I cannot imagine life without books any more than I can imagine life without breathing.
Terry Brooks

Dear Terry Brooks,

I’m sorry that I’ve never read one of your books, because they are epic fantasy novels, and if all books were fantasy novels, I would be too busy to read. But I like your quote, so in a way I’m a fan of yours, even though I’ll never read The Sword of Shannara or any of its many sequels. I’m glad you write these books, because fantasy readers are book lovers too, and as my grandmother used to say, “There’s a lid for every pot.” 

Sincerely,

Ann @ Books on the Table

What do you plan to do the day before Thanksgiving? We’ve all heard that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is supposed to be one of the year’s busiest travel days, but now, according to a recent Barnes & Noble survey, Thanksgiving Eve is the “busiest reading day of the year”.

The poll, conducted by an independent research organization, found that 77% of “Americans read a book, magazine, or newspaper during Thanksgiving travel” and that
73% “generally think that traveling on Thanksgiving Eve is a good time to bring a book they would enjoy and be able to read.” (By “able to read”, I assume the designers of the survey meant “find time to read”.)

The discrepancy between these two statistics is confusing. Do some Thanksgiving Eve readers think it’s not a good idea to read while traveling? Also, how do these numbers show that Thanksgiving Eve is the busiest reading day of the year? Maybe 85% of Americans read on a random Sunday in March.

The survey also showed that 28% of respondents “think that bringing a great book along for Thanksgiving could give them a way to get out of an uncomfortable or awkward conversation with a relative or other guest.” I want to know how this works. Do you pull out the book and start reading when the awkward conversation begins? Or do you change the subject, saying, “Let’s not discuss politics. Let me tell you about the book I’m reading. You’d love it!”

When asked to list the benefits of reading while traveling, over half the respondents said that “Reading is a good pastime if I get delayed.” Other benefits cited were “reading is relaxing and helps ease the stress of hectic traveling”; “A good book transports me somewhere else”;  “I can catch up on books that I have wanted to read, but normally do not have the time to read.”

Where were these people last Wednesday when I was delayed for several hours at O’Hare? I read almost an entire book in that time (Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family, by Amy Ellis Nutt), and I’m not a speed reader. I’m leading a book discussion on Laurie Frankel’s novel, This Is How It Always Is, about a family raising a transgender child, and wanted to read nonfiction about this subject. If you really want to liven up your Thanksgiving gathering, I recommend either of these books.

Almost everyone at the gate appeared bored and restless, fiddling with their phones and fidgeting in their seats. A few idly flipped through magazines. One man was absorbed in a paperback, but he was the only one. Some people  stared into space and did absolutely nothing. I wondered if they had rich interior lives or if the opposite were true. I also wondered if these were the same people who say they can’t find time to read, because if they were, they were missing a golden opportunity.

If you’re an avid reader, you are often forced to respond to a maddening, passive-aggressive comment : “I don’t know how you find the time to read.” The subtext here is, “You’re kind of a lazy slob without much to do, so you spend you time reading, whereas I’m a very busy important person.”

Even though I’ve heard this comment, or its cousin, “How on earth do you find the time to read?”, more times than I can count, I still don’t know how to respond. Because, of course, most reading doesn’t happen at airport gates during lengthy delays, or even aboard airplanes, unless you’re a jet-setter.

So how do you make time to read? It’s all a matter of priorities. Your house may not be as tidy as you’d like, you may rarely make it to the gym, your houseplants may live short and unhappy lives, you may not walk your dog as much as she’d like, and you might have to decline some of the volunteer opportunities that come your way (“So sorry! I can’t spend my Saturday supervising the middle school concession stand!”).

People who manage to find time to read do it two ways: first, they squeeze reading into their days in creative ways, and second, they make it a priority. They don’t think of reading as an indulgence. Why do people think taking an hour out of the day to exercise is a necessity, while they see spending an hour with a book as a luxury, on a par with window shopping or bubble baths? And who, except maybe medical residents on a 36 hour shift or parents of newborn twins, doesn’t spend at least an hour a day watching TV or checking social media? Really, hardly anyone is “too busy to read.” It’s all in how you choose to spend your time. No judgment if you’d rather do other things, but don’t say, “I just don’t have time to read!”

There are hints galore on the Internet about how to find more time to read, if you care to look, but here are the things I think work best:

• Decide if you really do want to read more, or if you just think you should. Maybe you’d rather spend your limited free time baking bread or perfecting your golf swing. But keep in mind that reading is one of the few activities you can do when you’re trapped somewhere, whether it’s an airplane seat, a broken-down rental car by the side of the highway, or an elevator. (And I have been in all these situations and in each one I was very happy to have a book with me.)
• Find the right books that you love and that you can’t wait to get back to reading. Don’t waste time slogging through books you find boring. One of my writing classmates mentioned that she struggled with feeling guilty about abandoning books that weren’t working for her, and our teacher directed us to “The Rights of the Reader” by Daniel Pennac, in which the third item on the list is “The right not to finish a book.” (Item #5 is important as well: “The right to read anything”).
• Be efficient with your time — listen to audiobooks while walking and driving. Some people seem concerned about whether this counts as reading, for some reason. Yes, it does.
• If you find you waste a lot of time with social media on your phone, set a timer. Or delete the apps so you have to go to the websites. You can download a screen saver that says “Read a book instead.”  Writer Austin Kleon designed the screen saver because “Reading books makes me happy. Being on my phone makes me miserable.”
• Get rid of games on your phone.  I found that Words With Friends did a number on my reading time. I deleted it, and guess what — I still have friends.)
• Always carry a real book with you. Technology can malfunction, and batteries can drain. But on the other hand, always have a book downloaded on your phone or tablet. On my last flight, the overhead light didn’t work and I wouldn’t have been able to read if I hadn’t had a book on my phone.
• Plan ahead for reading time. Novelist Tim Parks acknowledges it’s a different environment for readers today than it was before the advent of intrusive technology. In an article in the New York Review of Books, he theorizes that today’s authors are writing books that can be picked up and put down, knowing that most readers are easily distracted and read in shorter bursts than in the past. Every moment of reading, he says, “has to be fought for, planned for.”

This Thanksgiving Eve, I won’t be traveling. I’ll be at home, curled up with She Read to Us in the Late Afternoons: A Life in Novels, a memoir about Kathleen Hill’s reading life and how it has intersected with her “real” life.  My current audiobook is Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks: A Librarian’s Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books in Her Life, by Annie Spence, which is absolutely delightful, although I could do without all the f-bombs. We all know librarians are cool.

Next up: Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward, because it just won the National Book Award, and Hue: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam, by Mark Bowden, because we’ll be discussing it at our next couples’ book club.

Coming soon: recommended winter reading (fiction and nonfiction, paperback and hardcover) and holiday gift ideas. Have a happy Thanksgiving! I hope you find some time to read over the long weekend — and not because you’re stuck in an airport.