10 Conversation Starters About Books and Reading for Holiday Gatherings

December 3, 2018 |

It’s the season of holiday gathers, which often means making a lot of small talk with colleagues, with family, and maybe even with people you don’t know at all but have a shared relationship with (think: your friend’s friends). But even beyond the time of gathering, there can be times when making small talk becomes crucial. So why not have a few go-to questions prepared to get conversation rolling or to engage someone you’re interested in knowing better around a topic that you’re passionate about? Enter a guide to 10 conversation starters about books and reading.

I’ve sat through hundreds of panels in my time as a YA lover/librarian/writer, and I’ve also moderated a fair number. Those experiences, coupled with a life lived in books and around other readers, has allowed me a lot of time to think about the kinds of questions that are interesting to ask other people. These questions can get personal and deep, but they’re meant to spark thinking and discussion beyond the weather or one’s career.

These 10 questions about books and reading are a starting point. I’d love to know of any others you’ve used in the comments, and I’d also love to hear about the results if you do try any of these. I’ve found that I have learned so much from people, even those I thought I knew well, by asking some of these questions. The last question here is one that, if you’ve seen me moderate a panel, always comes up because I think the answers are fascinating and insightful.

10 Conversation Starters About Books and Reading

1. What is the first book you remember reading when you were young and have you ever reread it? Why do you think that particular book sticks out in your memory?

2. If you were stranded on an island and had only the books in your bag with you to keep you company for an uncertain amount of time, what three to five books would they be? Why?

3. Have you ever been part of a book club? If so, what did you like or dislike about it? If you haven’t — or if you’d like to join another one — what would your dream book club look like? How frequently would it happen? What kinds of books would you read? Would it be run by a celebrity and if so, who?

4. If you could host a dinner party with any three authors from any time in history, who would they be and why? Alternately, which three living authors would you want at your dinner party?

5. What genre of book do you find most difficult to read? What genre do you gravitate toward?

6. Do you listen to audiobooks? Why or why not? If you do listen to them, what are your favorite kinds of books to listen to and do you have a preference on narrator? On listening speed? If you don’t listen to them, what might interest you in trying one?

7. What is your favorite memory related to a library? If you don’t have one, talk about why that might be. Alternately, what teacher introduced you to some of your favorite books or read a book to you that you remember?

8. If you could switch places with any author for a year, who would it be and why? (Assume you’d have all of their abilities, so you’d be doing the work they’re doing at their level!).

9. Imagine you’re put in charge of a publishing imprint and get to decide the kinds of books you’d edit and publish every year. Or, alternately, you’re able to purchase the books for one category at your library or favorite bookstore. What kinds of books would they be and why? Is there any person, writer or not, you’d want to publish a book or purchase a book from?

10. If you could go back in time and give your 12-year-old self any book, what would it be and why?

Refilling The Well

September 12, 2016 |

I’ve been having a hard time reading this year. I know my perception of “hard time reading” and “not reading much” differs from the average person — I did just finish my 70th book, so I’m clocking about two a week — but it’s weird when you’re used to reading more than 100 or 150 books at this point in the year and you’re just not.

But my reading this year has been so much more satisfying than in previous years. Not necessarily because the books are better. Rather, it’s because I’ve let myself refill the well over and over, and I’ve listened to my instinct far more on what I’m choosing to pick up and what I’m choosing to put down.

Last week, I went on vacation with my husband to one of our top dream places: Marfa, Texas. We’d lived in Texas for a few years, but we never made the 6.5 hour drive out to west Texas. This time, we made the intentional decision to do it; we’d fly into Austin, then make the drive out to the desert.

Earlier in the summer, the two of us took a half a week trip out to the Denver area to see some friends, so this was our second couple trip together in the last couple of months. And one thing I figured out pretty quickly in that first trip was something I applied to this one: I don’t read.

I used to love the whole process of picking my vacation reads. I’d spend days debating which books make the cut and which ones would stay behind. But the truth of it was, I rarely read on these trips. I’d pack 4 or 5 books, and then I’d pick at a couple of pages while waiting at the airport and quickly discard it in favor of pacing the airport itself. When I get on the plane, I’m one of those lucky people who falls asleep nearly instantly. Then when I reach the destination, I’m conscious of leaving everything behind and living right in the moment.

What I did pack for both trips was my Nook. Out in Colorado, I did read. I woke up before anyone else did, since I’m a morning person, and I’d use the time to read a few chapters. I finished Kali VanBaale’s The Good Divide during one of those morning reading sessions, and I updated my husband on the story when he’d wake up. I loved the book, and I loved the slow, deliberate reading sessions, knowing that I was being intentional of when I was reading and I was fully aware of the moment I was in while reading (on an air mattress, in the home of good friends). The story and the setting coalesced into a wonderful experience.

I loaded up my Nook before this trip, but I wasn’t particularly excited about any of the titles on there. A couple of books I’d wanted to read expired, and given that this was a Dream Trip, my excitement was a bit dispersed.

Then we hit travel snags, and I suddenly needed a book to read. Right now. Something that would distract me from hours and hours of sitting at an airport.

I hit the O’Hare bookstore (note, this wasn’t the airport we originally had tickets to fly out of) and hemmed and hawed about what book to read. I picked up and put down tons of them. I left without a book. Then I went back and picked up more options, then put them down. O’Hare’s bookstore had some of those beautiful classics, including a cover for The Metamorphosis I hadn’t seen before (I was tempted). I ended up choosing the mass market edition of The Girl on the Train, which I hadn’t yet read. I picked up Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars for my husband.

And then I didn’t read.

For many more hours, I wandered O’Hare. And then when the flight finally came to be, I fell asleep, my dreams peppered with images of bowls of queso and margaritas.

I was disappointed about the delays. The trip was to begin with grabbing lunch with Kimberly, who I haven’t seen in a few years. My disappointment meant my concentration wasn’t there. Which meant my reading mind wasn’t there. There was some comfort in buying a book, but there was no response in reading it.

The morning after our flight, my husband and I tag teamed the drive out to Marfa. When we drive, I do not read. We have an understanding that when we drive like this, neither of us gets to read or sleep — we’re the second set of eyes. With driving such a huge expanse of Texas, it was hard not to keep looking out. It was beautiful and breath taking and there was so much to take in about the beauty of the land around us.

It hit me on the drive I wanted nothing more than to read a book about living in west Texas. About homesteading. About how you don’t feel like an insignificant speck in a part of the country where there is one person per square mile (a nifty fact gleaned at a rest stop Google session — one of my favorite parts of driving, the looking up of the things you see and know nothing about).

Marfa is a tiny artist town close to the Mexican border. But they have a pretty nifty bookstore, and as we discovered on the first evening there, a beautiful library with a lovely note to the community on the outside. I didn’t get a chance to go in, but I loved the love letter to the town. We did hit up the bookstore, located inside one of the new hotels downtown (…most of Marfa is downtown, I guess). It was a lovely specialty shop, filled with books about the artists who played a huge role in the community, as well as an extensive selection of Cormac McCarthy books — No Country For Old Men was filmed in places around town. Nothing caught my eye or scratched the itch of the kind of book I needed to be reading.

I didn’t read while on the trip. Instead, I explored. I saw the mystery lights. My husband and I and the other people who were out there watching the show that evening shared stories and theories; we learned one guy brought his family to this space ten different times and this was the first time they’d ever seen the lights. We wandered the campsite we stayed at, pet the dogs of other people staying there, and we even ran into another Wisconsinite, with whom we shared stories of travel, of how unbelievable the sky out in this space was. Even when I grabbed my book to read in the hammocks around the campsite, I put it down and instead watched the vast sky around me, felt the breeze, listened to the utter quiet of being in the desert.

One of the best parts of the trip, though, was stopping into the visitor centered. The woman running it was wildly enthusiastic about Marfa, and she told us about all of the places we needed to see, as well as the stories behind them. Our immediate trip after that was to the Chinati Foundation, where we wandered out into the land to see the famous Judd concrete sculptures. The Foundation is built on decommissioned military land that served as a German POW camp during the second World War. The sculptures, as well as the surrounding buildings filled with art, were the response to getting the land and making it mean something completely different.

Between the trip through the concrete sculptures, as well as our drive out to see the Prada Marfa installation, my husband and I had stories and theories to tell one another, as well as things to look up and read to one another. What did these things mean? How did they change over time?

Our reading wasn’t books. It wasn’t what we picked up or packed. It was what we were living right then.

One of the last stops on our last night in Marfa was one of the big hotel gift shops, and it was here I found the book I was looking for: a story about a girl whose grandparents made a homestead out in west Texas in the 1950s and 60s and what it was like for them to live in such a desolate place: A Stake in West Texas by Rebecca D. Henderson.

It’s a book that scratches all of my itches, and it’s one I cannot wait to read for the story, as well as the story behind where I got it, what it means to me, and what the longing I had to learn about this place meant to me before and during the travels. It is, as I type this, lost in transit with our clothes, our toiletries, our toothbrushes, our shoes, jars of honey, bottles of beer, and a number of other things. I’m eager to be reunited.

When we got back to Austin, our first stop was Book People, my all-time favorite bookstore. It was a sanctuary for me for the time I was living in that city by myself. On Saturday mornings when I wasn’t working in someone’s garage archive, I’d hop on a bus, then another one, then spend a few hours wandering the two-story store.

Remember when I said I didn’t pack anything but my nook?

That was in part because I knew I’d pick up a few things at Book People. And $125 later, I’m pleased to say I bought myself two books — including one that had expired from my Nook — and one for my husband.

We flew back to Milwaukee and when I got on the plane, everything changed. I needed to unpack the trip, the stories we heard and the ones we told, and the best way for me to do that was to read.

I pulled The Girl on the Train out of my bag and flew through 300 pages as we were in the air. Then the moment we got home, I tore through the remainder of the book. It was precisely what I needed when I needed it: a quick thriller which made me keep turning pages and put me back into my own space and turf. As soon as I finished that, I picked up another book, which I’m elbow deep in now, less than 24 hours after returning home.

There is a weird pressure to keep reading, to pick up the next book, to do more, more, more, when you make your life about books. When you identify as A Reader. You feel guilt when you’re asked if you’ve read something and you say no, you haven’t. Or worse, when you’re told about a book and you’ve literally never heard of it (the friend we stayed with in Texas asked me about a book by a UT Alumna, wherein I had to look it up and add it to my to-read ASAP).

The truth is, though, reading and one’s reading life is entirely personal. And sometimes being a “reader” means that you’re listening to stories in ways that aren’t about printed or electronic pages. Sometimes, it’s about experiencing stories in the moment, of asking people to share their stories, of reading those plaques on the side of the road, of paging through art books in a tiny collection, of enjoying the beautiful libraries in the middle of the desert.

Those are moments of refilling the well. Of remembering why it is you love to read.

Taking this break and leaning into it, rather than pushing to fix it, meant stopping and pausing. It meant finding momentum again upon return. It meant finding the hunger and passion again for stories, no matter how they’re told.

____________________

All photos above are mine. I started taking photography classes earlier this year, and it’s been another piece of my refilling the well. The stories you can tell visually, through little more than the lens of your phone, continues to impress and inspire me.

Intentional Reading

January 4, 2016 |

A few years ago, I wrote about how I dislike annual reading goals. The act of setting up a number or goal in reading as a yearly resolution feels to me like making reading work, rather than an activity worth enjoying. That’s not to say there’s not value in it — for many readers, there definitely is — but for me, being intentional in my reading brings meaning to my reading life.

Intentional reading is being selective with my reading. I’ve been doing the reading thing long enough now to know what phrases or descriptions ring my bells. I also have a good sense of where I can improve in my reading and I create strategies for getting better. Over the last few years, for example, I recognized how important reading more women and more people of color was; I set the intention of only spending my money on books written by women or people of color. By setting that intention, I work hard to seek out those books, many of which I may otherwise never have discovered, and I’m surrounded by them. If I need to read a book, I have so many fantastic options in my home.

Last fall, I made a decision about my reading life. It was something I needed to do. I’d sort of hinted at needing to change things up in the summer, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to go about it or what it was that I needed to do. When your reading life and your work life are so intimately and intricately tied, it’s hard to tease one of them apart from the other and separate the things you know you should be reading for work-related reasons from those you want to read for you and only you. I love talking about books intelligently and I love being able to be part of a conversation about books that are sparking discussion within the YA and broader book community. But I’m also not, nor have I ever been, a reader who needs to be up on the latest, greatest, or big-budget titles. I rely on reviews by others of those titles to help guide my decisions on them.

I was intrigued by Annika’s post about having only read books by women since 2013. I love when people suss out patterns in their reading and then they go at those things with full force. That’s an intention. But more, when the comments on Annika’s post turned really bothersome — and I moderated those comments for a few days, so I saw some of the worst of it — I decided that taking on a similar intention in my reading would be worthwhile. Why did a woman choosing to read only women make people so angry? What is so scary about choosing to read only women?

Leila answers that question about the challenge in a way that I didn’t know how to articulate while also offering more compelling reasons for taking part in the intentional reading of women’ stories:

And, as I watched that all play out, rather than scaring me off, all of the garbage levelled at that essay—and, of course, at the woman who wrote it—resulted in the realization that this year, every single book that I’ve read that I have connected on a kindred-spirit level has been a book written by a woman. It made me realize that lately, while I haven’t felt particularly welcome in a community that I used to consider welcoming, that I have felt embraced and affirmed and heard and challenged—in a positive way—by those same authors, in those same books.

It made me realize that at the moment, I want to surround myself with women’s voices. That I want to put my energy into listening to them, engaging with them, learning from them, and amplifying them.

I began reading only women in November. Knowing my bookshelves are packed with books by women and people of color, I’ve had so many outstanding options to choose from. Sure, I’ve already missed out on reading a few books I’d been looking forward to, and I know there are more books I’m going to miss out on reading in this coming year. I’ve felt my heart sink opening up packages and finding ARCs by favorite male authors, knowing that I wouldn’t be reading them this year. But the beauty of books and reading is when you set an intention like reading only women, books written by men do not disappear. I can pick up the books I’ve been eager to read in 2017. Or 2018. Or 2019. Or 2020. It doesn’t matter. They aren’t going to vanish into the abyss; they’ll be there when I am ready to pick them up. With the way technology works, even books that might not otherwise have a long shelf life can stick around infinitely thanks to eformats. Likewise, talking about good books never gets tiring and it’s never out of style. Backlist discussions matter as much as, if not even more than, talking about titles the weeks leading up to or immediately after their release dates.

By intentionally limiting the books I’m reading, I’m discovering how my reading is expanding. It seems counterintuitive, but now, rather than sticking to a certain type or genre of book, I’m reaching a little further. I’m excited to read more memoirs by women. I’ve always wanted to do that, but with the intention of reading only women, now I am permitting myself to reach for those books when I may have otherwise kept pushing them off in exchange for something else more timely or more related to what I feel like I should be talking about. I’m thinking about the connections between those books and my own life. Those books and the lives of other women I care about. Those books and teenagers, both those who may be intrigued by the book at hand or those who might find themselves connecting on a personal level to those stories in the future.

My reading has slowed down a bit, too. I’m marking more passages, thinking more critically, and asking more questions of the books I’m enjoying. I’m finding the act of asking questions to be fulfilling more than the desire to seek answers to them. My thinking and engagement in books opens up in a different way when I choose to settle for uncertainty, rather than demand closure. I’ve never needed closure in my reading, but I’m letting myself enjoy the discomfort of not knowing.

I didn’t participate in the Read Harder challenge at Book Riot last year. It felt too restrictive to me in the same way other reading challenges are. But this year, I’m embracing the challenge. I’m really excited to try reading books that I otherwise wouldn’t, especially with my intention of reading only women sitting on top of it. I know I’ll enjoy a wider range of reading while digging even more deeply into the works of women. Rather than expanding only outward, beyond my comfort zone, I’ll also be moving inward, further down the hole of the types of voices and stories I’m hungry to read.

If you aren’t a person who feels driven by goals or numbers, you’re not alone. And if you are a person who is motivated by that, that’s great, too. We’re all different in our approaches to reading. There’s no one-size-fits-all, and there never should be. Spending time thinking about your own needs and interests as a reader and digging into them, questioning them, and redefining them, only makes you better able to talk with or connect to other readers. This is especially true when you work with teen readers who have so little time in their lives for pleasure reading as it is.

I’m excited to see what this year in reading brings. Since embracing intentionality in my reading life and redefining what that means as I go along, rather than once a year, I’m able to walk away at the close of each year feeling like I’ve grown as a reader and as a thinker.

Do you have any reading intentions this year? I’d love to hear them or about any challenges you’re taking on.

Define “Reading”

May 16, 2014 |

A couple of really interesting studies have popped up recently.

First, this survey, done by the Reading Agency, notes that 63% of men feel like they aren’t reading as much as they think they should and a full fifth of men admit to saying reading is difficult or they don’t enjoy it.

NPR wrote about the findings Common Sense Media had when combing through a series of studies that teens aren’t reading like they used to. This one cites a few reasons why this might be, including the rise of tablets and internet-connected devices, as well as the always-present “not enough time” (that’s the big reason for the survey above on why men are reading less).

But before we cry about how no one is reading anymore, perhaps we should examine one of the biggest factors not examined in either of these studies: how is “reading” defined?

It appears in both cases that “reading” is defined as sitting down with a book — print, of course — and reading it cover to cover. This is how we all traditionally perceive reading, and it’s what we’re taught reading is from a very early age. There are different types of reading, including close reading (something that is brought up in Corey Ann Haydu’s Life By Committee in a way that I think all teens “get”: sitting down with a pen and marking reactions, questions, and favorite lines), reading for research (which also includes note taking, whether in the margins or on paper), and skimming/scanning. There are other reading skills taught to us, of course, but those are easily the three biggest ones. All three are taught from early on, and they’re taught via the print medium.

The problem is that in today’s world, this idea of reading is limiting. It defines reading by the medium in which one type of reading occurs, rather than opening up the idea of reading as an activity one can engage in across multiple platforms, devices, and mediums.

A few years ago when I was working the entire youth services program in my small library, I decided I wanted to shake up how our summer reading program looked. For a long time, the program required readers to track the number of books they read in exchange for rewards along the way. While this is an easy tracking system on the end of the library, it’s a very limiting system for readers. Aside from the fact it privileges readers who choose smaller books over larger books and it privileges faster readers over slower ones, it also reinforces the idea of what reading is: a book.

My proposal was that we count time read, rather than books read. After the change was made, when I got into the schools to talk to teens, I asked them specifically what they they thought counted as “reading.”

Many thought graphic novels and comics didn’t count as reading.

Many thought reading anything on the internet — blogs, magazine websites, gaming forums — didn’t count as reading.

Many thought picking up a newspaper or magazine in print didn’t count as reading.

Many thought that listening to audiobooks didn’t count as reading.

When their impressions of “reading” were shared, I told them their perceptions of what counted as reading were very narrow. Why didn’t graphic novels or comics count as reading? Was it because those aren’t typically what’s being read in the classroom? Is it because graphic novels or comics can sometimes have many pages where there’s no text? What made a magazine — either in print or online — not count as reading?

That summer, I told them I wanted them to count those things as reading. I told them I wanted them to count other things that involved reading to be counted toward reading. Do you spend time reading text messages? Then count it. Do you spend time reading the instructions before you dive into playing a game? Then count it. Do you spend time reading Facebook updates? Then count it. I told them to be reasonable — count those things no more than half an hour a day — but that those things absolutely, positively counted as reading.

When summer ended, I saw a marked increase in participation in the reading program, as well an impressive number of hours logged by teen readers. There was nothing inflated and nothing out of the ordinary. Instead, teens saw a redefinition of reading to include the very things they do every single day that require them to be active and engaged readers. You can’t respond to your friend’s text without reading it, processing it, then forming a response to it. Those are the same skills necessary to engage with a novel or a work of non-fiction assigned in school. The responses may be different. The contexts are different. But all require reading.

Reading is a skill set.

Reading is an activity.

Reading is not a format nor a context.

Of course teens aren’t reading like they used to. Of course men aren’t reading like they used to. Why would they? The world of reading is wide and vast and it’s not limited to one thing anymore.

Before panicking about the numbers and what it is teens or men or women or any other group or category of people are or aren’t doing when it comes to reading, or how things were so much better and greater “back in the day,” think about how those researchers have defined reading. Think about how we have defined reading for those groups. Are we limiting them to one idea of reading? Or are we allowing them to think about the fact that nearly every single thing they do in today’s world — online and offline — requires them to engage in reading?

For some more thoughts on this, go read Liz Burn’s post “Teens Today! They Don’t Read!“