Issue 104: The Reading Life of... Celine Nguyen

This one will leave you with a reading list AND the aching desire to upgrade your note-taking game.

When I started thinking about interviewing readers, I specifically wanted to reach out to people who don't work in publishing or write professionally as their main income. I'm fascinated by how people with other careers make time for deep reading and thinking. I'm drawn to anyone who's hanging on tooth and nail to their intellectual life, refusing to succumb to the soulless beat of social media-driven existence, choosing instead to return again and again to books, to timeless wisdom, to ideas. I'm especially interested in people who basically give themselves homework just to have a reason to read what they need.

Nobody fits that profile better than

Celine Nguyen

. Looking at the quality and quantity of her writing — both in her newsletter and for publications such as the LARB, ArtReview, and The Believer — you might assume she's a professional writer. But she actually has a big girl job as a product designer. I love Celine's work so much — her singular choice of authors and topics, the emotional ch…