It can be hard to make time to read in our busy lives, but this is the best, most enjoyable way to make time to read that I’ve found yet!

I woke up one morning last week and did. not. want. to. write. Not one email; not one proposal; not one sentence. I wanted to roll over, reach for a book on my nightstand, and burrow into the covers for a day of reading with Pepper.

But here’s the thing: spring is such a busy season in the publishing world, so I can’t make time to read during the day. And after a long day of work, I’m usually too drained by bedtime to reach for the stack of books on my nightstand. So sometimes, it feels impossible to make time to read.

The solution? Reading Night.

(Doesn’t that just sound fun?!)

Reading Night is a pact between you and whoever you live with—husbands, roommates, toddlers, unemployed dogs named Pepper—to throw your cares to the wind for a night and do nothing but read. It’s by far the best, most reckless, and enjoyable way to make time to read.

Anyone can declare a Reading Night whenever they need it, and everyone joins in on reading something. It’s kind of like a pause button on life–it slows and hushes the house for just a few hours in an otherwise insane-o week. It reminds us that very little is more important than slowing down to make time to read.

Here’s how you make time to read with a Reading Night:

Cancel or reschedule all your plans or appointments (it’s okay to be this person every once in awhile).
Pop something stupid-easy in the slow cooker or oven (might I recommend this or this?) or order in pizza.
Collect blankets, pillows, and other nesting apparatus. Leave cellphones, iPads, and laptops in another room.
Help kids pick their own book or other quiet activity.
Park yourself on the couch with a book and a glass of wine.
Repeat for the rest of the night, until you feel better about the day and basically all of life.

But I get it–pressing pause to make time to read is not always easy.

I know how hard it is to extract ourselves from our everyday pressures for even one night. Some nights, I try to relax, but all I can think about is the 1,000 things I should be doing and how I just can’t make time to read that night.

But a Reading Night is something families, marriages, kids, you need. That’s because it’s not only about books. It’s about a few precious hours of quiet, without screens, without to-dos, where we can “read to know we are not alone,” as C.S. Lewis put it.

So to celebrate how good it feels to come home to a book and to a Reading Night, I created this free book art print to inspire you to make time to read. It has my favorite Kathleen Norris quote: “Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.”

Click here to download this free book quote art print!

5 quick reads for the week

I am so thrilled to see my wonderful client, Nik, be nominated for a James Beard award in the Photography category for his book, Season! And by thrilled I mean jumping-for-joy, hugging-everyone-in-sight way too excited!
This Native American artist is bringing representation to comic books and bashing stereotypes, one frame at a time.
How to simplify your submissions to literary journals, because simpler is always better.
I know I always cringe when I throw away mountains of plastic after putting together dinner, so I love that The Salt has some recommendations for reducing plastic waste in your kitchen.
And here’s your publishing meets politics intrigue of the week.

What we’re eating this week

I cooked ONCE this week. Bitter laugh. But it wasn’t my fault, I swear! I was only home one day between a very fun weekend at The Greenbrier and a trip to NYC for work.

So this week let’s cheat—I mean, curate—our reporting.

A Highly Curated and Extremely Accurate Account of This Week’s Eating

Monday: Delicious cheddar brats made by a family friend, and sad boiled broccoli made by me.

Tuesday: Instant Pot Shrimp Scampi Linguine! See? I made a thing.

And that’s it. The End.

Cheers!

Read:

Hugh McGuire on reading

Do you read books anymore? I mean real, whole, chapter-by-chapter books? When was the last time you sat down with a book and read for an hour straight, without stopping to check your phone for a text or email, or taking a break to look up something on your tablet?

It turns out that online reading–emails, social media updates, articles, even this blog post–is stunting our ability to maintain our focus long enough to read whole chapters at a time in a book. As Hugh McGuire writes in this Medium article on Why We Can’t Read Anymore, which I love so much I want to quote it for days and weeks until people ask me to please shut up:

It turns out that digital devices and software are finely tuned to train us to pay attention to them, no matter what else we should be doing. The mechanism, borne out by recent neuroscience studies, is something like this:

New information creates a rush of dopamine to the brain, a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good.
The promise of new information compels your brain to seek out that dopamine rush.
With fMRIs, you can see the brain’s pleasure centres light up with activity when new emails arrive.

So, every new email you get gives you a little flood of dopamine. Every little flood of dopamine reinforces your brain’s memory that checking email gives a flood of dopamine. And our brains are programmed to seek out things that will give us little floods of dopamine. Further, these patterns of behaviour start creating neural pathways, so that they become unconscious habits: Work on something important, brain itch, check email, dopamine, refresh, dopamine, check Twitter, dopamine, back to work. Over and over, and each time the habit becomes more ingrained in the actual structures of our brains.

How can books compete?

Tag: reading

The best way to make time to read