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

by Anne Bogel

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. A book you won’t want to put down, whose characters you don’t want to tell good-bye. A book you will close feeling satisfied and grateful, thinking, Now, that was a good one

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

But avid readers know a great book doesn’t exist only in the realm of the material. The words between those covers bring whole worlds to life.

We can’t know what a book will mean to us until we read it. And so we take a leap and choose.

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. We’re the kind of people who understand the heartbreak of not having your library reserves come in before you leave town for vacation and the exhilaration of stumbling upon the new Louise Penny at your local independent bookstore three whole days before the official publication date. We know the pain of investing hours of reading time in a book we enjoyed right up until the final chapter’s truly terrible resolution, and we know the pleasure of stumbling upon exactly the right book at exactly the right time.

C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Friendship . . . is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”

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.

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.

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.” We are readers. This is how we decorate.

Just as I’m all the ages I have been, I’m all the readers I have been.

Thousands of years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

As Italo Calvino wrote, “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Great books keep surprising me with new things.

A good book, when we return to it, will always have something new to say. It’s not the same book, and we’re not the same reader.

Reading is often viewed as a solitary act; that’s one of the reasons I love it, and it’s certainly my favorite escape and introvert coping strategy of choice. But reading is also a social act: readers love to connect over good books. If I read a book that legitimately changes my life (what a find!), or a book that becomes a new favorite, or even a breezy novel that’s tons of fun, I can’t wait to talk about it with my fellow readers.