Q: When you have the time to read, how do you decide *what* to read?

"Do you simply read whatever you want, when you want?"

Welcome to our weekend conversation!

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This holiday weekend you will (perhaps) (hopefully) find yourself with some extra time to read. One thing I’ve always wondered about other writers is, when you have time to read, how do you decide what to read?

The answer may seem obvious. For many people, the answer simply arises from that hungry place between the brain and the gut, that place that tells us we have to finish this novel to know what happens to the hero or we have to read that history book to know what is happening to us.

I posted a poll on X. Maybe not surprisingly, most people seem to choose their reading purely by what feels right in the moment.

But I don’t think it’s that simple. For me, it is certainly not.

I have learned so much from craft books, both within and outside my genre. For any writer wanting to improve their craft, these books are indispensable. They exist in any category, for any literary muscle you need to strengthen, from The Art of the Poetic Line by James Longenbach to Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir by Natalie Goldberg, to the zillions of fiction advice on plot, dialogue, character emotion, story structure to the entire collection of nurturing gems from Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way, The Right to Write, The Vein of Gold…)

Of course, to fully develop one’s craft, one needs to see these tools put into action. You need to read. You need to read for entertainment, letting the words glide over you with their rhythms and sounds seeping into your subconscious. You need to read attentively, asking yourself how this writer pulled off this surprise, made you care so much, feel so strongly, shocked your senses alive. Which words were chosen, what information was withheld, what was left unsaid, and why?

It’s good to read within your own genre, to have a feel for what has come before you and what’s coming out now. It’s helpful to know the conventions and expectations which you might abide by or intentionally subvert. If you’re writing in a particular genre, you probably enjoy reading it too.

It’s also good to read outside your genre, to learn from any number of other styles and structures that are outside the scope of what you typically write. These other forms can solve a puzzle in your mind, make disparate ideas come together, give you permission to speak in a new way altogether. They can re-route you, unstick you, inspire you to experiment, offer a new language for whatever it is you’re trying to say.

Many of us might feel we have huge gaps in our reading. We might know nothing about The Russians, the Victorians, Hindu mythology, Japanese poetry. We can’t possibly know it all, but for many writers knowing some of it is important, perhaps even a pleasure.

Then there is nonfiction. If you are writing something that requires research, you’ve likely got a stack of books ten feet high. These too need tending if you wish to learn your subject.

Plus lit mags! The literary world always laments that people do not read and subscribe to literary magazines. But many people do, and I’m guessing a good handful of such people are here now. Lit mags can be a great go-to when you have no idea what to read next. Someone’s story could set off a firestorm in your mind about your own main character’s backstory. A poem might propel you to write on a day you had no motivation at all. If you’re submitting to journals, then of course it’s a good idea to be reading them too.

Then there’s The New Yorker. If you subscribe to that one, well, good luck finding the time to read anything else.

Speaking of which, there’s the news, the ongoing stream of information and history-in-the-making. I remember once, many years ago, I proudly announced to my father that from now on, I was going to begin each morning reading The New York Times. He (who did read The New York Times every day) looked at me and said, “Don’t do that. Just write.” That turned out to be very good advice. Still, one does hope to have some knowledge of what’s happening in the world, even if the acquisition of that knowledge is put off until after the writing gets done.

And speaking of knowledge, there are those other kinds of books, the ones we read because we need to know something, and which may have zilch to do with writing craft. Parenting books, health books, relationship books, grow-your-business books, financial planning books…books you read for information and support, which may be necessary to your human-being self, if not directly relevant to your writing self.

Many of you are teachers. This means reading student papers, on top of all the reading you wish to do on your own. Maybe it means you need to take a break from reading altogether, at times. Or perhaps you’re ravenous for it, for the warm bath of well-organized thoughts, sentences that require nothing from you other than your attention and enjoyment.

Many of you also have professional responsibilities to your peers—to blurb a book, to read a book before an interview, to read a book to support your friend and be able to tell them how great it is. If you are a writer with writer friends, such books are treasures. They can also pile up, asking for your attention and time.

If you are an editor, you may feel a professional obligation (and possess a natural interest) to keep on top of what other editors are doing. I’m always impressed when I speak to an editor who praises new work in other magazines, who seems to actively keep on top of other journals’ outputs. I imagine many editors may feel this is something they should do more of. But no doubt simply keeping on top of submissions, plus their own writing, plus all the aforementioned reading, consumes every last moment of time.

Which brings me to this weekend’s question.

How, with all these options, all these personal goals and professional responsibilities, with the yearning to become a better writer as well as a better person, with one’s endless thirst for knowledge, wisdom, solace and entertainment, with the pile of books on the nightstand mounting by the minute, with lit mags to keep up with, research to do, classics to catch up on and contemporaries to stay on top of, with a hankering to read simply for pleasure and yet also a desire to challenge oneself and grow…how, oh, how, in any given moment, on any given day, during any given holiday weekend, do you decide what to read?

Tell me how you do it.

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Do you simply read whatever you want, when you want?

Do you set weekly or monthly reading goals for yourself?

Do you have a reading list?

Do you read mostly within your genre or do you read beyond it?

Do you read craft books or do you learn the most craft from the texts themselves?

How does lit mag reading fit into the mix?

If you are traveling this weekend, is one entire suitcase full of books, and since the answer is obviously yes, how were you able to fit it into your car?