Hey everybody, so this week we're doing something a little different. And instead of bringing you a school librarian, I am bringing you one of my oldest friends. So Mikey, why don't you take a second and just introduce yourself so people know who you are. Well, thank you. So let me say I am definitely a clean slate as far as being on this podcast. I think my qualifications are as follows. One of your closest friends for probably 30 plus years.
I do not have any experience in direct experience in librarianship or education. Most of my working experience has been working in supply chain analysis for public companies. So I don't think you could get any further away than that. and all the experience that I do have with that comes secondhand. my mom was an administrator in the school, well, she worked in administration in the school system that we came through.
My sister-in-law is currently a high school English teacher and works as a department head. And other than that, it's just talking to you and getting your perspective on things. Well, and that's one of the things I love when we have our conversations is that we do have these conversations about books and reading in school and education. And it's always interesting to kind of get that outside perspective and see like, how are other people seeing some of the stuff that's going on?
Or are they seeing some of the stuff that's going on? Because, you know, you never know. But like you said, I mean, we've known each other since, I want to say first grade. Yeah. And. Like we've been in high school, we were on the same basketball, junior high school, we on the same basketball team for forever. And high school we spent most of our after school time hanging out. I mean, I was at your house so often, your parents practically adopted me. I mean, yeah.
So yeah, so we've known each other for quite a while. So it's kind of interesting, I, as I was thinking about, maybe recording one of our conversations that we have, I thought it would be kind of neat to just sort of talk a little bit about, you know, some of that history, particularly like, because what kind of memories do you have of either let's start with our school library, because we went to the same school, we spent quite a few years there. What memories do you have of our school library?
So, do you mean our high school library or do you mean our town library? Because I'm going to tell you, I have distinctly different recollections of each one of those. Yes, so let's start with the high school library. Okay. I gotta be honest with you and interesting way to start things off. I did not have a good impression of our high school library at all. It was actually a very poor experience and it really turned me off of libraries and reading for quite some time.
And at the time, I don't think I realized it. It was kind of a little subliminal and it was just in the back of my head, but looking back on it, it was not a good experience. Yeah, I mean, the library itself wasn't huge to start with. Like there didn't have a ton of resources and a lot of it, I feel like was pretty dated. like, I mean, the only times I can think of that I could probably count on one hand the number of times that I went into that library in six years of being there.
Cause it was the middle school and the high school shared the same library. like, yeah. So probably like a couple of history projects. maybe a couple of English projects. Like, that's about it. And like you'd go in, the librarian would point you at the card catalog, you'd use the card catalog, she'd maybe help you find the books on the shelf, maybe not. You'd bore yourself to death reading through those.
And then that was like, that's literally pretty much all I remember about the school library. Yeah. And it's funny, I was only in there like a couple of times. I did not go in there very often. I remember kids in our class calling the library, the second auditorium, because it seemed like the only reason why they ever went in there is if there was some kind of function. They never went in there to look for resources. Yeah. That's true.
That's actually probably where I spent most of my time in library was going there for like award ceremonies or whatever. Huh. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, so yeah, I didn't have good experiences when I went there either. just, you know... Yeah, I mean, the resources were definitely very dated. I think the big thing was, is that it wasn't a very inviting place to go.
And that's, that's a big thing for me because, the reason why I was asking you about like, you know, the, town library, not to jump topics, but you know, granted I was much younger, but when I went to the town library, it was a very inviting place. Right? I mean, the librarians there, they knew your name. They were very, they engaged you, they would help you find things. They would remember your name when you came in. They would remember interests that you had. And it just seemed welcoming.
Whereas the high school library was an entirely different experience. It was not the same thing when you went in. I didn't go into that library thinking this is a place where I can explore. And look, I had the impression that you only go into this space unless you have a very specific purpose for being there. And that's really the only reason you should be there. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I I Honestly, I literally cannot tell you if there was even any fiction in that library like I couldn't tell you either. have no idea. I, cause you would never go in there and say, I just want to poke around and see if there's something interesting to read or something that catches my attention. You wouldn't do it there. just wasn't the place for it. it didn't, the environment wasn't made conducive for that. Yeah, it's funny because I mean, I was a huge reader.
I was always trying to find new books. I literally cannot remember a time that I said to myself, I should stop into the school library and see if they have something I want to read. just literally never occurred to me.
Yeah. And you know what, looking back on it, that's one of the things that I've been thinking about too, is that when you walk through, when we walked through the high school and we walked through those, you know, corridors, I remember seeing like the main office and thinking that is the main office for the high school. And then you would see guidance and say, that is the guidance department of the high school. When I saw the library, I never thought of it as the high school's library.
I really thought of it as like its own separate thing. And it just always seemed like a separate entity. And I think a lot of that was that, you know, I didn't know a lot of people that ran it. I have to tell you very recently when I moved, I didn't even tell you this. I was going through some old boxes and I came across my high school yearbooks.
Now yours might be a little bit different because you were like a year off, but I was flipping through the back looking for something entirely different. And I came across the librarians in the back. And I don't think I ever realized that librarians would be in the back of the yearbook, but they were there. And I looked at them through all four years. And I had the same head librarian for all four years in high school. And I have to tell you, I couldn't pick that person's face out of a lineup.
And I had no recollection of the name at all. I could not tell you. I wanna say her. I could not tell you her name. You just said librarians, plural. Was there more than one librarian there? if you look in our yearbook, there is a head librarian that is listed all four years, and there are two assistants that are listed for each one of those years. Now I will say, even though the head librarian stayed the same for all four years, the assistants, changed up a lot.
Very rarely did any of the assistants stay for two consecutive years. And that in and of itself might've been a little telling. But I have to tell you, I kept flipping through the yearbook and what stood out to me was I came across the guidance counselor section, right? And I came across my guidance counselor and obviously I remember them. I had a lot of interaction with them and I was thinking, wow, that was a really good experience. There was a good memory.
And I saw other guidance counselors in that yearbook who they weren't my guidance counselor. I didn't deal with them in their primary capacity, but I still remembered them. Mm-hmm. And that was because even though it wasn't to a large degree, they still had somewhat of a presence outside the library. And that was a big thing. I would see them in the halls. And even though I may not have dealt with them, they knew I played on the basketball team.
So they'd say, Hey, look, I don't, I don't go to any of the games, but you know, I follow the scores. You guys are doing great. And that is really all it took for me to feel comfortable going into guidance. If my guidance counselor wasn't there. I never really had that comfort with the library that we had in high school. Hmm, yeah, it's funny. Like I could probably still remember most of my middle school and high school teachers.
Like I could probably start rattling off names, even of people that I didn't necessarily love, but like had interactions with, even teachers that I didn't have. Like I still remember the names of a bunch of the teachers that were in the school just because like, like you said, you'd see them in the hall, you'd interact with them. I cannot for the life of me picture, I can't picture and I can't remember who the librarian was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you could you could walk from the front door to one to the other and probably three to four minutes. Yeah. was great because I definitely spent some time at the public library. Like that was, like you said, different experience. Absolutely a different experience going over there. Do you, so one of the things that was a little bit, I'll say weird, a little bit unusual about, we grew up in Rhode Island and Rhode Island had public libraries, but each town had their own library.
wasn't a system at the time that we were basically coming up. It was, think by the time, yeah. I think when we were maybe in college, they started to unify it into a single statewide system. Yeah, they had something called clan cards, I think, at the time. And that was when it was all under the Rhode Island umbrella at that point in time. Yeah. right. What a terrible name. so, yeah, maybe we don't want to call it clan. Maybe we can come up with something else.
yeah, but so I spent a lot of time at the Lincoln Library. I think I've been into the Pawtucket and the Providence Libraries. And I think that was probably about it. But which library would you say you probably spent the most time our town library, the one that was next to the high school. That's the one that I spent the most time at.
That was the one like growing up when I went there, like when we got our library cards, when I was younger, like we got our pictures taken with the librarians, like all the kids from the neighborhood, when we got our library cards and went down there together. You know, that was. a, their kids section was so great. Like it wasn't huge, but I can still remember. Like you walked in the door and it was right there and the librarian was friendly and they had so much stuff and places for you to be.
And like, could just wander around or you could sit and read. Man. Yes. I remembered. Like the library had events and granted I'm dating us a little bit. This is going back a little bit, but you know, when they had these events, it was a thing. You know, all the parents in the neighborhood would get the kids and they throw them in the car and then you drive down and you know, a librarian would either do like a public reading of a book or you would even have speakers come in.
Like you would just have people come in and just kind of explain what their job was. I remember seeing firefighters. I remember seeing people that were, you know, Native American heritage. They came and, you know, to talk about like their experiences. And as a young kid, you know, that was just, those were some great experiences and some great opportunities. And you weren't going to get that anywhere else firsthand. Yeah, no, absolutely.
It was definitely sort of a community center slash library. And it was, as you walked into the library, there was the function room, like right in the entryway, you had to walk past the function room. So like when they had stuff, it was there. Like it was easy to get at. I remember, dude, they were doing different kinds of Halloween events too. Like people showing up in their costumes and them having like some candy for the kids and stuff. And, man, I spent a lot of time in those shells.
Yeah. wandering around and pulling stuff out and man, that was a great library. They were great memories. I still to this day, I look back on them like very fondly. Yeah, well, so here's here's something that I was thinking about the other day in thinking back you when I think of you back in high school in college I think of someone who was very very smart person who focused on like In my mind in my in my mind the world is sort of divided into fiction and nonfiction. And you were in nonfiction.
Like you were always someone who was looking at like politics and like world events and stuff like that. And I, I never, if you had asked me back then, I would never have pegged you as a fiction reader. And that was just sort of occurring to me the other day. Like I was absolutely a fiction reader. I was not interested in nonfiction in any way, or form. You were always so involved or aware of what was going on. And like you were really, you were good at sort of paying attention.
to the world that was going on around us where I was always trying to find a way to get out of the world we were in. which exactly, exactly. And that's, that was one of the things that I was kind of like chuckling about a little bit the other day was because I, would you say I'm kind of in the ballpark there to say that you weren't much of a fiction reader when we were, yeah, yeah. I spend much more time reading fiction now than I did then.
I don't know if there was any particular reason why I did. I think a lot of it was... I just think it's how you're brought up. Like my parents, always had the news on in the background while we sat down. Sometimes we would put on the TV while we had dinner and my mom would kill me for saying that that's how we were brought up. Hahaha allowed to do that if it was news because during the commercials we would talk about what was going on.
And so I was just always aware of what was going on and you read newspapers and when you read newspapers, you want more information, you go to nonfiction books. That's basically what it came down to. And then eventually majored in politics in college. So then you end up just starting to read more, whether it's for leisure or not. And as I've got older and I read more for pleasure now, Wow, it's really a must-all fiction at this point.
So do you have any thoughts on like, when did that sort of transition sort of happen, would you say? when I started leaning more towards fiction? I think when I was finally at a point where I could 100 % decide what I was going to read, when I didn't have to do any more reading for a job or for school, at that point in time, it just sort of started to naturally fade away. And I didn't realize, but in retrospect, A lot of what I was reading was because of either jobs or school.
I wasn't reading as much for pleasure. You always read much more for pleasure back in those days than I did. And now I'm finally at a point where, you know, my time is my own. And it's funny that now I'm gradually working towards more fiction. Yeah. And it's funny because like I said, I never would have years ago, I never would have pegged you as a fiction reader. And now like the past several years, you and I have really gotten into like trading titles and trading authors.
And like, we're really have started to get onto the same page fiction wise, like with our interests, which has been awesome. Like it's been really enjoyable to be able to have those conversations about this thing that I love to do. And that I love that you love it too, you know? So. I love the conversations too. And I have to tell you, the thing that I love about the conversations is we love our authors.
We're constantly looking at our TBRs and mixing them up and seeing who we should be reading, who we're hot on, who we're cold on, who we want to try. Have you tried this person? And I think that's great. And at the end of the day, I just, I like the fact that if you compared us as readers, there couldn't be two more different readers in the terms of our reading habits and how we approach reading. but we come to the same place.
And I got to tell you, that is something that I really wish I learned a lot sooner in life that, you know, however you absorb those words from your eyes into your mind, everybody does it differently. everybody has a different process and everybody has different habits and it's up to you to customize your own and find your own. And, once I did that, I just started reading more and more. I it.
I love that you have found that place that works for you because I think there's a lot of adults who still sort of see reading as a chore. You know, like it's that thing I had to do for school or for my job or whatever it was. And I think there's not as many folks who unfortunately kind of just get that joy of this is a fun thing that I can do and I can, like you said, you can explore and you can, the social aspect of reading I think gets lost so often.
And I feel like you and I have been very fortunate that we, every time we talk, we're talking about, you know, this thing we love to do. And it's a social aspect of the reading process that like, man, I read this and you gotta, you know, you gotta check this out. Or like, you had read Project Hail Mary recently and I had read it when it came out and I liked it. I like, I thought it was a great book. And then you were talking about like, man, I'm on page 20 and it's amazing.
And I was like, that book is really good. I need to go pick that back up. And like we ended up reading, you know, like kind of co-reading together and talking about that book because it is such an enjoyable story, you know? So it's, I love that we are having those kinds of conversations because when we were younger, like that wasn't really part of our... It wasn't because I was reading entirely different things.
So I like the fact that now at this point in time, we're kind of like on the same page with a lot of that stuff. And, you know, I think a lot of what impacted it too for me is that, you know, when you're younger and you're going through the school system, you're really forced to read a lot of things that you don't want to read. And a lot of times that carries into adulthood with people and they look at reading as something that you just sort of have to do that. It's not. an enjoyable experience.
It's something that's sort of like an obligation. One of the things I have a number of things that have helped me increase the number of books that I read and how much I enjoy reading. And I got to tell you one of the things things is not being afraid to DNF a book. If I don't like it. I have to tell you, I originally thought, well, if you start a book, and it's not working for you, and you don't finish it. And that happens a couple times, you're going to end up reading less books.
But I found out the irony is you end up reading more because there's less forced reading. Yeah. When you're in school, can't just say, I'm not gonna finish this. You have to finish it. You have to take the quiz. You have to take the test. You have to write the essay. And I think you're on something incredibly important in education that we miss. And I just spent two days in Atlantic City giving presentations on exactly this in different ways.
schools are really good at beating the enjoyment of learning. out of students, being the enjoyment of reading particularly, I think, out of students. And like you were saying with the school library, like you didn't feel comfortable going there. We were lucky that we could literally walk three minutes across the parking lot and be at a public library that we did feel comfortable at.
But I think there's a lot of people who had a very similar experience to ours in school, that the school library was not a place you went. And so that's their impression of what a library is. their only impression of what a library is. Yeah. it's not a place you go. It's not a welcoming place. It's not a resource you go to first. It's your last resort and only when you're forced, you know? And I think that also carries over with reading in general.
Like you were saying, like in school, you can't say, I'm just not going to finish this. I mean, you can, but like it carries lots of negative consequences if you decide that you're not going to finish a book. And for you and I, people who like, we had to have good grades, we had to have, make sure our parents weren't on our backs, know, like we were just, we're rule followers, so we're gonna do what we're told to do, you know?
So like, just the idea of saying, no, I'm not gonna finish this book in school was just not even, it was a non-starter, like, wouldn't even occur to me. But. also the choices too, like even when you were given a choice of something to read, was narrow choices and it was very heavily placed. Emphasis was very heavily placed on classics. And there are some great ones and there are some that are just classics and you really didn't have a choice.
I think looking back on it, if I could really choose what I wanted to read, I would have read more. but it was stuff that you were just kind of forced to read. And also, you I felt like when I was going through the school system, if I was reading something that was a classic, some of them were good. Some of them, I just, they were not good. I just really, really struggled with them and I didn't think they were good. And I couldn't really criticize them.
You know, it wasn't received well if you were trying to criticize something that was a classic. Yes. You're not teaching people to be objective readers. You're not teaching people to be critical thinkers. You're teaching people to just find some way that they can support this text and write something positive about it, even if they don't feel that way. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
And it's funny that you're saying that, that you didn't feel like you could criticize or critique what you were reading. And I'm gonna come back to that in a second, but I wanna get back to classics for just a moment and say, I think part of the problem with classics is they are, I think English people who... like digging into the symbolism and the depths and the figurative language and all that stuff of a piece of writing.
They can mine a lot out of a lot of those classics and that's great and that's fine. But I think too often English classes tend to focus on those skills that you will probably only use if you become an English teacher rather than saying, let's pick some stuff. Let's get the kids just reading. Like let's just get them to read something that they want. joy. know, that's there's there's so much reading joy that gets lost there.
And then coming back to like not being able to critique something without feeling like you were doing something wrong. When you said that something sort of clicked in my head because I feel like a couple of years ago when we started kind of trading ideas for fiction that, you know, you would you'd ask me for a couple of recommendations, I'd given you some titles. And there were one or two that you were like, Yeah, you know, I just I don't think I got it.
Like I didn't really like this and you almost sounded like you were apologetic about it or like that you were worried that I was going to be like, how could you? And like, I could definitely feel that sort of reluctance on your part to say you didn't like something. And I think that's probably like another remnant of the public education system that sort of landed you with that belief, like you can't say something bad about a book. And it's like... I think that's a lot of it.
And I think also too, when you talk to people about books, there are some people that think that quality of certain works, certain series and certain authors, I think it's all subjective. But there are people that think it is very much objective. And I think maybe when I was a little sheepish in giving my opinions to you was because maybe I had talked to some other people that didn't view it as objective. Yeah. And then I think I'm just programmed to respond that way.
But yeah, there's a lot of people that do have that point of view. Yeah, and unfortunately, a lot of them are, I think they're really well-meaning. again, this is something I did an hour and a half long presentation on this. I think there's a lot of adults in the world who are well-meaning, but who through their practices make reading much less enjoyable for kids when they're trying to help kids be better readers. But what they're really doing is making kids not want to you know?
And it's a shame. because it's like that saying, know, beatings will continue until morale improves, you know, like, we're gonna keep, you're gonna read these books until you like them. And it's like, that's not how it works. But too often, I think that's what happens. And I mean, this conversation, I think really kind of bears out the idea that there's, we're maybe not doing the thing we should be doing when we are approaching reading in that way.
Mm. so I mean, I am really enjoying this as we talk through all of these ideas, because although we've sort of talked around a lot of this in many of our conversations in the past, I don't know that we've come at it quite this directly. And I'm really appreciating and enjoying that you are, you know, sharing these thoughts, because I think it's, I know where I stand on a lot of this stuff. And I love being able to sort of, share thoughts with you and get this other perspective on things.
Cause as you said, not an educator, not school library, like just a dude who loves reading, which I love that you love reading, because it's not something that everybody loves. So I'm digging that. I'm just kind of curious. would you say that you're, a reader, who would you say you are as a reader? Let me ask it that way, which I know is a real big and broad question. But if I asked you like, as a reader, who are you? What do you say? don't even know how to answer that.
I will tell you this, if I was to answer that question a few years ago, I would give you very specific genres and I would give you very specific authors. And I would say that these are the types of books that I read. When I look at what I read now, it's all over the place. I genre hop a lot. And I found that's another one of the tricks that helps me keep reading is that if I stick to one genre for too long a period of time, I'll just burn out on it. So I have a tendency to kind of jump around.
Mm-hmm. really who I am as a reader, I've kind of come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter what other people recommend or what other people think is good. All that matters is that pages are turning. If pages are turning, then I'm doing what I should be doing. And, you know, with the amount of writing that's out there, there's a lot of good writing that's out there. Now, there's also a lot of mediocre writing and a lot of bad writing, but with what's available out there.
The way I look at it is I shouldn't be turning pages. The pages should be turning themselves. And I have spent so much time in my life doing things that, reading things that either were homework or felt like homework that I kind of vowed that I wasn't going to do that anymore. So if I'm reading through something and I'm starting to do that math where it's like, okay, wait a minute, how many more pages is this? Mmm. many more sittings can I do? Any more pages per sitting?
Okay, so I should have this done, but once I start doing that, just close the book and that's it. Usually I'll give books like the first third, like once they set up act one, if I don't have any interest in any of the characters, any of the plot, any of the world, even if there's a really good plot twist in it, I don't think it's anything that's gonna reel me back in. So usually I just copy and walk away. So I think who I am as a reader, it's very different than what it was in the past.
I was always looking to align myself with some existing author genre. And now it's just whatever I pick up and read. there's a lot of different stuff. mean, there's science fiction, there's fantasy, there's spy novels that I mean, I'm all over the map. And I think in the past, I would have looked at that as well. You're kind of all over the place. You don't really have a reading identity. And I think that has actually become a reading identity.
And that's something that has helped me read a lot more in my later years. I love that. And you've brought up the idea of not finishing stuff a couple of times. And I think that is such an important thing that we don't talk about that enough. Just generally, think, like in education definitely, but even in the wider world, like there's, I kind of feel like there's this expectation that once you open a book, you are changed to that book until you finish that book.
And it's like, there's no, there's too many good books in the world to waste time reading a book you don't like, you know? Your time on earth is limited. Enjoy it. Don't force yourself to read something you don't like. And that's not to say like there are absolutely books that I have picked up that I have muscled through because I want to learn something from them. But especially for pleasure reading, like that time is limited.
know, find the things that you enjoy and it's okay to just enjoy what you read. And it doesn't have to feel like an assignment. It shouldn't feel like homework, you know? Exactly. And I think one of the things that it took me a while to realize is if you enjoy reading it and the world thinks it's total marzipan and it's not, you know, this high-end piece of art, it's okay. It's completely okay.
As long as the pages are turning and you're enjoying it and it's for your own purposes, that's all that matters. Yeah. And that took me a long time to adopt and I don't know why I was so adverse to that for a period of time, but I, you know. Again, I think there's sort of some expectations that we build around reading.
And I think a lot of it stems from the some of the bad habits we inculcate students with or some of the bad perceptions that we give students when they're in school that surround reading. And it's a shame because like I love so much that you love the reading that you do these days, you know, and like we were trading off the expanse recently. It I had I thought I had tried to read The Expanse before and I had not.
was reading some other series that was like the author's name was kind of similar and the series name was kind of similar, but I was reading something else and I hated it. was like, and then you were telling me like, no, I started reading this and I really enjoyed the, there's a, is it Prime or Amazon? One of them, Netflix? Amazon has. think, it it switched. The IP went to a couple of different platforms.
yeah, but you were saying like you had watched the series and you wanted to try the books and that in reading the book, you were like, wow, this book is really good. And I was like, man, I, all right, I'm gonna go give it another try because I hated this, but Mikey really likes it. So I gotta give it a shot. And I read that first book and I was like, this is not the book I read before. This is really good. And ended up wolfing down.
I didn't even realize when I started, I thought there were three books and I read the first two. And I was telling you like, man, these first two books are good, but I'm curious how he's gonna wrap all this up in one more book. And you're like, no, three trilogies. There are nine books in this series, my friend. I was like, what? But I mean, they were all so good.
And I'm so glad that we had that conversation because that was not, I'm very unlikely to have had that conversation with someone else whose reading tastes I trust because like I work in a school. So I talk to English teachers all the time. And so we're always talking about, I read this and I read that. like, the people that I work with are excellent teachers and they have good taste in literature, but we don't have the same taste in literature.
Like what they enjoy reading in their downtime is very different than what I like to read in my downtime. And so having somebody that I can have those conversations with and be like, okay, I like this. I think you're going to like this. you like that? Now I have another thing that I got to get on my TBR pile. That makes such a difference, I think, if people can find those reading buddies almost, you know?
Yeah, yeah, because I got to tell you, like, when I look back at periods of time where I wasn't reading a lot, and I am somebody who had a lot of good teachers in my life, I had some really, really good teachers, especially in high school, but I didn't get a lot of the best reading advice. And when I look at how I contradict a lot of the reading advice that I got back then, I get it like, first of all, if it's if it's not literature, it's not reading. Uh-huh. coined literacy shaving.
So like I experienced it like, know, firsthand. You know, always finish a book. I heard that, you know, that was always told, you know, like you have to finish it. My favorite, audio isn't really reading. That was something that was drilled into my head. And I use audio a lot less than I used to, but I still use it. And there's a lot of people that don't, like I know you don't use it at all. Yeah, it just never, never really worked for me, but that's okay.
Yeah. Yeah. there's some times that I'll seek it out just because there's really good performances. And I like doing that if it's something that's a little more dense. And I think I'd like to just not have as much mental overhead while I'm absorbing the information I'll do that. But that's something that's been really useful to me in the past. And it was something that was strongly discouraged very early on. it's something, it's a piece of advice I wish I hadn't listened to earlier on.
yeah, yeah. And now correct me if I'm wrong, but I know this part. You recently got glasses. Did that also have some impact on your reading? Because I feel like around the time you got them, we had had a conversation about this. It did. And I got to tell you, just, man, so many small changes made reading a lot easier. I didn't realize I just, I needed glasses like pretty badly. And I was experimenting with readers for a little bit and that kind of got a little better.
And then I went and got like a real eye exam and they re they pointed out that the magnifiers I were using were, they were very much like underpowered. so, I got like an actual prescription and that helped a lot. and the other thing that helped a lot was, you know, you and I were talking about physical books versus, actually using an e-reader. I hadn't used an e-reader before. and, I had adopted that. So the combination of the glasses and the e-reader just made everything far more comfortable.
one of the things that I had mentioned to you that I just, I never imagined this being a thing was, I always thought I would be just a physical book reader. And I think that might've also been one of the things in talking to people. It's like, know, books are kind of sacred. You know, it's physical books. It's the feel of them and the hold of them. And that was true. And I kind of adopted that. And that was kind of why I was resistant with the readers.
And then I, you know, picked one up and the first book that I read through, I went through pretty quickly. And one of the things that I realized is that, And again, this all goes back to like finding your own reading process and like customizing it accordingly.
I don't think a lot of people are like this, but one of the things that I noticed is that, when I read, am very distracted by changes, even if they're subtle in font size, fonts, and even if like certain, pages are like a brighter white or like a, like a darker white, huh. It doesn't mean I can't read it. It's just distracting when I go from one to the other.
And I didn't realize how distracting it was and how much more friction it was creating until you get the e-reader, you open it up and it's always at the settings you want. It's always the exact amount of light that you need. It's always at the settings that you put it at. And all that other stuff that was kind of distracting just went in the background and then it was just absorbing content. So that made things a lot easier and just made reading just a much more enjoyable experience.
When you had mentioned that, because when you got in the glasses, you had mentioned that you were having an easier time reading, like that you actually were, you found it less stressful, like your body was having less fatigue from reading when you had the glasses. could sit for longer periods of time that absorb information more easily.
Yeah. Yeah, and then when we had the conversation about should you get an e-reader or not and like you were kind of resistant because you were like I have enough devices. Do I need another device? Holy smokes. I can read on my computer screen and I kind of I just told I I hope I didn't oversell you but I kind of said like, you know, I gotta say my e-reader I really appreciate the way, you know, the the screen works.
It's really more like paper than you would believe and you said that that really helped too and it's it's funny because I honestly hadn't really thought about there's a physical comfort level that if you're not finding it as you're trying to read, that's gonna impact your ability to read. like it just, it literally never occurred to me until we started talking about you getting your prescription and getting the e-reader. And it was like, huh, that's a really interesting point.
Like just the physical comfort when you read. absolutely matters, but it's not something that I had given enough thought to. So like there are teachers who will set up comfortable reading or libraries will set up comfortable reading spaces in their rooms. Or like one of my colleagues would let the kids, she just would bring in blankets, like just tons of blankets. And she let the kids lay on the floor and read their books.
And I'm like, that kid, you've got a quarter of an inch of compressed cotton between you and a cement floor kid. Like that cannot be comfortable, but like, For them, that was giving them a different physical sort of sensation from sitting in a hard school desk with the book, you know, held in front of them on the desktop of the desk, when they can spread out, when they can do different kinds of things, kids that you would never expect to read actually start to read.
it's like, this is like, Tumblr started to click when you were saying for you, that really was, you know, the physical. element of it was a real, when you were able to kind of take away some of the physical stresses of it. Yes. you can just focus on the reading. And I mean, I found other things, just like little tweaks, just even like, granted, we're all very busy and there's maybe limited time for reading anyway.
But, know, I always would just be reading late at night because that's what I just thought people did. And I am very much a morning or an early afternoon person. And so if I had time on a weekend, if I was reading late at night, I just wasn't absorbing everything as well because I was just exhausted and I was forcing myself to, you know, to get through the pages.
But if, you know, I got up really early and I had some time, I could, you know, open up the Kindle and I could go through stuff a lot quicker and... It was just far more enjoyable. that you said you've got to find your own reading process.
Like that is such a, I think that's a really important idea that I'm glad that we are articulating in a lot of different ways because I know like a lot of my school librarian friends, a lot of my ELA teacher friends, we try and help kids find the books that might work for them, but it's more than just the book.
I tend to think of it as help them find the book that they like and you know, they will become readers, but you're helping me kind of think this through in a much more complex way and think about it's not just the book, although the book definitely helps. It's not just like when I tell kids that they don't have to finish a book if they take it out from the library, I tell them, if you don't read a couple of pages, take it home. If you don't like it, bring it back the next day.
Their eyes get huge. Like, I don't have to finish it. I can return something I don't like. Yeah, absolutely. can like, giving them that power. Like that's an element of it, but it's not all of it. know, finding them the right tools, finding them the right place to be, helping them figure out like what time of day works best for you. Like that's when you said that just now, that's not something I had thought about, but absolutely that is something we need to give some thought to.
Or like how we talked about when if you tend to get on a series that you enjoy, you'll go straight through it because that's how you enjoy it. And then if I were to follow that same path, I would just end up burning out on it and never finishing it and going to something else. Whereas if I broke it up, I would finish it.
I think one of the things that, you know, when I look back on it in retrospect is that again, some really good teachers, it may, it was a well-intentioned advice, but it probably wasn't the best advice. I remember at one point in time. I'm getting advice from a couple of teachers when, it was some point in junior high school going into high school. I just noticed that other kids around me were reading faster and absorbing things more quickly.
I could do the work and I could absorb everything, but it just seemed to be taking me a little bit longer. And I had asked some teachers for some feedback and some advice and they were so well-intentioned, but, and it was almost as if they were reading off the same script, but the advice. was sort of implying, here is the one process to reading. Here is the one way to read.
So they were saying things like, you know, make sure, you know, you have well-lit space and, you know, if you're not feel like you're not absorbing the words, read out loud to yourself. like, and for a long time, I probably just assumed, well, you know, I tried this, isn't quite working. Maybe I'm just not a reader. you know, and as I've older and I've been able to tweak and then find these things that work better, I just found out that I am.
And it's just a matter of finding my own process, not adopting a preconceived one that was presented to me. Yeah, I mean, I have to say, I feel like I have heard you say in the past that you are not a reader. And it's a shame that you got to that place in your head. Because clearly you are. Once you found the things that work for you, I mean, you're a voracious reader. You've always got a new title going. it's... yeah, I go through quite a bit now.
But yeah, it just took a while to figure out the and you know, everybody does it. Everybody has their, their own way of doing I mean, even I mean, it all depends on how deep you want to take this to. Because, you know, one of the things that I was always interested in when I was trying to figure out again, like my process for reading is just always asking people how they read.
And when you ask them, you know, people usually tell you the authors that they read, and they tell you, you know, many books they go through, whether or not they read for pleasure or they're reading for work or whatever. But I was always interested in asking people like, all right, when you're looking at those words and then they become ideas, what is your process? Because you'll find out that it's very, very different. We've talked about this before.
Some people, they'll hear a narrative voice in their head, right? As they're reading. Other people don't at all. They'll say, no, a narrative voice would just distract me. I just, I move my eyes across the page and I absorb the ideas. Mm-hmm. some people will hear that narrative thread and it'll be a voice of a character. Some people will hear their own. Some people will have an omniscient narrator voice, you know, people do it. as scenes in a movie.
I literally, was just today, I was having this conversation with wife and we were saying how like she tends to see things as scenes from movies. Whereas I tend to think of it more almost like scenes from a comic book where I tend to see like moments of the action but I don't necessarily see it all flowing but it does fit together like the panels of comic book. And so. it's very different.
the most extreme example I can remember is in a former job, I was talking to somebody who read quite a bit and he read a lot of like military history. And I remember just asking him, like, how do you see it? How do you visualize it? And everything was just maps and calendars in his head. That's just how we absorbed the material. And he could spout off facts pretty quickly. had it all committed to memory.
So I think the thing was if somebody when I was younger had told me like, look, everybody's going to see it in their head differently, they're going to process it differently. Don't worry about trying to find any one way to do it. just see what works for you. Try different things and whatever makes you focus more on the content and less on the distractions. That's your process and just do that. And then you'll find yourself reading. I wish it was something that I had found out earlier in life.
I'm glad I found it out now. I wanna get that wood burned onto a sun. I wanna make a banner, I wanna make a highway billboard and just put that up someplace. Like that is absolutely so, that's it. Like you just distilled it down. That's absolutely what it is. Wow. Love it. one big change for me. It was just a lot of little ones. And I'm sure for a lot of people, and don't get me wrong, some people, they'll just pick up a book and they're just hardwired.
So they're not really going to be very distracted and they'll probably go through stuff very quickly. But you know, not all of us are like that. Some of us, know, it just takes a little more time. And like you said, it doesn't mean we're not readers. It just means we haven't found the right path to reading it. Yeah, that's totally it, you know?
And it's like, I'm hearing what you're saying and it's got me thinking about, I've got a student who is kind of a troublemaker in his other classes and he's not in very advanced classes and he does so-so on schoolwork stuff. But I kid you not, he is in the library at least once a day, often multiple times a day. He's trying to get out of class, but he comes to the library and he will ask me like, I read this book. Do you have something like that?
will like he'll say, there's this topic that I've been thinking about. Do we have stuff on that? And he will, he devours books and like you can't get him to read his classroom texts. He doesn't score well on readings assessments, but he loves to read the stuff he wants to read. And like when I'm able to give him that it's, he's a different kid. He's a different kid in the library than he is in other places.
And it's because he's got the ability to sort of exercise his agency, his desire to find the thing that worked for him, you know? And that's one of the reasons I get so frustrated, angry. I mean, I was literally, I'm not even kidding. I was giving a presentation about how important school libraries are, and I was talking about how they're being dropped like all over the place, especially in New Jersey. Like we've lost a ton of school library programs the past year or so.
And I was literally hopping up and down mad. Like I was hop, I was literally hopping mad. I've never seen that that was an actual thing, but I was, I was so worked up about it. I was jumping up and down, but like we're, don't know. We've got people who I think, I think so many decision makers had our middle school and high school library experience where that's what the library is. It's a place that you go to do the boring research.
And if that's what you are, knowledge of the library is if that's what your expectation of the library is with the internet you don't really need that space because like if we were doing those same projects now in high school we wouldn't go to the library like we would just look the stuff up you know we're at so like i think a lot of decision makers are coming from it
from that headspace and saying like yeah we don't really need that because we can do this to take the place of that experience i had and i think they're missing out on these important elements that we're discussing now. giving the kids that space, giving them the time to find what works for them, helping them find what works for them, helping them understand that just because you don't like this doesn't mean that you're not a reader. someday when you and I rule the world, we will fix it all.
Well, I mean, this has been a really, I really have appreciated. this conversation itself, I appreciate you. am so glad that you were willing to take the time and share some of these thoughts. Cause I know that that's not something that you would generally find yourself doing, but I really think there was so much value in this conversation that we just had. And I really think that hopefully other school librarians are going to see it as valuable as I do.
They're going to share it with their friends and colleagues, because I think you have said some really important stuff that I think could really impact some of our younger readers. So hopefully they're going to walk away with the same. enjoyment of this that I have. Yeah, that's great. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed this and it didn't feel like anything different from us just chatting every week like we do. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you, man. Appreciate you too.