what I want to read right now. It focuses my attention on what I want to happen next.

library due dates aren’t particularly frightening, but they still impose a clarifying framework

The best acknowledgments are endearing and entertaining, witty and wise, short but not too short, sweet but not sappy. They’re funny, or strange, or surprising. They’re personal and positive.

Ariel Lawhon credits her copy editor with “the patience of Job and the thoroughness of the IRS.”

Every reader goes through this rite of passage: the transition from having books chosen for us to choosing books for ourselves.

establishing your own reading life,

I was digging grooves and laying habits characteristic of avid readers: turning to books—and actual, physical books at that—for the information I wanted and needed, poring over books about cleaning and cooking and parenting and pregnancy, practical things, things I didn’t know how to do yet.

pleasantly pliable paperbacks

I love bookstores because I love books.

she’s that remarkable reader whose taste bears an astonishing resemblance to my own.

My reading life has been better since I found her, simply because she steers me to read more of what I enjoy and less of what I don’t.

the Venn diagram of reading tastes.

I’ve found that a good book not only holds up to repeated visits, but improves each time we return to it.

When I find myself in a dreaded reading slump, nothing boosts me out of it faster than revisiting an old favorite.

That book wasn’t quite the same when I read it again, but not just because of what I knew about the book. No, the book was different because I was different.