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We read so much we want you to read with us for virtual book club.  Join us at 7:30pm Central Time on Friday 26 June as we discuss Deanna Raybourn’s A Curious Beginning (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 1). If you’re ready to sign up, you can do so here.    

As you may imagine, it’s not unusual for either of us to mention a book in a conversation, either one we’re reading or read in recent memory (or not so recent memory).  Occasionally that turns into someone asking just how many books we read in a given time period, which generally leads to questions of how we fit that into our lives.  So, combine that with folks (including a bookseller) saying that people are reading more these days, we thought you might be interested in a deep dive into how we squeeze in 100+ books a year, in a “normal” year.  Oh, and a mom of the blog may have asked about this during book club, so we were ready to say there’d be a post all about it soon!  Here goes! ::Ashley Waves HI, Mom!::

I guess today’s blog post is an author confessional. Because… I don’t know how else to explain how I read all the pages since I currently experience reading as both a joy and an anxiety. It’s not much of a shocker and I am going to happily dig a little deeper into the hot mess that is my brain just for you. Y’welcome.

When Adam and I were in California for a year and a half, I went through a very rough existential crisis. Adam spent 5 months out in L.A. without me as I worked on fixing up and staging our house in Tennessee. Then I listed it, packed it up, and coordinated the movement of 2,300 square feet, plus a basement and a two-car garage, worth of STUFF. Nikki and I had started trading titles again by this point, and I was reading a lot from my local library when I wasn’t doing all the necessary things to put a house on the market as an owner/agent while my spouse was living and working 2,000 miles away. I was not taking on any other clients as a Realtor and I didn’t know what I was going to do out in California since licensing laws are different and at that time California was only a jumping off point for us to move somewhere else in a few years for Adam’s career. [Obviously, now that we’re back in Tennessee, things didn’t work out as planned, we’re doing the best with what we’ve got.] Once I arrived in Whittier, I had a lot of time for reading because we were waiting on our final PODS to arrive for almost 2 months. This is when I learned the miracles of Overdrive on my kindle. My crisis came to a head after I was let go from a position I had thought was going to transition me into real estate in California, after only 6 weeks of working there. Adam and I decided it was good to just give myself a break from the need to find work. I went on a week-long girls’ vacay to Napa – thank god for girlfriends because I don’t know if I would have been able to handle the loss without their support and encouragement…and the wine. So. Much. Wine. Then the next month were the terrible wildfires in Ventura and Los Angeles counties. We hosted our friends and their puppers for almost a week. Then I had a visit from another friend for 10 glorious days of touristy things, like Disneyland and Universal Studios and beaches and holiday decorating. Then our only Christmas in Whittier came and went. Then my birthday, and a visit from my sister and mom, and another visit from a friend, and through all of this I couldn’t define myself by what I was doing in my career, because I didn’t have one. Holly Homemaker is not a career, at least for me, but was certainly my job. The house was clean, the groceries were bought, Adam and I went to personal training together twice a week and the gym a couple of times more each week. I only had one friend in the area, my roommate from freshman year of college, but she and her husband lived over an hour away close to Malibu so we only saw each other once a month or so. I became a professional reader. I read, and when I wasn’t reading or doing household things, I played games on my Kindle Fire. Reading became what I most associated with and if I wasn’t keeping track of that, if I wasn’t doing that, then really what WAS I? I was a miserable and sad wreck. Reading became my escape and my primary joy.

Now that I’m back to that #RealtorLife in Tennessee I am balancing my work and my reading, and my reading for work. [I took an online continuing education class this past Thursday. It was FIVE. HOURS. OF. READING. MY. COMPUTER. SCREEN. And a few videos.] I, too, enjoy quiet cups of coffee in the morning with my kindle books and kitteh cuddles. I randomly get to read throughout the day depending on what I have going on work-wise. And then after Adam goes to bed in the evenings, that’s prime reading time. I stay up later than even Nikki does, but I sleep later, too, because my monsters love to cuddle in bed in the morning, not demand food and bathroom walks. [Also, Adam feeds them.] However, there are some days that I don’t read more than a few pages in any book because I am still in the habit of needing to be able to sit down and focus for a solid stretch of time in order to read a book. I like to be able to check my book completions off my list and yes, even now, reading is a competition. I don’t get those personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut anymore, but I get a whole lot of life satisfaction from having read certain books and a certain amount of books. The blog, however, does give me deadlines to have completed lots of reading, and I work well with the deadline up until it becomes a bundle of anxiety. It was the same in college with paper writing. I researched a lot in college with my history classes, and yes it does bleed over into what and how I write for you, dear readers. I try to give you the background and facts you might not know you need. I sometimes do that for myself about books and authors even if I’m not writing about it on the blog. That’s extra time away from the book reading time, which is why I don’t usually read as many books as Nikki does in a year. Overall, I’d say I spend reading the average amount of time a typical American used to spend watching TV, 2-3 hours a day. Obviously, I also watch TV, binging shows is oh so good, but I try to spend that time with Adam or ‘watching’ and doing housework. Reading, unless I’m eating, is always done without any attempt at multitasking, but I’m usually always reading while I eat, which is another way to get those pages in. Quit scrolling your phone and pick up your book, friends!

Imma challenge you to stretch your reading life this year, especially with Safer at Home orders still in place all over. If you’re not keeping a record of your reading, try to do that. Paper and pen works just fine, you see how I do mine at the end of every month with our Reading Life Review posts. If you prefer digital, GoodReads is an excellent place to start, and if you read on a kindle it automatically connects to your Amazon account! Be warned, GoodReads is a much better experience on a computer browser than it is in the app, either on your phone or on a tablet. If you’re already keeping track, try to pay attention to when you get your most quality reading done, and stick to that every day if you can. If you’re doing that too, well, gosh almighty, you’re a professional reader and I hope to see that your end of year stats are higher than mine. Challenge Issued, will you accept it? 

~Ashley

First, some background- I grew up in a house with a mom who read daily, and as such went to the library regularly growing up.  I vaguely remember getting my first library card, and definitely remember perusing the stacks looking for my own books while mom went to see about her own titles. Years later, I remember being grounded and bored, and my solution was to ask to go to the library.  What mom could say no to that?  Not mine!  (That’s when I read Anna Karenina, among other things.)  So, all that to say, I was raised by a reader, so it was easy to become a reader (and now easier to raise my own reader).  Fast forward to college and I didn’t read much for pleasure because there was too much to read for class, but I asked a favorite professor for some recommendations when I started graduate school.  Because of him, I read some classics including Bleak House (which I love in spite of Tarkington and Tarkington) and Tess of the d’Ubervilles (which I didn’t love because it’s gut-wrenching, see also I love romance novels).  Yes, in graduate school I read Dickens and Hardy for pleasure.  That should tell you a lot about me friends.  Even with all this, it still took several more years for me to get back into books, like really into them like I am now.  Fast forward a bit more, and I’m spending the week at home with my boys so we can all attend our church’s Vacation Bible School which is amazing and at night – well after bedtime (meaning we can’t handle all day at daycare/camp and then VBS too).  This combined with my (then) recent discovery of ebooks, the electronic library, and my new Kindle Fire led me to jump back into reading in a way I hadn’t since I was in middle school, consuming books for class and for pleasure both.  My aforementioned desire to deep dive (hi, yes, that’s my #enneagram5wing) and love of period drama led me to Hallmark’s When Calls the Heart, which was new to Netflix at the time, which led me to the Canadian West Series by Janette Oke (they’re both amazing, but I do prefer the books, especially the Return to the Canadian West books).  And from then, it was ON.  I tracked my reading in a hardback book journal, which only lasted for six months until I found Goodreads and started a firm record of my level of reading.  All that to say, my routine has been more or less the same for a few years now.

But wait, how do you read that much?  Well dear readers, one page at a time.  I’m not the reader who reads waiting in line (back when there were lines, other than for groceries), but I did (and somewhat still do) get up earlier than my little people for some quiet time with a book.  I don’t wake up well, so reading with my first cup (or two) of coffee is a treasured routine for me to use to enter into being a person for the day.  This time is built into my morning routine because it helps me to have a better day than without (yes friends, that means reading is part of my self care).  I don’t read much during a usual week day (and I’m not big on audiobooks for me – but I adore them with and for my boys), but once bedtime starts, I start reading some again.  I can only do so much during the running around to get baths, but after the boys are settled in bed, they both like to be cuddled for a bit after the lights go off (judge all you want, but I’m taking it while I can get it), and if I cuddle without reading, then I’m asleep too, so I read during cuddles.  After the boys go to bed, we’re usually beat, so if Ashley and I don’t have blog business to tend to, I’ll watch TV with my Adam or head to the couch or bed with my book.  Even if we watch TV, I’ll pick up my book when I do go to bed and usually read until I fall asleep (or determine it’s late enough I have to put the kindle away).  This routine led me to an average of about 100 pages a day.  On the weekends (and during Safer at Home), we have quiet time in the afternoons for our whole family.  The boys (8 and 5 years) go to their rooms with books and quiet toys (this is what we transitioned each of them to as they began struggling with naps at 3).  For my husband and I this may mean working on a project together if we have something pending, but it usually means alone time of some sort, either working on a project, watching TV, or reading a book.  Sometimes we have calls or chores scheduled then (this is my prime call/meeting time on weekdays now), but in general we try to enjoy being alone (we’re all introverts so this is more necessary now than before).  None of that is really affected by Safer at Home.  

The part that is affected by Safer at Home is how I spend the weekends.  Because of my and my husband’s job, I manage the children during the day, while also working.  This means by Friday afternoon, I am fried and he’s only seen our children for a few hours in the evening, plus in passing during the workday (we’ve kept our usual bedtime and they’re sleeping in, as am I, so the evening commute is the extra time we have all together, unless I’m still working).  I usually spend a decent portion of the weekend with a book, alone, to recover and reset.  This means instead of the one romance novel Ashley and I would breeze through over the weekend has turned into two, and I’m not sad about that at all.  I still spend time with my family, but the boys have seen me all week (all. week.) and miss their dad and want to focus on him more (which has recently turned into boys dinners with the girls – me and the dog – in the other room, with a book – they’re asking for what they need, so I’m encouraging it).  I still use the weekends to do some chores and get groceries, but we do more chores during the week than previously and there’s nowhere for us to go unless we’re going on a hike, so it all works out.  

Here’s the part I want you to remember dear readers, especially now: you need to do what works for you and your people in your home.  Whatever that is.  Communicate with your people about what you need and why it’s good for you and find ways to make it happen.  This means I get up earlier than my boys, but as I’m more of a night owl and my husband’s more of a morning person, I stay up later than he does and he’s up earlier than me. We’re both introverts, so he’s off doing his own thing first thing in the morning and I’m in bed with a book and coffee.  It took us a while to work this out, but now that we have, it’s glorious.  When it stops being so amazing, we’ll shift until we figure out what works in that season.  What’s helping you feel more like a person these days?  

~Nikki