Issue 59: A day in my life as a reader
Sharing exactly when, what and how much I read on a random Tuesday
One thing you should know about me is that I have a massive sweet tooth. Pastries, candy, chocolate, ice cream - I do not discriminate. I want it all. So, despite the fact that I am fairly educated and committed to living healthy, when people tell me to replace sweets with healthy alternatives, my brain tends to misfire. However, when a random lady at the grocery store saw me staring at the rice cakes and told me that she eats them with nut butter, I thought… Aaaaah. Here we go. News you can use.
So - in that same spirit - today I will share exactly when, what and how much I read on a random Tuesday. I don’t share this to tell you that you should do as I do but maybe I can give you some ideas you can bring into your own reading life, especially if you are time-poor like yours truly.
Some biographical details to help you understand what my life is like, just so you can calibrate accordingly: I am 43, full-time working mom. I am a UX researcher for a tech consulting firm and work from home in Memphis, TN. I am a creative class worker but my job has no connection to the literary world. My husband is a teacher at the same school where my daughter is a 1st grader, so 4 out 5 days a week, he drives her to school and brings her home (I know, I am lucky). Even though I am a natural night-owl and tend to gain energy as the day goes by, I am typically lights-out by 10:30PM.
This week I am running a research study for a big client. I am scheduled to conduct 25 user interviews which is both exciting and exhausting. That is to say, I am pretty focused on work and that may cut into my reading time a little bit. BUT, I am also making a focused effort to scroll less, so maybe my reading will be just fine. Let’s see.
7:15AM
My husband and daughter just left for school. I unload the dishwasher, clean up the kitchen, shower and get dressed. While I do all that, I finish listening to the last ~50 minutes of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening that I borrowed from my local library through Libby. There is so much to love about this novel about a married woman who draws inpatient with the smallness of her life as a mother and a wife. What I find particularly striking was the sequence of Edna Pontellier’s awakening, in this specific order —> physical, creative, personal, sexual. It felt so contemporary even though it was written in 1899. I now completely understand why it’s considered a feminist classic.
I do have some regret that I didn’t read this on paper because there were so many wonderful passages I wish I could have annotated but I loved this book so much that I know I will be returning to it in years to come. Next time, I will be sure to read it on paper.
8:15AM
I need to be at my desk by 8:30 today so I won’t have time for more reading but I want to make sure I know what I will be reaching for throughout the day. I just completed Biography of X by Catherine Lacey last night which was a BIG book that I loved but I am feeling a little depleted by. I spend some time looking through my various To Be Read (TBR) piles and decide to pick out a couple of tinies (books under 200 pages).
The two titles I will be reading through the next few days are Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi that I recently impulse-bought because I couldn’t resist the cute cover and Clear by Carys Davies (on recommendation from my husband who just read it and told me it reminded him of Claire Keegan; he needn’t say more). I find that if I know what I will be reading and have the physical books near me as I work, I am more likely to read throughout the day. Otherwise, I scroll.
I grab my coffee and I go to my desk. It’s time to work.
11:45AM
I make a quick lunch of leftovers and decide to read Before the coffee gets cold. The book is about a small back-alley cafe in Tokyo where if you sit at a certain seat, you can travel back in time.
One thing that I appreciate about this book already is how little it is. Perfect to hold in one hand, while holding a fork in the other. I am at it for ~30 minutes which is just enough to make me know that I want to keep reading. Pages read: 14
2:30PM
Before I go out for a little walking break around my block, I search for a new audiobook. I go to Libby and after selecting the following filters » Audiobooks > Available Now > Fiction > Classic Literature « I am presented with a short list of 142. I tell myself not to overthink it and select The Professor’s House by Willa Cather.
Too early to report on this one but so far I can tell you that I love the narration, which is a deal-breaker for me with an audiobook. I return home around 2:45 and work until ~5:00 when my people come flying through the door with pizza. 🍕🍕
We eat dinner and hang out a little bit. I typically listen to books while I clean the kitchen but cleanup is quick tonight so I just chat with my kid while my husband goes for a run and try to gently nudge her towards her bath.
6:45PM
While Rumi takes her bath, I sneak in a little reading - another 10 pages of the Kawaguchi book. I am feeling sleepy and distracted, I can tell that the work day took the best of me. Pages read: 10
7:30PM
Rumi is now in her jammies and in bed. She is a 1st grader in a public Montessori school so she doesn’t have assigned homework but she is required to read for 20 minutes each day. We’ve been reading to her daily since she was 4 months old but it’s this daily reading assignment that turned her in a READER. When she started choosing to read on her own (as opposed to us reading to her), I started asking her if we could do Bookclub together. Basically, we help her get cozy in bed with her book and either me or my husband (or sometimes both of us) join her under her bedcovers. She reads her book, the grownups read their grownup books. We get to supervise what she reads, help her with difficult words and also get to model how important reading is to us as a family.
Tonight we read for ~30 minutes, she read The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale by Jon Klassen and I loved listening to her gasp while reading, delighted. Pages read: 10
9:15PM
In bed with my book. I really want to read a lot, for the sake of this diary. But, honestly, between a day at work that required higher than usual levels of extroversion and not getting enough sleep last night because of staying up too late to finish the Catherine Lacey book, I am ready to sleep. Pages read: 20
Total pages read: At the end of the day, I am on page 67. My math is not wrong, for some reason, this books starts on page 13.
A couple of observations before I go:
Of the books I read today, I loved The Awakening and I can’t tell about The Professor’s House just yet. I like Before the coffee gets cold but it contains elements of magical realism, which is not where I’m at mentally today. I am just having a hard time suspending disbelief. I will give it another earnest go tomorrow, but my general rule is that if I don’t get into a book by page 100, to set it aside.
I almost didn’t include page counts because those are almost meaningless, based on the format of the book, the pace with which you read, etc. In the end, I decided to keep the numbers in just so that you could see how by reading this way, your pages do add up. Is it THE BEST way to read… maybe not. BUT, for me, the alternative is scrolling (just being honest). So, bits and peaces of reading here and there (even if I have to go back a page or so sometimes) is actually pretty great.
Small books work really well for me on busier work weeks when I have higher stakes projects and I have a hard time transitioning away from work mode, especially because I work from home. I am thinking of maybe doing a post next week on some of my favorite tinies. Let me know if that would be interesting.
I used to be such a purist about authorship, form and format - ONLY literary fiction, ONLY paper books, ONLY women and BIPOC writers, etc. SO MANY RULES. But then I heard someone compare their personal library to a wine cellar - pulling out the appropriate wine for the appropriate meal, mood or occasion. I liked that. Now, even though I still have my preferences (probably entirely too obvious from the sample I’ve shared today), I allow myself to be more open and experimental in my reading.
A question for you:
How does my reading day compare to yours? Did you come across any ideas that you are willing to try?
Love learning how to sneak more reading in throughout the day! Thanks for sharing, P!! 💙
A note from a rice cake enthusiast - I’ve been eating rice cakes since I was probably 15, because I have an almond mom. I would like to spread the good rice cake gospel of my favorite combos: rice cake + cream chz + bloobs 🫐 + drizzle of honey; rice cake + birthday cake granola butter (or cookie butter) + berry; rice cake + melted slice of cheddar chz.