How to Succeed at Reading Without Really Trying
Gorgeous gorgeous girls love talking about books
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Without wading too far into any specific discourse, I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about the relationship between who we all are in real life and how we present ourselves online.
Admittedly, I often think about this through the lenses of consumerism (because I’m deep) and the curation of girlhood which should come as a shock to absolutely no one.1 And, if I’m being mostly totally honest on the Internet, there’s a not-small part of my brain that remains preoccupied with the Instagram-ification of books and reading.
As I confessed before, that was my main intention when I created last year’s reading panel: I wanted people to tell me why they returned to reading when it was suddenly cool again to, I suppose, allow my inner middle-school self to feel vindicated. But it’s not fair to assume or demand, nor is it the full truth for most born-again readers. Just as it wouldn’t have been a good piece back in April, it wouldn’t be any more interesting now.
Still, I wanted to find a way to talk through this Make Reading Fetch Again campaign so I’ve decided to scratch the itch the way I often do: by taking one of my private conversations and having it on display for all of you!
Over the past year, E4P Superstar Sandra Etuk and I have been talking books—what to read, how we read, and why. It’s genuinely always a joy to talk to Sandra on and offline so today, I asked her about how she got back into reading, what she looks for now in the books she reads, and, obviously, what she’s reading now.
My name is Sandra, I’m 25, and I currently live in Chicago. If any of this sounds familiar, it is because I’ve had the luck of joining Emily twice now solo and two other times in a panel. So while this is technically my hat trick E4P, I’m thinking I need to start a Five-Timers club, á là SNL.
I am a self proclaimed non-expert in books (I did not reach my 2023 Good Reads Challenge) but Emily has been gracious enough to unofficially serve as my personal book recommender for the past two years or so.
Reader? I Hardly Know Her!
If it felt like everyone and their mother was reading more during the pandemic, it’s because they were: data provider BookScan reported an overall 8.2% increase in book sales in 2020, “the largest annual increase since 2010.” As Publisher’s Weekly reported earlier this month, “Despite the 2023 sales drop of 2.6% and the more pronounced decline of 6.5% between 2021 and 2022, print unit sales in 2023 were still 10% ahead of the last prepandemic year in 2019.”
Unsurprisingly, the key driving factor for book sales since the dawn of Covid has been BookTok: last March, The Bookseller reported that “one in four book buyers used TikTok/BookTok in 2022 and these consumers accounted for nearly 90 million book purchases last year,” and a study conducted by the British Publishers Association found that
over half (55%) of respondents saying they turn to the platform for book recommendations. 38% of young people now turn to BookTok for recommendations ahead of family and friends, while seven in 10 (68%) say that BookTok has inspired them to read a book that they would have never considered otherwise.
This influence has also allowed Gen Z-ers to connect with their peers and create communities based on what they’re reading. Nearly one in five (19%) say that following the BookTok hashtag helped them find a community and another 16 per cent reported that they made new friends through BookTok.
While BookTok and Bookstagram have been the major catalysts in driving individuals to or back to recreational reading, I wanted to hear about Sandra’s personal experience:
Emily: How has your relationship with reading changed as you've gotten older?
Sandra: Like most kids, I was a big reader growing up. I loved getting to know new characters and new universes and would feel so connected to the storylines. In high school, I definitely became uninterested in reading for fun as hanging out with my friends and social media became more important to me, and reading books for class became a chore.
In college, my reading habits were nearly non-existent. As Britney Spears put it, I felt like I was “not a girl, but not yet a woman.” I had graduated from the Hunger Games/Percy Jackson YA genre but didn’t know where to go to find a book that wasn’t too mature.
My perspective shifted when I had a long solo plane ride and decided to read Gone Girl because I’d seen the movie and liked it. This was a pivotal moment for me as it was one of the first times I was able to identify a theme in what I liked to read: books that had been or were going to be turned into movies or TV shows.
I think even people who weren’t big readers as kids can pick up the skill if they spend time reflecting on what they like and what are the barriers to reading. Do you like TV shows that have multiple 22-episode seasons? Pick a book series. Do you dislike reading because you don’t like to carry something around? Get an e-reader.
A 2022 Pew Research Center report found that
75% of U.S. adults say they have read a book in the past 12 months in any format, whether completely or part way through, a figure that has remained largely unchanged since 2011, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted from Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, 2021. Print books remain the most popular format for reading, with 65% of adults saying that they have read a print book in the past year…
Despite growth in certain digital formats, it remains the case that relatively few Americans only consume digital books (which include audiobooks and e-books) to the exclusion of print. Some 33% of Americans read in these digital formats and also read print books, while 32% say they read only print books. Just 9% of Americans say they only read books in digital formats and have not read any print books in the past 12 months.
With more people reading recreationally than before the pandemic, it’s interesting to note which habits have changed and which have not. I asked Sandra:
Emily: What is your favorite thing or way to read?
Sandra: I’m 100% a Kindle girl, through and through. My controversial yet brave confession is that I got my first Kindle in probably 2011 and have bought maybe one physical book since then. I had to let go of the idea that paper books are superior to e-readers because they just don’t work for the way I live my life.
I like to be able to read on my phone when I’m on the go, read with one hand while I’m in bed, and switch between different books at the same time. Ultimately, it’s like what my dentist says about flossing: it doesn’t matter how you do it as long as it gets done.
Kindle reading got SO much better when I discovered that libraries do e-books meaning I don’t have to give money to J*ff Be**s.
Emily: Can we celebrate libraries for a second?
Sandra: Yes!!! Probably one of the most underrated resources that exist that would get called socialism if introduced today. You can get magazine and newspaper subscriptions, language classes, e-books, and the list goes on.
Support your local library if you can and take a closer look at what they offer—you might be surprised!
At the risk of sounding like I’m bragging (maybe just a little…), I logged 52 books on Goodreads last year. Of those, I only physically read nine.
If I’m being honest, I had never considered trying out audiobooks before I started going on approximately 3.1 billion hot girl walks and needed the grown adult version of Cocomelon. Getting a New York Public Library card and downloading Libby (sponsor me?) have been monumental in my efforts to get through my To Be Read list and expose myself to as wide of a variety of books as possible, although I shouldn’t have been so surprised.
My mom, my first and favorite bookfluencer, showed my siblings and me the magic of libraries very early on in life, and we grew up using our town’s main branch and all of its resources. For the last 14 years, though, I’ve watched as my mom—in her role working for the library’s non-profit arm—has fought to keep municipal funding and raise even more money through donations. It is as baffling now as it was when I first had the rude awakening that libraries everywhere do not inherently receive billions and trillions of dollars.
I say this because I cannot emphasize and amplify the last line of Sandra’s response enough: if you love books in whatever form they come in, support your local library…or else!
Take a Look! It’s in a Book!
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the world of books, despite being great and good and fun, is not exempt from a lack of diverse representation: in late 2022, PEN America released a report documenting “deep and persistent obstacles to bringing more titles by authors of color to commercial success.” As Arvyn Cerézo elaborated last year in Book Riot:
“There is little available market research on book buyers and readers of color. This absence is seldom discussed but critical to understanding the lasting biases in the industry. Readers of color may have different preferences or buying habits, different media that they follow or topics that they read about, different ways that they learn about and consume books,” the report says.
In other words, publishers aren’t targeting readers of color enough, which perpetuates the lie that “diverse books don’t sell” and forces publishers to put out less books by authors of color.
I feel like it should go without saying that that belief is asinine but it somehow manages to persist. And yet, so do readers.
When Sandra and I first started talking about books, she listed several things she was looking for in the stories she wanted to start reading. The list that we’ve assembled through our conversations is robust, exciting, and by no means finite—all of which makes PEN’s assessment that much more infuriating.
I asked Sandra to explain:
Emily: Last year, you were notably very deliberate about which books you wanted to read. What were the qualifications for your TBR list and how did you come to that?
Sandra: A lot of the books I’ve read in the past year have been recommendations from you or another very well-read friend. I generally tend to stay away from stories that center the white cis-hetero experience because I feel like so much other media I consume (social media, TV, movies) prioritize those narratives.
As a result, I tend to read books about women, queer people, and people of color. But as I got more intentional about my book selection, I noticed that a lot of novels focus on the pain that stems from those identities, which is hard for me if I’m trying to read to escape from reality. Something you and I have talked a ton about is finding books that detail those marginalized identities without making the homophobia/racism/sexism the plot.
Reading about the complexities of love and family from those perspectives has both been a lot more pleasurable and also made me like reading much more.
Emily: What was your favorite book that you read last year and why did you like it?
Sandra: I read Severance by Ling Ma (an Emily suggestion!) and no exaggeration I think about it almost every single day—it’s my Roman Empire for sure. I was not expecting to like it as much as I did. I’m not generally a sci-fi person and also a book about a pandemic, while living in a pandemic, was not the most appealing.
However, I loved it because it introduces the main event immediately and the rest of the book was an unpacking of how things got to that point. I felt like it covered multiple themes at once—capitalism, immigration, the routines we hold dear—without being too heavy-handed on any topic.
I really enjoyed how despite it being about a virus that turns people into zombies, the book was still so realistic. Every story told was connected and important and it just sucked me in because I needed to know what happened next.
Talking about books with Sandra and cultivating a TBR list that fits her criteria has also helped me become more conscious and deliberate about the books I read, like a little reading osmosis. The intentionality of analyzing my personal lists, of diving deep into literary fiction Twitter, of combing through both niche and popular Goodreads roundups—it has all made me reflect on the types of books I like to read and why I like to read them.
As my advisor once told me in college, I enjoy reading “dark shit” which has only become more true as I’ve gotten older and the world has gotten bleaker; I’d read literary fiction before any other genre but I’m incredibly picky when it comes to thrillers because I don’t like when I can figure out the twists2; and it’s going to be hard to try reading romance again after my experience of sitting on the M15 bus listening to my first-ever “romantasy” book (read: smut) while realizing no one around me was any the wiser. I like non-fiction books that read like one long conversation and the new wave of Irish novelists and coming-of-age stories where the protagonists are in their late 20s because they make me feel better about myself.
If you had asked me what I like to read a few years ago, I would have said, “Like…good books…?” But now, I have a vocabulary to tell you what I like and don’t like, which has helped me both to figure out the gaps in my tastes I want to try to fill and to better recommend books should anyone (read: Sandra) ask.
Segueing into the question perfectly if I do say so myself, I wanted to know:
Emily: What have you learned about your reading tastes and habits over the past two years? What revelation has surprised you the most?
Sandra: Over the past two years, what has changed the most for me has been 1) curating my book recommenders and 2) articulating what I liked or disliked about past books.
As I mentioned earlier, TV/movie-adapted books were a starting place for me. After that, I would blindly Google “this year's best books by Black authors” which gave me books that I thought I would like but didn’t always resonate with me. Finding Instagram accounts like @interestedinblackbooks was key for me as it gave a bit more context to some popular books that allowed me to self-select a bit.
However, I feel like I hit the jackpot when I conned you into being my personal recommender because you always took the time to ask me really specific questions about my reading experience, which leads me to point #2.
With your help, I now find that with every book I read, I take time to reflect on not just the content but how I felt reading the book. It’s become clearer to me now why I’ve read some books in two days and others in two months, which consequently has made me more excited to read because I’m more likely to enjoy it.
I’ve come to peace with the fact that just because “everyone” liked it (@ Bridgerton) doesn’t mean I will and, conversely, just because it sounds a bit strange (@ Hot Stew) doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy it.
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One part of Sandra’s response really stood out to me: upon reflecting and soul searching and setting a resolution to not be as much of a bitch in 2024, I realized what it was about the “reading is trendy now” cohort that was getting under my skin—I felt like everyone was reading the same slate of books.
Don’t get me wrong! I have experienced firsthand how beautiful it can be to form a community over a shared love for a singular book and wish that for others. But I think, vulnerably, I was irritated that it appeared in my feeds as though no one was reading anything besides those few selected books.
What I found, in the year after the Barbie movie, is that I’ve had it all wrong. A piece published last year in The Guardian referred to the aforementioned Publishers Association study and found that amongst
more than 2,000 16- to 25-year-olds…one in three use [BookTok] to discover books they wouldn’t otherwise hear about. It encourages diversity, with one in three readers polled saying they discovered books by authors from different cultures, and almost 40% being introduced to new genres by the app.
I meant what I said last April earnestly—particularly my rhetorical question, “At a time when book banning is en vogue again, who the hell am I to judge anyone for picking up any book at all?”—but I think I needed more time to see past my own ego and algorithm and get out of my too-small britches.
While I’d like to think I’ve let go of the judgment element to my ass-out-of-u-and-me assumptions, I still wanted to ask Sandra:
Emily: What would you say to someone who tends to gravitate toward only one kind of story, genre, or author? And why do you think we're so quick to judge people based on their reading preferences?
Sandra: I’ll be the first one to admit it—it’s because being a hater can be fun sometimes. Poking fun at people who are reading glorified smut is harmless when done in true jest. There is no shame in knowing what you like and indulging in it.
The issue arises when people get a feeling of superiority over what types of books they’re reading. I think we should be supportive that anyone is choosing to read versus scroll on their phone. The only caveat is that I think you’re missing out if you only read fiction about people you directly identify with (whether that be class, race, gender, etc.).
This is all well and good but, much like Whitney Rose on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, I wanted to stir the pot for no reason and asked:
Emily: Last year, I asked a panel about their thoughts on whether reading has become more of an aesthetic than an activity. What are your thoughts on that?
Sandra: Insert picture of Addison Rae on a pap walk reading the Britney book.
Thwarted…but maybe it was for the best.
Good Reads for Good Readers3
During my conversation with Sandra for this piece, she shared how much she loves The Atlantic and long-form pieces where an author dives deep into a topic while keeping their writing pithy and concise. It got me thinking that oftentimes, whenever we talk about reading, we often automatically measure it in books—at least, that’s how it is for me.
While I by no means want to upend everything we’ve discussed up until this point, I did want to know:
Emily: What are some of your favorite book-adjacent forms of media?
Sandra: I am a Celebrity Memoir Book Club girlie—shoutout to any wormies reading this right now. For anyone unfamiliar, CMBC is a podcast hosted by two comedians who dissect celebrity memoirs and offer their critiques on style, content, and takeaways.
It’s my favorite book-adjacent form of media because 1) they’ve really helped me identify what makes a book good versus bad and 2) I don’t have to do the heavy lifting of reading myself. It has also expanded my reading palate as I’ve never been naturally into non-fiction by an author who doesn’t have the last name Obama.
Last fall, after sitting at my desk tip-typing away to audiobooks for months on end, I fell into my own reading hiatus. I simply just didn’t feel like reading for a little bit. Now, not to wax too poetic but when you think about it, this piece is just as much about reading and books as it is about figuring out what both can teach you about yourself. Your tastes, your timing, your type(s) of book—it’s all a reflection of who you are. So who’s to say how or what or when you should read? Unless it’s problematic and bad, in which case you should get lost.
While my advice for anyone in a reading rut is to pick up Britney Spear’s memoir (trust me and Addison—it works), I wanted to ask Sandra:
Emily: What advice do you have for anyone trying get into or back into reading?
Sandra: I’m not sure I’m the most qualified to give advice but I think the first step would be to take some pressure off of yourself for not reading. Adding feelings of guilt around it will only make it feel like more of a chore.
Second, I would abandon whichever book you were previously reading, because obviously it wasn’t hitting the spot. There is NO SHAME in not finishing a book—if it makes you feel better, I have multiple books on my Kindle that I started but never finished. I might also suggest re-reading something you read in the past that you knew you liked, even if it’s the Hunger Games trilogy or Harry Potter.
Lastly, I’m very pro-Goodreads. You don’t even need to ask someone for a recommendation—you can just stalk their history (like Venmo, but way cooler).
And finally, I couldn’t end the piece without asking:
Emily: What are you reading right now?
Sandra: I’ve been reading Olga Dies Dreaming for like two months now so technically that BUT it’s about to be leapfrogged by Emma Cline’s The Guest.
Ok so…we’ll meet for book club here next month to discuss The Guest?
Thank you a million to Sandra for always being a delight of a guest and one of the best people to talk about books with!!!
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh was one of the best thrillers I’ve read in a while. If you can see the end of that coming…get help <3.
Shout out to my book club!!!!
1. A slay as usual
2. That SJP photo made me laugh
3. Hard agree on “diverse books” not needing to be a book all about being diverse. Representation doesn’t always mean you have to make a singular part of their identity the whole plot/personality