May 24, 2023

Reading Habits

I love my kindle, but before buying it in 2020, I was a big library girl. I’d wait a few weeks after a book was released to search for it on a library portal and then wait patiently for a few more weeks until that book was ready to be borrowed from my local library branch. When I was a kid, my sisters would drive me to the library, where I would take out 5-10 books at a time. When I was old enough to drive, I made a visit to the library whenever I could. I always dreaded the drive, but loved being in the actual library once I was there. I’d sit and read the latest edition of Vogue or Architectural Digest before checking out my library books. How very 2010s of me…

I used to probably read 1 or 2 books when I was a library girl. Now that I’m a KINDLE girl I read almost double that number of books every month. Sometimes, if the book is 600+ pages, there’s definitely a lil lag in how many books I’m reading, but otherwise I’m pretty consistent with having 1 or 2 books going at a time.

To supercharge our reading habit, my boyfriend and I have also started to listen to audiobooks on our runs instead of podcasts. We usually have 1 Audible credit every month, so we pick a super long book that will last us for the whole month. Even when we listen to it at 1.8x or 2x the normal speed, it gets us through the whole month. The last book we listened to (and liked) was Empire of Pain - super long & detailed, but a thrilling and complex history.

My favorite types of books are self-improvement books with biographies coming in second place. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed at the idea of self improvement but I love how books break it down in digestible steps. I try to take at least one idea away from every book that I read (but not necessarily to implement, just something for my mental toolbox).

Lately, my favorite self-improvement books have been: