My Reading Life

Anytime I post about what I’m reading – I get a lot of the same responses.

“Wow! How do you have time to read?”
“I could never read that much!”
“That’s so impressive!”
“Where do you get all those books?”
“How do you decide what to read?”

Let me tell you, anyone can have a reading life. A.NY.ONE. I learned to read at age 4 and have had a love for reading since then.

So let’s talk about how I make it work. And let me tell you, it doesn’t happen overnight. Reading is a habit and a hobby I’ve had my whole life. If it’s been a while for you, it will take time to make it a priority but hopefully these tips will help!

HOW TO FIND THE TIME

• Don’t read books you don’t like. Doesn’t matter if it was the number one book of all time and all of your friends are reading and loving it – if you don’t enjoy it, put it down!! You can ALWAYS try again another time. So many books I tried in college and didn’t finish I’ve tried now and really like! This is the biggest reason I read so many books. I only read books I enjoy. Life is too short to read bad books.
• Always have a book with you. Since the quarantine began and libraries closed, I’ve been reading a lot of Kindle books, more than I usually do (I’ll share how I get free Kindle books later on…). I have a Kindle Paperwhite that I LOVE but I also have the Kindle app on my phone. So I have my phone or Kindle on me all the time.
• The minutes add up. Not the pages, the minutes. You may not read a book as quickly as you’d like to but you need to make the time before you make the progress. Here’s where my minutes add up: Nursing Sydney (about 50 minutes a day), while Archer is watching a show and Sydney is playing on her own (30-60 minutes depending if there’s anything else I try to get done), while Archer plays in the backyard (15-30 minutes before he recruits me to play also or needs help getting something), while dinner cooks (20mins), before bed (30mins). So theoretically I could read almost 2 hours a day or more if I picked up a book every single time I had a free moment. That won’t happen since I have a house to clean and food to cook but even an hour is totally feasible! I encourage you to make a list of your gap minutes just to see how much time you actually have!

HOW TO FIND THE BOOKS

• Fall in love with your library. Figure out your local library, most libraries are slowly opening post quarantine and will issue library cards via email. My library also lends ebooks via the Libby app. I actually have multiple library cards all connected to the Libby app – one in Dallas, one in Aspen where we go every year on vacation and a local church library card. Between those 3 I get a wide variety of books right on my phone or Kindle! The library is my favorite place to get books. Ours has an app where I can request books and know when they are ready.
• NetGalley: Once you start to get serious about reading, you can apply to read ebook pre-releases (called ARC’s – Advanced Reader Copies). You may want to wait until you know how quickly you can read because you need to post reviews in a timely manner once books are released. This is a great place to figure out your author and publisher preferences.
• Decide what you want to buy. I rarely buy books at full price. The only books I like to buy no matter what are non-fiction so I can underline them and refer back and books in series’ I want to collect. I never buy Kindle books – just aren’t worth it for me since I know I probably won’t re-read them.
• Thrift Books: I buy most of my books from thrift stores. They’re really cheap, often great quality (or if not then perfect for a pool day where you don’t care if they get splashed) and a great place to buy older books by popular authors and great condition bestsellers that were purchased for 1 book club meeting then donated.
• Tracking Books: I love using Goodreads and a book journal (though I’m much more diligent with Goodreads as opposed to a journal). This is a great way to see your pace, your preferences and just remember what you read over the years. I’m quick to add books to my want to read list. (You can add me on Goodreads here!)

That’s really it! Once you start keeping books around and putting down the ones you don’t like, you’ll start reading more! And please remember it’s an ebb and flow, I barely read anything during quarantine and then read 4 books in a weekend…so there’s that. How’s your reading life? I would love to hear in the comments below!