I'd Rather Be Reading

This collection of essays delights with every passing page. It is a memoir of the author's reading life as well as guidelines for others to follow in their own reading lives. I loved the chapters on bookshelves and acknowledgments, to name but two of many. I have been tracking my reading for a number of years but am inspired by the last chapter to keep a more detailed reading journal to help me remember, to benefit my future self to paraphrase the author.

Highly recommended if you love books and reading them.

Boring, basic

This book is like taking with my best friend.

Finding another soul who sees books in the same light as you do, a true bibliophile, bookworm, bookish person (whatever title you want to give them), where reading and books are more than just a pastime - but a lifestyle, is rare in my experience. Someone who gets why you have multiple copies of the same book, why a good portion of your decorating is made up of books, why a trip to the library or bookstore can make your day or why a snowy afternoon curled up with a book is the ultimate pleasure and why there is always at least a few minutes in everyday for a bit of reading. Anne Bogel is definitely one of those people. Her short book on the bookish lifestyle had me nodding in agreement, smiling ear to ear with understanding and maybe embarrassingly admitting to the same ‘delights and dilemmas' that she included in these pages. If felt good to find a kindred spirit who ‘gets it' and I very much enjoyed reading her own personal slant on a lifestyle I am all to familiar with and felt right at home reading about. One of her chapters is on finding others who enjoy a similar passion and even discovering a ‘book twin', and although we may have different taste in books, I very much felt like Anne was someone I could easily talk too about living the book life. It was a delight to read this and find a connection to someone I've never met, but who knows a part of my heart few others can appreciate. An enjoyable read for any and all who don't just read, but live the bookish life.

What an enjoyable read! I wanted to read nonfiction, but I didn't want to read something dry or educational. I am so glad I found this gem!

This book, written by a book blogger, is an homage to her love affair with books. There is so much in this book that I can relate to as an avid reader. There were so many times while reading that I was nodding my head and thinking “Yep! I totally get that.” It is always enjoyable for me to learn that there are others in this world that feel the same way I do about the power of books and reading.

This book is an easy, quick, and thoroughly enjoyable read. If you love reading about books, you should definitely pick this one up.

this was an incredibly boring coffee table book

Not my favorite of this type but a solid entry. I have listened to a lot of the What Should I Read Next podcast Bogel does so it was nice to have her voice in my mind's ear (?) My favorite chapters were Bookworm Problems and I'd Rather be Reading. (It's always so overwhelming to think of how many books in the world I won't get to read in my lifetime)

• 3 ☆☆☆


I was expecting so much more.
And here is why:
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I'm a book lover. And one of my guilty pleasures is books about books. Bookshop's fondness to be more precise. And this book was ALMOST there.
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O que me perturbou tanto:
A princípio pensei que esse livro poderia ser avaliado por capítulos separados - como uma coletânea de contos - pois cada qual com um “jargão comum” (ex.: I'm Begging You to Break My Heart, Bookworm Problems, Keep Reading) dos muitos leitores assíduos que vivem espalhados no mundo, não são interligados.
E comecei a dar estrelas mentais para cada capítulo. Mas depois percebi que há frases, vivências, aflições e conceitos muito interessante 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎, porém de forma geral... é um livro okay.

Não traz nada excepcional - embora tenha ocorrido alguma identificação, veja bem - e confesso que em alguns momentos achei um pouco forçado (a relação desesperada que ela expõe que teve com os livros e as bibliotecas).
O capítulo que ela informa que tem que ler o livro de capa a capa para não perder nada, se estendeu muito, com muitos exemplos, a maioria iguais - como se quisesse mostrar que realmente leu muito na vida e tem “vários exemplos para mostrar” - mas que serviu para engordar o livro.

Comentou do meu filme favorito da vida 𝚈𝚘𝚞'𝚟𝚎 𝙶𝚘𝚝 𝙼𝚊𝚒𝚕 e todo o heartwarning da obra, e aborda a cena da borboleta no trem.

“So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?”

E conclui como:
“With apologies to Kathleen Kelly, what I've come to learn is this: if my real life reminds me of something I read in a book, I'm reading well—and I'm probably living well, too.”

E concordo com ela.

Contudo, em suma, não voltaria a ler... nada da autora. Porque parece que são vários podcasts separados e não tem um vínculos os capítulos.
Estou péssima em rever coisas hoje.

E esse livro deve funcionar melhor caso seja escutado, será?

Tive vários highlights, mas esses dois compensam ser colocados aqui para buscas rápidas (tenho pensado nessa vida de resumir livros e leituras com mais entusiasmo e esse último capítulo do 𝙸'𝚍 𝚁𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝙱𝚎 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 foi como uma lâmpada que realmente seria uma boa investir mais nisso (já que invisto tanto em livros).
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“The best books move you, drawing out the full range of emotions from the reader, and sometimes that includes breaking your heart.”

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A good tip:

“Start today, because as soon as you begin, you're going to wish you'd begun sooner. Record your books as a gift to your future self, a travelogue you'll be able to pull off the shelf years from now, to remember the journey.

[...] Good reading journals provide glimpses of how we've spent our days, and they tell the story of our lives.”

Excerpt from: “I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life” by Anne Bogel. Scribd.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Read this book on Sribd.

This was a charming little amuse-bouche of a book. More like an expanded blog post than a substantial book, but still fun for any book aficionado. The audio version read by Bogel herself is lovely.

Added thoughts from reading the text after listening to the audio

Reading the text helped me get more out of the book. Bogel's writing is quick and moves quickly. I like that, but I find I follow better when reading it rather than hearing it read. And, for the record, this is the first time I've read a book twice back-to-back. Usually this is because as a slow reader, reading is a time commitment. In this case, the book is on the shorter side and it reads quickly. Having listened to the audio helped as reading the text filled in gaps I missed while listening and I could hear her voice in my head while reading. Now back to the original review.

I recently discovered Anne Bogel's podcast and have enjoyed her approach in helping people find books they will enjoy. Her demeanor is gentle and inviting and shows genuine interest in people. Learning that she had written a book and that the audio was on Libby with my library, I jumped on it.

Bogel reads the book, so it has the sound and feel of her podcast, minus the guests. The book in one part feels like the podcast where she puts herself in the guest position, telling her story of becoming a reader. The book goes into thoughts about being a reader. From personal expectations to the way we choose to manage our reading lives.

What I really like about this book is that Bogel's message is to liberate people to be themselves in their reading life. Ideas are presented without being definitive answers. However, there are ideas for readers of all stripes.

She hit one of my nerves when she described how many more books will be published than is possible for her to read, even at a fairly fast rate. (I'm a slow reader, so that is compounded with me. She says she read Harry Potter series in ten days, it took me ten months. No judgment, just reality.) I admit I felt grief over the loss of not being able to read so many books that I might love. This was an important message for me to hear and to address my reading FOMO.

The one struggle I had with the audiobook was the speed at which it is read. I think this is likely a reflection of her natural speed, but my first thought was that I had bumped the playback speed on the app up by mistake when it was at normal speed. I have acquired the ebook version and have started making my way through it to help fill in the parts that I didn't quite follow. This book is of such interest to me that it is worth investing reading it right after listening to it. I'm definitely feeling a reader's high on this book.

To finish this up, I'd like to thank Anne Bogel for writing a book that helps take away some of the self shaming thoughts I've had about books I enjoy and encouraging me as a reader to enjoy the journey in my own way.

It's okay for most of the people in my country to devote hours and hours of their lives to watch other people play sports. This is widely accepted, especially in my part of Texas.

Accept it, then, that is okay for big readers to spend many hours of their lives reading about...books. Yes, books. It's the genre I call books-about-books. For obsessive readers like me, it can be one of our favorite genres.

Anne Bogel is one of my tribe, a fellow obsessive reader, and a fellow blogger. This slim book is a collection of pieces I wish I'd written myself. I find myself nodding as I read along through the chapters—-Confess Your Literary Sins, The Books That Find You, How to Organize Your Bookshelves, The Readers I Have Been, Book Twins, and, of course, the mantra for obsessive readers, I'd Rather Be Reading.

A perfect book for the start of my new reading year.

I know it is from chapter 1, but I need to admit a book secret. I hated Great Gatsby because I thought the town names were stupid. That also led me to not having a good grasp on the setting.
I like her thoughts about re-reading. It even made me, a staunch one read only kind of person, think about reading a few books again.
Very relatable.

4.5 stars

I really enjoyed this collection of essays about the reading life. So many of them resonated with me, particularly the one entitled ‘Bookworm Problems' (where I started looking around for the cameras a few times because how else would she know how to describe my bookish situation?), and others got me thinking more about my own reading life and history. Definitely a collection I will come back to read again.