The Busy Woman's Guide to Reading More EP 428

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Hi.

00:00:09
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker.

00:00:15
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer and course creator. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long.

00:00:33
Speaker 1: Term career goals.

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Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.

00:00:41
Speaker 1: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: This episode is airing in mid October of twenty twenty five. This is going to be the Busy Woman's Guide to reading more. We both love to read. We know many of our listeners love to read. Indeed, it's one of the things you all tell us you would love to spend more time doing, but to.

00:00:59
Speaker 1: Have trouble finding the time. Maybe you could.

00:01:01
Speaker 2: Track your time, as we talked about two weeks ago, and that might reveal a little bit of more time to read. But in any case, we tend to enjoy this as a leisure time activity, and so today will be all tips on how to make time for reading in your busy life. But it thought it'd be fun to open with a discussion of what we have been reading lately and what we were reading now.

00:01:22
Speaker 1: So Sarah, maybe you can tell us about what's on your bookshelf. Yeah.

00:01:25
Speaker 3: I thought it would be fun to just give like the last five books that each of us have read, and guess what, Since I made these notes, I have another book. So my books were What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown? That was a fun and twisty kind of summer read. I really really liked it. Set in Montana anyway, these summer storms for the book club that I was in by Sarah MacLean. I liked it and it was great summary kind of kind of read. My nonfiction recent read was The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fuki take Koga, which was not really about the Courage to be disliked, but was super interesting philosophical. What was it about a certain form of philosophy that was kind of brought about by a psychologist about kind of autonomy and like making choices And it was really interesting. I liked it, but I didn't feel like like the title was the title was like a tidbit that was like sort of may be buried in there, but they were like, that would be a great hook that people will love.

00:02:24
Speaker 1: Oh dear, I don't like that. Yeah, but it was a good.

00:02:27
Speaker 3: Book, Like it was really good, all right, I just would have named it differently. I read I Wish I Had a Bigger Kitchen by Kate Strickler, as you heard about last week on the podcast. I actually had to add another book because I also read Die with Zero by Bill Perkins, and then Misinterpretation by Lydia Zoga, which is a Booker Prize long list.

00:02:48
Speaker 2: So yeah, and you're working through the Booker Prize.

00:02:52
Speaker 1: I started that as surprise charge.

00:02:53
Speaker 3: We'll talk about I don't We'll have to see if I get married to that project.

00:02:57
Speaker 1: I like it so far, but yeah, yeah, all right.

00:03:00
Speaker 2: Well my last five books, I read a novella called The English understand.

00:03:05
Speaker 1: Wool by Helen de Witt. That was interesting, very short. You can read it in an hour.

00:03:10
Speaker 2: So if somebody is looking to feel accomplished, like you have read a book and you just want to get it done on a Saturday on while your kids are at soccer or something that could happen. Anna Karinyina by Leotostoi, which is not a book you we'll read while your kids are at soccer practice on any given Saturday. That is a bit of a nine hundred page epic. But I recently finished that because it was my long read for the year. I read one chapter a day and finished in September. The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. It's a book about how many trends are in fact more positive than people seem to think, and in many cases the things that seem catastrophic are not as bad as people think. I read that because I had just read before that The Red Queen by Matt Ridley, which is about how sexual selection shapes evolution in different species. Like, there are certain things that are about usefulness with genes, but there are also certain things that are not useful whatsoever, and yet seem to.

00:04:17
Speaker 1: Get selected for.

00:04:19
Speaker 2: And that is often because in the species the female prefers it for whatever reason, and then as females prefer it, you have to do it more and more. So I think of a lot stuff like peacocks tails, right, Like, there's zero reason to have a peacocks tail, and in fact it's a problem, but for whatever reason, female pns seem to like colorful tales, and so you get it. I read that because it was mentioned in The Ancestor's Tale, which is by Richard Dawkins and Yen Wong, which is about evolutionary history, sort of tracing back where the last common ancestor was from, starting with humans and then going back through first like the chimpanzees and bonobos and then gorillas, and back through the different primates, and then through mammals and then getting through things like the sauropods, and then you're going back through like lungfish and all the way back into single celled organisms and such, where all the trees of life branch off.

00:05:21
Speaker 1: So that was fascinating. I am currently reading a book called The Fortnite in September, which is a novel by R. C. Sheriff, which is sort.

00:05:27
Speaker 2: Of a calm novel about two weeks in the beach in the British countryside in September.

00:05:34
Speaker 1: So anyway, yeah, ooh, that sounds good.

00:05:38
Speaker 3: I like, how that's the one I'm gravitating towards. I'm like, I cannot, You're like, I am not reading about single celled organisms.

00:05:46
Speaker 2: I am not reading about the molecular basis of the genes that are getting the peacock's tail.

00:05:51
Speaker 1: And I am definitely not reading Anna Karnyana. That's pretty true to eat your own. But I'm probably not reading the Summer Storm, So probably not. I know.

00:06:06
Speaker 3: I think that's the wonderful thing about reading is you can really read anything that strikes your fancy. You can start a book, you can abandoned a book, you can learn about really random things.

00:06:15
Speaker 1: So I guess this is a great.

00:06:17
Speaker 3: Prelude into why we encourage people to think about their reading lives.

00:06:20
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, Well, why would you encourage people to think about their reading lives, Sarah?

00:06:26
Speaker 3: Just personally, I get so much joy out of reading, and I've seen others get joy out of reading.

00:06:31
Speaker 1: I've learned so much.

00:06:32
Speaker 3: From it, and compared to any other kind of leisure activity, I find it to be like the most immersive and calming and also possibly one of the most customizable, Like you really can choose exactly what you kind of are looking for, versus being served up things as we kind of have as our other option these days. I mean, that's kind of not fair because maybe somebody else would say, well, I feel that way about movies or TV, and I don't feel that way about books, and that's fair, but I think it's at least worth considering.

00:07:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I was thinking about like my books. If you see that timeline, there are the three non fiction books I read. Clearly, it was sort of like the in book algorithm was recommending the next book that I was going to read.

00:07:12
Speaker 1: Right like that.

00:07:13
Speaker 2: I read one book because I'd read something previously by the author. I read that because it was mentioned in a previous book though, so in its own way, it's like an old fashioned version of the algorithm. But yeah, I mean reading is regardless of its upsides or mental upsides or anything like that. It is the thing that people tell us they most want to do. Like when I have done studies of what leisure time activities people would first choose if they had sort of time to themselves, that tends to be what people say now. Now, maybe if they thought about it a little bit more, or thought that they would have a longer term commitment to some they'd say things like singing a choir or joined a pickleball league. But you know, when they're thinking about things they could sort of easily access, they think reading because it is almost as effortless as scrolling. I mean, certainly, anytime that you are tempted to read headlines or to read social media captions, you could just read something else, like you could read a book in that time. You're still reading. It's just a slightly different format. And many people think they spend too much time reading headlines and social media captions and spend too little time reading books. And so we need to think about how to sort of change how we approach reading and think about our schedules to make reading books a little bit more of a first choice in that situation. I mean, when you're a busy person, you make time to read, right I do.

00:08:37
Speaker 3: I was just going to say one more benefit and like, you know, the SoundBite versus book kind of argument, and I'm just going to mention two things. Number one is like when you write a book, you have to substantiate you cannot.

00:08:47
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could. You read a lot of self help books. Okay, fair, fair.

00:08:53
Speaker 3: Fair, oh man, But in theory you have space to do that, whereas you don't have space to do that in a fifteen second sound clip.

00:09:00
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, in theory.

00:09:01
Speaker 3: And then the other one is that many argue that, well, there's probably some decent evidence. I don't have studies to cite right now, but that focus is something that is becoming a scarcer thing, and one of the ways that we can continue to preserve our focus is to actually use it, and reading requires that, and yet it also can be very enjoyable. So, like, if you're looking to preserve that skill, reading can be a great way to do that.

00:09:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some scary stuff coming out about young people's lack of focus, sustained focus for reading longer passages, particularly on tests are when required to for writing papers for literature classes and things like that. But you know, we think even if you are very busy, it is possible to make time to read it in your life.

00:09:50
Speaker 1: Sarah, you read how many books per year? And when do you fit this in? Yeah?

00:09:55
Speaker 3: So I only started tracking how many books I read in around twenty twenty.

00:09:58
Speaker 1: Apparently I started tracking a lot of things around that. But I read about fifty books a year.

00:10:04
Speaker 3: And it's usually like forty eight or fifty two or something like that. And even when I try to read more, I still end up with.

00:10:09
Speaker 1: That being my number.

00:10:12
Speaker 3: So I just think it I have certain ingreened habits, which just don't change that much, and honestly, I'm pretty happy with them, so that's cool. I tend to read nonfiction in the morning, usually for like twenty minutes in the morning, sometimes a little more if I really like it, but honestly, usually it sticks to twenty minutes because I just don't have unlimited time. And then my fiction is the one that kind of expands in tracks depending on how the book is, how much I like it, and what I'm doing.

00:10:35
Speaker 1: If I am.

00:10:35
Speaker 3: Traveling, I will get through multiple books because that's my preferred activity. On a flight, I'll just read and I'll like finish a book, and if I really like a book, I will find spare moments the day like, oh, lunch break, let me read my book. Okay, waiting for in the car, let me let me bring my book if my car is you know, at a stop in a car line that's not moving and I'm in park and my parking breaks on, which does happen with certain types of pickups, et cetera. So yeah, and then some months tend to be better than others for reading, like I read more novels in the summer usually, but yeah, it's.

00:11:08
Speaker 1: About four to five books per month. And then interestingly, the split.

00:11:13
Speaker 3: Of fiction and nonfiction kind of varies based on the year, Like this year is more fiction heavy and last year was more nonfiction heavy.

00:11:18
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, that tracks.

00:11:21
Speaker 2: I mean, so four books a month, I mean that's like one a week. A book is often about four hours, So if you're reading about four hours a week, which I think if you look at your timelog, tends to be about what it is, right, I.

00:11:32
Speaker 3: Would say some weeks it's less, in some weeks it's more, but that would be an average.

00:11:36
Speaker 2: Yeahah, and I find it interesting how you're doing that. I mean, right, like you have there are different ways of reading. I mean, one is to structurally have a reading time, and the upside of that is that it does add up, right, if you're reading twenty minutes a morning of nonfiction, that is right there an hour and forty minutes during the week that you are devoting to reading, which can get you through certainly a nonfifi book every.

00:12:00
Speaker 1: Three weeks or so at that pace.

00:12:04
Speaker 2: But then recognizing that there are other books that are kind of fun to sort of have less of a limit on how much you could read at any given point, obviously a who Done it kind of book, or you're trying to figure out what happened next. It would be very frustrating to have to stop at twenty minutes over and over again.

00:12:21
Speaker 1: But you could, you could. So that's that's the true. Okay, we're going to take a quick ad break, and then we'll be back with more about The Busy Woman's Guide to Reading.

00:12:41
Speaker 3: All right, we talked about my reading habits, Laura, how about you? How many books do you read per year and when do you tend to do it?

00:12:49
Speaker 4: So?

00:12:50
Speaker 1: I did not track this, which is interesting.

00:12:53
Speaker 2: I tracked my time pretty religiously, but I have not been tracking titles read recently.

00:12:59
Speaker 1: I did for a while.

00:13:00
Speaker 2: I went through a bit of a reading renaissance in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen where I actually did read a lot of the books on kind of my book bucket list, as it were. So in that time I read through like Moby Dick and Doris Kearns, Goodwin's Team of Rivals and one Q eighty four, the I read through Kristin Lavern's Daughter and reread I will say Ulysses and so all those sort of big books that I wanted to have read as a person who likes to read, and then I kind of got through them, and then I hit a bit of a wall and have not been reading as much since. I read over one hundred books in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen, even though many of them were huge.

00:13:50
Speaker 3: Right, So was that the period like between Alex and Henry. Yeah, like you didn't have a young kid.

00:13:56
Speaker 2: I did, all of a sudden he as a younger kid, and so I was getting more reading done.

00:14:02
Speaker 1: But I could now too. But I'm not reading one hundred books a year.

00:14:04
Speaker 4: I don't know.

00:14:05
Speaker 2: There's just other things I've been doing, I guess, or not been as interested in taking that on with my leisure time. But I would say it's about fifty I do read. And I also have been with titles when I'm interviewing people, Like if I'm interviewing somebody, I've always read their book. That's something I want to guarantee to any guests I would have on any of my shows.

00:14:29
Speaker 1: And you know what, they're like, always surprised? Is it so sad? Shouldn't that be like, you know, expected? Yeah? Same, I always always read them. Yeah it should be expected.

00:14:39
Speaker 2: But I know as an author that it isn't universal, so I will throw that out there.

00:14:45
Speaker 1: I mean, if you.

00:14:45
Speaker 2: Count the chapter books, like the children's chapter books I'm reading with Henry, it's well north of fifty. But I'm not gonna I don't know. I mean, I could count that they're books, but like I've read within the past year, for sure, I've read at least over twenty of the Dragon Maule books and over twenty of the Magic Treehouse books because we tend to get through them each and three or four nights, so it's diary.

00:15:08
Speaker 1: But we won't a kid like half a book half a book, Like how do we count graphic novels.

00:15:12
Speaker 2: Graphic novels are books we'll throw out there if your child is not necessarily into full narrated like solid print block books. Graphic novels are also a wonderful way to read, and so I would not discourage that at all. But yeah, I don't know, you could count it as half a book. Sah, sure, whatever you want.

00:15:32
Speaker 3: I've never logged the books I read to kids, but I don't know. Maybe that would be a fun separate list to keep, especially because I think we're now at the point where we can start with some more heavy titles than there.

00:15:44
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:15:45
Speaker 2: So as for when I read, if I have my reading project for the year, I tend to do that in the morning, like during my work day. So I was reading in twenty twenty two, I read all the works of Shakespeare, so I read three pages every morning as part of the start of my workday. When I was doing Jane Austen, I do ten pages of Jane Austen in the morning during twenty twenty three, and then this year in a Krinyan, it was kind of different. I do it either in the morning or at night. I had it as a I kept it up in my room, so I was often doing it at night, But I don't know the rest. It tends to be in the evening, Like nine thirty to ten forty five is pretty prime reading time. It's not uninterrupted yet, which is why I don't know. I can't really fully get absorbed.

00:16:34
Speaker 1: Into something, but that's one of the times when I read.

00:16:37
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, how do you curate your reading, Like where you'd mentioned that you often get book titles from books that refer to them. Is that your main way or do you listen to any reading podcasts or look at lists like that.

00:16:50
Speaker 2: So yeah, one of the reasons for me I tend to read a lot and then not read as much is that it tends to happen like that. Like I'll get recommendations from books of books from another book, or I read a book that I enjoy by an author, and then I'll go back and read all of their previous books. So I did that in this winter with sim Montgomery, who is a nature writer. I read all of her books on various things dolphins, turtles, tigers, octopus. Yeah, I read those titles and so that kept me going for a while. Or I get a topic that I'm really interested in, and then sometimes Amazon will helpfully suggest other books on a topic. I've been on evolution and then the history of the Ancient Earth for a long time, so i've but I've unfortunately read a lot of those titles now, so some people need to write some new ones.

00:17:42
Speaker 1: Maybe that's your next book. I don't know, No, I have.

00:17:44
Speaker 2: No expertise in that whatsoever. I just like to read it and I read the reviews in the Wall Street Journal. Sometimes I get something from that. Sometimes I've gotten titles from Modern Missus Darcy which I think you'll talk about as well.

00:17:54
Speaker 1: Right, where does yours come from?

00:17:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I really like modern missus darc your and vocals lists, especially she comes out with like a summer reading list and a fall reading list, and they're on there behind to pay well, but it's like not a lot of money for a lot of joy that I get from her recommendations and the kind of like checking off the box. Part of me just enjoys having a list to work from, although I never try to read like all of them or anything like that, so that's one main one. I also like the Currently Reading podcast, and then I subscribe to a couple of newsletters. Laura Train comes to mind. She usually like puts all of her favorite books into like these big emails every couple seasons, and I think our tastes align a lot, so I enjoy her picks. Definitely, recommendations from friends, like if somebody just text me a book or will be a book club just talking about like what have you.

00:18:36
Speaker 1: Read that's good?

00:18:38
Speaker 3: And then I do kind of like every once in a while just like to have some kind of a project. So you mentioned like reading you know, all of one author's works way back in the day, I was like, I'm reading every mirror CoA me and I read a lot.

00:18:48
Speaker 1: I don't think I read all of them. There are a ton, but I read a ton of his novels.

00:18:52
Speaker 3: I haven't done that for a while of one author, but I've done that with like parts of some banned vocals lists and then most re I just you know, somebody linked to the book or prize along this, and I was like, huh, there's twelve, but there are thirteen books. I was like, what if I just read like one per month for the next year or so, and I can give myself the rule that if I don't like it, I'm just going to start each of them. That's my rule, not that I'm going to read all of them just because I think it'll expose me to some genres I might not have chosen by myself, but that others have vetted as high quality.

00:19:24
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, I like that idea. I'd be willing to abandon a book. Do you find that challenging to do? Because I honestly think that's the secret to reading more.

00:19:32
Speaker 3: I do, and I don't find it challenging. I find it really challenging. I have gotten past a certain point. And I do feel like there are some books where the beginning's good and then they're just like not, like the first one hundred and fifty pages will have great momentum, and then I'm like, what just happened? We are slugging and there's still two hundred pages left, and I'm like, I'm one hundred and fifty in that is hard for me. If I'm like twenty pages in it and I'm just like, this is not for me, I have no problem.

00:19:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, yeah, No, It's true.

00:19:58
Speaker 2: The further you get in, the more you feel like, well, I should stick with it, the sunk costs thing.

00:20:02
Speaker 1: But you can really get stuck. Yeah, yeah you can.

00:20:05
Speaker 2: But I think for most books, yeah, I mean, giving them like a fifty page lead to is probably a reasonable rule. In fact, you might even if you are a serious reader, you might have a budget of how many hours per week you're willing to sort of not say waste, but like read a book that you're not going to finish. The problem is if you keep going with a book that you're not into, like you can stop reading because you don't want to convert extra time to reading time because you're not excited about the book. So I'd say allowing yourself to if you are a seven hour a week reader, you could certainly have one of those hours be a book you're not that into. But not let it be more than that, I guess, So allow yourself to read fifty pages and then start the next book if you're not into.

00:20:52
Speaker 1: It at that point. Totally makes sense.

00:20:55
Speaker 3: Even when we have picks for book club, we're always like, if you hate it, just dig it. Like nobody should feel obligated.

00:21:00
Speaker 1: This is not homework. We're not in school.

00:21:02
Speaker 3: You do not have to finish it, because again, that really can get you stuck when you would be happily reading other things. And you mentioned earlier what we didn't mention, it is like you might only get to read twenty five hundred books.

00:21:14
Speaker 1: So is that your estimate? That's true? I mean, like, okay, if you do the math, here, people.

00:21:21
Speaker 2: Fifty books a year, which is about what Sarah and I managed to read. Maybe some of you are reading a lot more, but a lot of people that would seem like a good number if you live for fifty more years, which might be.

00:21:31
Speaker 1: Stretches optimistic, optimistic.

00:21:33
Speaker 2: For a great many of us, that is only twenty five hundred more books, so sad, yes, which is like a couple shelves in a community library where there are so many books you are not going to be reading, which means that sticking with the book you're not liking is just silly because you could be reading other stuff. Though, now, you don't want to go crazy with this, Like you don't want to like only read books that are fifty pages long so you can up that number, or like listen to audiobooks every single minute of the day so you can get it up higher.

00:22:04
Speaker 1: But it does call for a little bit of intention.

00:22:09
Speaker 3: Yes, well, then if you do that extreme thing, you'd be treating the rest of your life for only reading books exactly, be another mistake.

00:22:15
Speaker 2: We're going to take a quick ad break and then we'll talk about exactly how we read. Well, we are back with our Busy Woman's Guide to reading more So, Sarah, you are team.

00:22:38
Speaker 1: Paper and pretty much paper only discuss. Yeah.

00:22:45
Speaker 3: I just prefer physical books either I buy them, which, now that I've written a book, I'm like, yes.

00:22:51
Speaker 1: Buy books. I's a lot of work into this.

00:22:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I'm just kidding. People can get it from the library, do whatever they want. But either I purchase them and then if it's not fiction, I like to highlight in them and take notes in them. And actually it ended up being very helpful that I had bought certain non fiction books, because when it came for me to write my book, I ended up having to like find page numbers for different quotes and stuff, and if I hadn't owned them physically, I think that would have been harder to do. Like it was great to be like, oh, let me pull out my copy of one hundred and sixty eight hours and just figure out where Laura said this or that it's right there.

00:23:23
Speaker 1: So yeah, I like my physical books for that.

00:23:25
Speaker 3: If I don't love it and I don't feel like it deserves a spot in my permanent library, I just give it away or I use the library, which I use a lot for fiction books, where I will do library holds and just kind of keep my list going and every couple of weeks kind of exchange for a new batch. And definitely have also purchased some novels, like I was super excited to read Katabasis by rf Quang and there was like a million week waiting lists and I was like, Nope, that book looks really pretty, and I'm just buying it. So sometimes I'll purchase those as well, But fiction tends to be more library. But I just enjoy holding a physical book. For me, if I'm holding my phone, and you have great art and as for why it's great to read on your phone, but for me, if I have a book on my phone, I'm like itchy fingers, like I'm going to go to email or a I'm going to go to something else, And I just like, don't like.

00:24:09
Speaker 1: When I think of the books that I have read.

00:24:11
Speaker 3: On the phone, I'm like, oh, I like, I don't process them the same way. And that's the same thing with a I had a Kindle paper white, and I just I don't know, it's cycle. It's obviously psychological because it's the same thing, like there's nothing wrong with it. But I just get pleasure in the feeling of holding a book, from being unplugged for my device, from turning the pages and seeing how far I have to go physically, and then for nonfiction, from putting pen to paper and actually writing in it.

00:24:34
Speaker 1: I enjoy that. And so you're willing to take the books with you wherever you like they're in your bag.

00:24:39
Speaker 3: Yes, I tend to like I have a toe bag, and I often have my laptop in there too. By the way, like if I'm going to the dentist, I'm bringing my laptop because I might be sitting, I might have to do work, sit at a desk for whatever. Once I've got a bag big enough for my laptop, adding a book in there, I mean, listen, I'm not reading maybe like the large sized books that you're I don't know how big enna current it actually is.

00:25:01
Speaker 1: You're not sticking it in your bag telling These of my books are reasonably portable.

00:25:06
Speaker 3: Plus I bring my planner everywhere I go, so again, like I mean my bag, I'm not just shaking. My bag is still manageable. So I don't know somehow I managed to do it.

00:25:16
Speaker 1: Well. I read mostly on my phone these days.

00:25:19
Speaker 2: I do get a fair amount of physical books that come into my life for one reason or another. I get sent ones if i'm again I'm interviewing the author, if it's somebody in the nonfiction world that I would just be on the list for publicity for so I see a lot of those physically, But we have so many books in the house I can't in good conscience buy that many more without getting rid of some and that's always challenging to get rid of books. But there are just so many upsides to reading on like the Kindle app or the books app or the nokapp or whatever app you're using. I have Kindled just it's so easy with Amazon because you have it with you all the time. Like there is almost no situation that a modern human does not have her phone within an arm's reach, and so any time can become reading time. If you are about to pick up your phone to start scrolling around headlines or social media, if you can train yourself to just hit that Kindle app which is right next to it or before it, right like it's the screen before it, so you're not even getting to Instagram or whatever. You have to see the Kindle app before you get to Instagram. You can just click on it, challenge yourself to read for a couple of minutes, and most of the time you'll be excited about what you're reading and you'll keep going. You may never make it over to Instagram, and that would be absolutely fine, but even if you do, you will have built some reading time into your life that you would have just been scrolling, and that can be wonderful.

00:26:54
Speaker 1: You can scroll in the dark. This is actually I mean, you can read in the dark.

00:26:57
Speaker 2: This has been so like I may or may not have a five year old who sometimes needs somebody with him as he is going to sleep.

00:27:06
Speaker 1: I like to think this will end in the next year or two.

00:27:08
Speaker 2: But until it does, I cannot read a physical book in that room with him, whereas I can read on my phone.

00:27:17
Speaker 1: I'm probably ruining my eyes, but that's all right, they're ruined anyway.

00:27:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's just i mean, the upsides. And also you can get a book so quickly, right, that's the other. And you don't even have to pay for the first bit of it, Like it's like the most wonderful way to impulse buy. So Amazon almost universally with publishers, has a deal with they can get a free sample, so like the first chapter you can get And so if you see a book that you think you might want, you can download the first chapter, start reading it, decide in five minutes it's not for you, and abandon it and never worry about it again. You don't have the clutter, you don't have anything. Or if you like it, you can just keep going. Have it so it allows you to quickly act.

00:28:02
Speaker 1: On an impulse that you want to read something totally I can see.

00:28:06
Speaker 3: I mean, those are all excellent arguments, and it make so much logical sense.

00:28:10
Speaker 1: And I'm still going to read on paper, but I get it.

00:28:13
Speaker 3: No, I'm serious though, that all of that, including the phone one, which like, yeah, you can really turn it either direction, you know. I was just thinking about the screen Time app and how you could probably quantify, like how much time you spend reading on your Kindle app.

00:28:24
Speaker 1: Well, you track your time anyway, but for those who do not track.

00:28:27
Speaker 3: Their time but have screen time going and use the Kindle app, you can investigate how much you're actually reading.

00:28:32
Speaker 1: It would be kind of interesting.

00:28:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So I think those things outweigh. I mean the truth that you could decide to stop reading a book that's not that interesting go over to your email, and that there would be a little more friction in doing that if you were reading a boring paper book. But let's be honest, your phone is still with you. You could still pull it out if you were bored. So I think there's enough upsides. Sarah, do you have any just one or two more questions here?

00:28:54
Speaker 1: Do you have social rituals around reading. You said you're in a book club.

00:28:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm in a neighborhood book club, which I started a few years ago when we moved here. It was part of my efforts to like get to know people in my neighborhood. And it's been fantastic. Now a couple of the people actually have kids who go to my kids' school, and like, it's been very fun and also does kind of like the reading project I had talked about, forces me to sometimes read things that wouldn't have been my first pick. We're actually reading like an academic fantasy novel or set in like dark academia, and I probably wouldn't have picked.

00:29:22
Speaker 1: That up, and I'm super excited to read it.

00:29:24
Speaker 3: So, yeah, the Ninth House by Something Bardugo, if anybody is curious.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have not wound up in a book club. I don't know. I'm a bit of a I'm not sure if it would. It could be fun. Maybe, well your book picks, you'd have to be in a very special book club. It would be a very very special. No.

00:29:42
Speaker 3: Maybe I could enjoy like a classics book club where people that's true so shack and read like respected works and.

00:29:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I would probably enjoy that, and then we'd all be ridiculous sitting there arguing from the text as if we were writing our literature paper. But maybe somebody wants to start that with me, that would be exciting. Let me know, how about your kids, Sarah, what's reading rituals looking like with your children?

00:30:04
Speaker 3: Some of my kids are really seem like they're into reading, and it makes me happy. And honestly, some of that's been fairly recent, and I think a lot of it's been about finding the right kinds of books, not all of them. Some of them are like I will read diligently when is a signed to me, and otherwise prefer to do anything else.

00:30:21
Speaker 1: So I imagine that could change over time.

00:30:24
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of it's worth trying to at least help your kids find books that they find fun and interesting. And I am willing to go to the bookstore and have them pick things that might look fluffy, but who cares. Like it's just about them having that habit and again telling them and I think they do understand this, or at least my older ones. That focus is becoming a scarcer resource and holding onto that might actually be really beneficial long term, and reading might be one of the ways to do that.

00:30:49
Speaker 1: So they're actually getting that.

00:30:52
Speaker 3: I feel like gen Z kind of bypassed it, but Jenoff was like, hmm hmm, maybe we can do better.

00:30:57
Speaker 1: I don't know.

00:30:57
Speaker 2: Yah. I am willing to buy books, Like if kids ask for books, that's one of the things I am always willing to buy. And I tend not to police much of what they are reading. Like if they wanted to read a book that was maybe a bit more adult than I would have chosen for them, I said, well.

00:31:16
Speaker 1: If you're able to read it, then go for it.

00:31:20
Speaker 2: Although nobody who's been picking out in anything too terrible in that regard. I had to sign a funny for for the middle school library. In that regard, oh, interesting of children being allowed to check out any Ya novel they wish.

00:31:35
Speaker 1: I rated books. Yes, rated book, I'm just gonna trust it.

00:31:38
Speaker 2: Don't have too many hardcore R rated books in the middle school library. But they could surprise me.

00:31:43
Speaker 1: But I'm in Florida. They definitely don't.

00:31:45
Speaker 2: They definitely don't there, so like, yes, probably a Ya novel that you are choosing to read is not something I wish to stand between you.

00:31:54
Speaker 1: And reading it.

00:31:56
Speaker 2: But we also I mean, I keep trying to stick with the enforcing a certain amount of time that is off screens, that devices have to be surrendered at a certain point of night, and theoretically that encourages reading time, although it's also lately my middle schoolers have been hanging out chatting during that time, which I guess I haven't really wanted to cut off, so they're not necessarily reading.

00:32:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's if my kids have screen access, they I will never I've never seen them choose a book over a screen.

00:32:29
Speaker 1: I don't think it will happen. I don't blame them at all.

00:32:32
Speaker 3: I just think the things they like to do on the screens are really enticing, unfortunately, and so you know, we just let them know when it's time, Like we've talked about this in other episodes, but my kids know that like until a certain time in the late afternoon on weekends, they're just not getting a screen.

00:32:48
Speaker 1: And you know what, I'll see them curled up with the book and it's great. Yeah, awesome.

00:32:52
Speaker 2: Well, we hope you've come up with a few tips from this for making space for reading in your life and ways to find books and other such things. So let us know what you are reading always looking for title recommendations, or if you have some really creative way that you are reading more. I mean, there's always something I don't know. If it's always reading in the elevator and they have a long elevator ride. I don't know what it is, but let us know. We'd love to hear about it.

00:33:14
Speaker 1: Today's question comes from her listener, who wrote in that she wanted to implement what she calls a feel good folder or something similar.

00:33:23
Speaker 2: She says she thrives off words of affirmation that's one of the love languages, or just verbal feedback and appreciation, and wants to stash good examples of feedback to preserve. So if she is feeling low or feeling insecure there's some sort of imposter syndrome going on, she can read these wonderful words of affirmation from people in her life and feel better. She says, My issue is I haven't found a essential place or system to capture them, and many come in verbally, or I forget to capture them. Any strategies for me here, she says, she might forget to look at the folder too, So Sarah, what do you think.

00:33:57
Speaker 1: I think, is this super interesting? And I enjoy the idea.

00:34:01
Speaker 3: I know myself, and if when I'm in that mood, like nothing I would read, I would just be like, well these are stupid, like these people are lying to me, or like I can't imagine it actually helping when I'm in that mode. But again, maybe you are different than me. So I think it's a great idea, or at least to try. You can always decide it doesn't work. But my thought for like the most accessible way to do it might be like have a desktop folder on your laptop and just you know, like if you get an email or like that, just shove it in there like a word document, because then it would just be one easy place to like see everything in one place. If your desktop is incredibly cluttered with nine million folders and.

00:34:34
Speaker 1: You wouldn't see it, then probably wouldn't go for that.

00:34:37
Speaker 3: But if you tend to keep things organized, you could have one folder that just has like a heart on it and your name and you just put all accolades in there.

00:34:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I would also recommend just create. I mean, you don't have to overthink this. It could just be like a word document and you could call it something like testimonials or underscore testimonials, so it comes up first on a list of documents or underscore Love Lucy or whatever your name is, right, like something maybe cute that will make you want to open it. I guess if other people aren't looking at your computer all the time, and you would feel weird about this.

00:35:10
Speaker 1: So let's say it's underscore we Love Lucy, and.

00:35:13
Speaker 2: When somebody emails you, you just paste it in, right, just copy the email, paste it in.

00:35:19
Speaker 1: If somebody says something to you.

00:35:22
Speaker 2: You go into the folder and the document and paraphrase it, like as soon as you remember to do this. If you are going into a situation where you think you are going to get positive feedback, right like you're having a sit down conversation with your manager who has just been glowing about the amazing job you just did on something like, go in with a notebook so you can take notes of what she is saying, right, so you can get the exact phrases that she is saying and get those down, and then you can immediately transcribe those into your we Love Lucy folder for later perusal. And then I would sort of build in some sort of rhythm of checking this, and this would just be to remind yourself of this document's existence. So if you have like a weekly planning ritual, that might be a little bit too free.

00:36:09
Speaker 1: Like I don't know how often you get praised.

00:36:11
Speaker 2: Many people are not getting ted a day, so there wouldn't be a whole lot of new ones every week. But just to sort of glance at it, like open it once, so we to sort of train yourself that this folder exists. And after you've done that for a while, you can remember that it's there. And when you find yourself in these low moments, you have your list of things you can do. I can go for a walk, I can buy myself a latte, I can look at the we Love Lucy folder and then you are feeling better.

00:36:37
Speaker 1: I like it.

00:36:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can imagine looking at it regularly, like once a season even or even once a year, might be more realistic for someone like me, who in the throes of a mood would be unlikely to click it open exactly.

00:36:49
Speaker 1: But I love the idea. It is a good Yeah.

00:36:52
Speaker 2: Maybe somebody is doing this and can tell us, yes, what your words of affirmation folder looks like and how you make sure you look at it frequently and we would love to hear so let us know, all right, Love of the week, Sarah, what.

00:37:03
Speaker 1: Do you have?

00:37:03
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to go with bookstores because I'm just so glad they still exist. I mean, if nobody buys physical books, they won't exist. Although I will say like Barnes and Noble has quite the selection of non book items that are also very enticing, lots of planners, notebooks, stationary items, toys. My kids love going to Barnes and Noble and not just for the books, and other bookstores seem to be doing that as well, having like some other trinkets.

00:37:25
Speaker 1: But I'm just very glad.

00:37:27
Speaker 3: They exist, and so I encourage anyone who likes bookstores to engage in a little bit of bookstore tourism. So if you happen to go to a cool city, why not look up an independent bookstore or a big box bookstore whatever suit your fancy, and I don't know, get a flavor for the local reading culture and buy yourself a book.

00:37:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, they are so fun to visit, even airport bookstores. I have gone to some of the I mean that's where I found the Si Montgomery Book of Time and Turtles and I was like, Time Turtles, that sounds interesting and I read it. Then That's what triggered me to read five other books in short succession afterwards. That said, I will say again that my love of the week is going to be the Kindle app. It's just one of those amazing things of technology, I think, making our lives better and turning time into reading time that might not have been if you hadn't thought about it that much. So even though I definitely prefer reading on paper, I am willing to go with all the upsides of the app. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. We've been discussing The Busy Woman's Guide to Reading more. We will be back next week with more on making work and life fit together.

00:38:33
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can.

00:38:41
Speaker 4: Find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.