Dear Readers, I’m seeking input for the second edition of The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life and would be deeply grateful for your help.
Do you have a technique or practice that helps you get more books into your life? I’d love to hear about it.
It’s hard for me to believe, but it has been 20 years since I wrote The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, which carried the subtitle: How to get more books in your life and more life from your books. Reading the reviews online today, I’m gratified that the little book seems to have delivered on its purpose, but so much technological change has occurred in the past two decades that impacts how and if we read books that it’s time to update The Little Guide with a second edition. That’s where you can help.
Despite all the new technology in recent years (including ChatGPT, which created this image from a few prompts) the traditional printed book is still pleasing readers.
What readers want
The idea for the original book came from a complaint Levenger customers shared with me a bit too often: “I love what your company sells,” many customers said, “but what I need most, you can’t give me, and that’s more time to read!”
I had the same frustration myself. There were so many books I wanted to get to, so many authors, so many genres I hadn’t even tried. Was there really nothing that any of us could do about getting more time to read?
That's when I began asking our customers to share their reading tips and habits that they found helpful.
Thankfully, many of them did. Some talked about making a to-read list of books they wanted to read in order to make better book choices. Others talked about how–and when–they give up on books (which many readers have a hard time doing). Some readers told me about how they relish writing in their books to reinforce their learning and pleasure (while other readers definitely do not). Still others told me how they love their book groups and how listening to audiobooks on long drives made the miles fly by. These kinds of practical tips, along with advice I culled from books on the subject, became the content of The Little Guide.
How we read today
But that was then, and so very much has changed.
In 2007, just two years after The Little Guide came out, Amazon launched its Kindle, and the reading of books evolved as profoundly as transportation evolved from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles. Want to take 10 books on vacation? How about 100 instead contained automagically on your Kindle? Can’t wait a week for that new book? Buy it now and begin reading a minute later. Want to read at night while your partner sleeps? Your e-reader glows, making bedside lights less necessary. Want to look up a word? Just touch it and its definition appears.
The Kindle and other e-readers offered such a profound solution to the physical limitations of traditional books that many thought the printed book would soon be dead. Microsoft’s Dick Brass told Wired magazine, “Twenty years from now paper will be a thing of the past…almost all printed material–books, newspapers, and periodicals–will be published electronically.” He was right that all these things are now published electronically, but he was wrong about paper books going away. After a few years of rapid growth in e-books, printed books rebounded, especially for children’s books, and have found a new equilibrium with electronic books.
Then came YouTube and Goodreads
Google bought YouTube in 2006 and in short order, the social network of video became our go-to source for learning all kinds of things, delivering a near-fatal blow to how-to books. Who needs a book on home appliance repair? Just enter your specific appliance and question into YouTube and find a two-minute video on how to fix it. After that, watch your favorite author give an interview about her latest book.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the reading of books has changed more in the past 20 years than in the past 200.
Then the power of social networking came to our bookshelves with software like Shelfari followed by Goodreads, which Amazon bought in 2013. Suddenly you could share your entire library online, including your own reviews, while viewing the covers of the books in your library represented on your laptop screen as avatars. Do you even need to have a physical library any longer?
The stakes are even higher now
Considering these advances, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the reading of books has changed more in the past 20 years than in the past 200. One could also say without exaggeration that we are enjoying a golden age of books, or at least a golden age of opportunity. Never in history have there been more marvelous books and more ways of reading them. So why, then, are fewer people doing so?
The declines are most pronounced in the groups that typically read the most books, including college graduates, women and older adults.
According to Gallup, Americans are reading fewer books than 20 years ago. The declines are most pronounced in the groups that typically read the most books, including college graduates, women and older adults. The NEA reports similar findings.
Why?
I’m not sure anyone knows for sure, but one theory is that people may, in fact, be reading more than ever, just not books. Rather than turning pages in books, they are swiping and scrolling social media feeds, apps, headlines, and short articles. Some college faculty complain that they can’t assign long books or the number of books they used to. Teachers say students just won’t–or can’t–read hundreds of pages anymore. And those complaints were before the recent advent of AI.
Is AI Cliffs Notes on steroids?
I don’t propose to know the answers to these questions, but I do know one thing: if we give people, young and old, practical techniques for how they can get more books into their lives, they are more likely to do so. The marvelous books out there, both new ones and classics, are quite capable of hooking readers and getting them to fall into love with books. Sometimes readers just need a nudge to fall into book love, and keep falling.
That’s why this second edition of The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life may make more of a difference now than 20 years ago. As book lovers, as serious readers, as accomplished readers, as professional readers–I know you are out there, and I need your help now.
I want to hear your ideas, tips, techniques, and habits you’ve developed in the last 20 years, so that we can pass them on to others. And not just to young people, but to adults of all ages who have fallen out of the habit of long-form reading, who have turned away from the great illumination that books can provide.
How to share how you read now
Send me an email to wellreadlife@Levenger.com and submit your ideas, practices, techniques, and tips for getting more books into your life and more from your books.
Help me help other readers—from first-timers to old hands.
Your contributions will help not only with the second edition of The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, but also with a workbook on the same subject that will add to our Levenger Master Class Work Book Series, providing another useful tool for now–and future–book lovers.
Gratefully yours,
Steve Leveen
Co-Founder, Levenger