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

by Anne Bogel

When we talk about reading, we often focus on the books themselves, but so much of the reading life is about the reader as an active participant.

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

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But reading is personal. We can’t know what a book will mean to us until we read it.

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.

How good it is to be among people who are reading.

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.

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.

Readers want to discover what they want to read, and they want to discover it for themselves.

You’re in the middle of a great book, and you forget to eat dinner. You keep reading “just one more chapter” until 2:00 a.m., and you cannot keep your eyes open the next day.

You cannot, no matter how much you beg, plead, or wheedle, convince your book club to read your favorite book. You cannot, no matter how or what you try, persuade your child to read your favorite childhood book.

Your TBR list is longer than your arm, but you still can’t decide what to read next.

You have countless unread books at home, but you can’t resist buying one more.

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

I loved this thought. The idea in context is that as we grow older, we are not isolated at that age. We are all those ages that we experienced until then. Similarly, our reader life is not limited to (or) isolated in the present moment with what we are reading. We grow with what we read. It shapes us. We are all those readers that we have been until then.

Sometimes you think fondly of the readers you used to be; sometimes looking back makes you cringe a little. But they’re still here. They’re still you.

Old books, like old friends, are good for the soul.

But they’re not just comfort reads. No, a good book is exciting to return to, because even though I’ve been there before, the landscape is always changing. I notice something new each time I read a great book.

As Italo Calvino wrote, “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Great books kee...

Rereading helps us see how we have changed.

A good book, when we return to it, will always have something new to say.

Reading is personal and never more so than when we’re sharing why we connect with certain books.

“You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?”

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.

We are readers. Books grace our shelves and fill our homes with beauty; they dwell in our minds and occupy our thoughts. Books prompt us to spend pleasant hours alone and connect us with fellow readers.

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They invite us to escape into their pages for an afternoon, and they inspire us to reimagine our lives. Good reading journals provide glimpses of how we’ve spent our days, and they tell the story of our lives.