Books, Books | How to Read Again
Welcome to my column, BOOKS, BOOKS, where I write about all things books: what I’m reading, what you should be reading, and perhaps the occasional literary gossip.
So you haven’t picked up a book in a while. Maybe you keep manically buying beautiful hardbacks, and they form a teetering tower that looms. Your want to read again haunts you, daunts you! But how to begin?
When I finished grad school last year, my singular dream was to read books for pleasure again. These are a few rituals that I — a neurodivergent, very attention-deficient book worm — have adopted to make reading an essential part of my daily life again.
Here’s a start — how about actually reading things that you like? Think of the books that that brought you the most joy when you first read them back in school. What books are on this list? For me, revisiting adolescent favorites like Pride & Prejudice and The Great Gatsby has been foundational to me to remind myself why I love reading in the first place.
Keeping a reading journal. I use an old fashioned notebook for journaling about my reading, and an app called The StoryGraph to track my reading through the year. This app, created by self-made tech entrepreneur Nadia Odunayo, rivals Amazon’s clunky old GoodReads. Founded and created by women of color, StoryGraph charts and graphs the data of your reading material, allowing you to track the moods and themes of your reading material, as well as a bastion of other juicy data curated by what books you share with the app. I’m over the moon about this app.
Read together. Read out loud with your partner, to your pets, to anyone who will listen! Ask your friends what they have read recently that they have loved in order to curate your next great read. Lastly, it seems obvious, but genuinely this: joining (or starting!) book club. I work with a local, woman-owned independent book shop in my town called Four Seasons Books and lead two book clubs there — one reading women’s fiction called The New Bluestockings and the other called Wild Voices, where we are reading nature-based nonfiction. If you’d like to join us remotely, please drop a line at info@boshemiamagazine.com.
Get the apps. Besides my beloved StoryGraph, there are so many useful apps to help you access endless reading material for free. These are my favorites.
Libby App — library books (e-book & audio) through any library you have a card with (USA)
Libro.fm — audio books purchased through your local independent bookshop
BorrowBox — library books (e-book & audio) in the UK
Get yourself a library card. Better yet, ask your friends if you can use their addresses in their city and get a digital library card there, too! Having a library card in my favorite cities (especially abroad) is my great scam in life. If my local doesn’t have a copy of a new release, I can check libraries in Los Angeles or Bristol, UK and find the book! Besides connecting you to audio and e-books and physical copies, library cards give you access to free (or discounted) cultural happenings in your city. Getting a library card is often the first thing I do in a new city in order to feel more connected to my town and get to know my neighbors; this has been especially wonderful in the rural community I live in now, since our library is very much our community center.
Take yourself on a date with a book. It’s a romantic gesture to yourself, to spend time with a book and treat yourself to a coffee or meal out. I find this is the way I get my best, most undisrupted reading done — away from the allure of screens and conversation.
You’ll notice I didn’t mention #BookTok or #BookTube. In terms of my relationship between reading and the internet, I tend to stay away from all of that — my singular exception being this column. However, you can follow me on TheStorygraph @bonefires to see what I’m currently reading!