The Reading Habits That Changed My Reading Life
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the kind of reading life I want to cultivate. One thing that’s so clear is that my reading life has become far more joyful than it used to be. I no longer feel like I have to keep up with every buzzy release, finish every book I start, or read what everyone else is talking about. Over the past ten years of sharing what I read online, I’ve gradually learned to trust my own instincts, and my reading life is so much richer because of it.
Before I get to today’s post, I have a bit of news I’m excited to share.
Over the past week, I’ve realized something significant: I’ve really missed the conversations that happened in our weekly Friday Threads. Some of my favorite moments in this community have happened in those comment sections, where readers introduced each other to books, formed friendships that extended to real-life meetups, shared their reading lives, and turned a simple question into a thoughtful conversation.
So I’m bringing that space back with a new name: The Reading Room.
It will continue to be a private corner of the internet where we gather every Friday to talk about books, reading, publishing, and whatever literary rabbit holes we happen to wander down together. The format will be the same—one question or conversation starter to kick us off. I want The Reading Room to be a space you look forward to visiting each week: a community built around curiosity, thoughtful recommendations, the joy of talking about books and the occasional must watch tv show or movie.
This Friday’s Reading Room will be open to everyone as an “open house.” After that, it will return as one of the benefits of becoming a paid subscriber.
Now, back to what’s been on my mind lately….
This fall marks the ten-year anniversary of ItsBookTalk, and I’ve been reflecting on how much my reading has changed since I first started talking about books online in 2016.
I’ve read hundreds of books over the past decade, but that’s not the biggest change. The biggest change is that I know myself as a reader. I know what excites me. I know what bores me. I know when to walk away from a book that isn’t working. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned that reading isn’t a competition—it’s one of life’s great pleasures.
Over the last few years, I stopped trying to read the “right” books and started paying attention to what genuinely brought me joy and that has made all the difference. Here are the habits that have had the biggest positive impact on my reading life. My hope is that one or two of them might do the same for yours.
I started reading in community.
Talking with other readers has expanded my reading life in ways I never expected. Some of my favorite books have come from recommendations from other readers here or on Bookstagram. Hearing why someone connected with a novel often tells me far more than a star rating ever could. Just today I finished a book (While I Was Gone by Sue Miller) that readers in the Friday Thread kept mentioning. It was a book that was right up my alley and I enjoyed it so much.
I stopped reading reviews before picking up a book.
I almost never look at ratings or full reviews before I begin reading. I’d rather meet a story with my own curiosity than someone else’s expectations. I’ve been surprised too many times by books that had low ratings but ended up becoming favorites of mine. Case in point, when I first read One Day by David Nicholls in 2011, I remember going to Goodreads and being so surprised that it had a 3.4 average star rating (it’s now a 3.88). I loved that book, it’s in my top 5 all time favorite reads. I tend to allow other’s opinions to sway me too much so the less information I have before starting a book the better for me.
I gave myself permission to stop reading books that weren’t working.
This might be the single biggest change I’ve made, and it’s probably the biggest reason I enjoy my reading as much as I do today. If I’ve reached the point where I simply don’t care what happens next and/or I don’t care about the characters, I set the book aside. Maybe it’s my mood. Maybe it’s the book. Either way, I’ve come to believe that if I’m meant to read it, it will find me again when the time is right.
That’s exactly what happened with Lessons in Chemistry. I DNFed it the first time, then nearly five months later decided to try it again on audio. I ended up loving it.
If you remember one thing from this essay, I hope it’s this: you don’t have to finish every book you start. There are many other wonderful books waiting to be discovered.
I figured out what I genuinely love to read.
For me, that’s often under-the-radar novels, complicated love stories, characters in midlife and beyond, literary mysteries and thrillers that rely more on atmosphere than gimmicks, French translated fiction, and narrative nonfiction—especially stories about people overcoming extraordinary circumstances. The more attention I pay to the books that truly stay with me, the easier it becomes to find others I love.
I embraced being a mood reader.
Some days I want an immersive literary novel. Other days I want a page-turning mystery or thriller. Instead of forcing myself to read what I think I should read, I ask myself one simple question: What sounds good to me right now?
I sampled almost every book I considered reading.
If you’ve been here for a while, you already know how much I love opening pages. Reading the first few pages of books is one of my favorite things to do. The anticipation of seeing if I'm immediately pulled into a story is so fun. My method is simple: I’ll either send a sample to my Kindle, or if I’m browsing the shelves at the bookstore or library I’ll read the first few pages before deciding whether to bring a book home.
Those opening pages tell me so much. Sometimes I know within a page or two that I’ve found my next great read. A perfect example is one of my recent reads, Love Story by Erich Segal, which hooked me with the very first sentence.
I paid attention to my own reading patterns.
Over the years, I started studying my own reading tendencies and patterns. Questions I often asked and investigated (first using Goodreads for tracking and now The Storygraph) included: What do my five-star books have in common? Which settings pull me in? Which types of characters linger long after I’ve finished reading? Which themes keep showing up? Which authors do I tend to enjoy? Do I tend to have higher quality reading with backlist or new release?
Understanding those patterns has made choosing books infinitely easier.
I left room for serendipity.
Some of my favorite reading discoveries have happened completely by accident. I’ve been drawn in by beautiful covers, an intriguing title, a bookseller’s recommendation, or a forgotten backlist novel sitting quietly on a one of my shelves. One of my favorite serendipity finds was Birthday Girl by Niko Wolf which I found browsing the shelves at Barnes & Noble a few years ago. I’d never heard of it but bought it based on loving the first few pages. It ended up in my top reads of the year and I still recommend it to people asking for an unputdownable psychological thriller
Sometimes the best reading experiences begin with curiosity rather than careful planning.
I embraced audiobooks.
A wonderful narrator can completely transform a story. Audiobooks have allowed me to read while walking, driving, or doing everyday chores, and some performances have been so immersive they’ve felt like watching a movie in my head. These days I almost always have an audiobook going and that plays a huge part in maintaining my reading momentum.
Looking at all of these habits together, it’s interesting that none of them are really about reading more quantity wise. What I think they’re truly about— enjoying reading more.
Bottom line: you don’t have to finish every book. You don’t have to keep up with every new release. It’s perfectly okay to reread an old favorite, fall in love with a thriller one week and literary fiction the next, or buy a book simply because the cover spoke to you.
Reading has enriched my life in countless ways over the years, and I hope ItsBookTalk continues to be a place where we celebrate that together.
I’d love to hear from you in the comments: What’s one habit that’s made your own reading life richer?
And I hope you’ll join me for The Reading Room open house tomorrow! We’ll be sharing our best books of the year (so far)
Thanks for reading,
