Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

Writing for The Atlantic, Joe Pinsker tries to uncover the factors that lead to folks joining the “reading class.”

This made me laugh in recognition:

“Introverts seem to be a little bit more likely to do a lot of leisure-time reading”

“I’m Parenting Right now” is my new motto:

Reading will seem more like chocolate cake if it’s something that parents themselves take part in happily and regularly. “When I’m sitting there on my couch, reading a book, and my kids are doing their own thing, I like to think, ‘I’m parenting right now—they can see me reading this book,’” Russo told me.

This ignores the very real possibility that one would have to actually move to a larger, more expensive space to accommodate the influx of cheap books:

Paul also advised that parents seed books throughout the house, not stash them “preciously in your own bedroom, away from everyone else, or in one [specific] area of the house.” It may seem expensive to assemble a large home library, but Paul points out that it’s cheap to buy used books and free to borrow lots of them. “You don’t need a lot of money to fill your home with books … [and] it’s very hard to have a bored child when there are always books around,” she said.

All kidding aside, it’s been one of the biggest pleasures of my life to share a love of reading with my whole family, and to look up most afternoons and evenings and see everyone tucked away in their own corner, lost in a book.