Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books
From the author of the international bestseller Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, a heartfelt invitation to reflect on your relationship with reading and celebrate the joys of books.
Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure?
How often do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves and of our relationship to the joy of reading? In each of the essays in Every Day I Read, Hwang Bo-reum contemplates what living a life immersed in reading means. She goes beyond the usual questions of what to read and how often, exploring the relationship between reading and writing, when to turn to a bestseller vs. browse the corners of a bookstore, the value of reading outside of your favorite genre, falling in love with book characters, and more.
Every Day I Read provides many quiet moments for introspection and reflection, encouraging book-lovers to explore what reading means to each of us. While this is a book about books, at its heart is an attitude to life, one outside capitalism and climbing the corporate ladder. Lifelong and new readers will take inspiration from it, including a treasure trove of book recommendations blended seamlessly within.
My posts about this book
Finished reading: Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum 📚
Finished reading: Every Day I Read: 53 Ways to Get Closer to Books by Hwang Bo-Reum 📚
This is a quick read: 53 short meditations on reading. If you are an avid reader, you will not find much new here, but it’s still nice to read about reading and how a fellow avid reader feels about books. This one gave me some new book ideas and made me think about going deeper with my reading.
Hwang reads a lot. Like, as many books in a month as I do in a year. It almost gave me permission, or gave me solace, in knowing that it’s ok to read more or as much as you can. Funny that I need that, but I guess I did. I do have a to-read pile that is growing every month, and I truly want to read them all, and the only way that will happen is to read more.
I love books, and clearly I like reading about reading books. In my life, I don’t have any friends who are avid readers, so it’s powerful for me to read about someone who is and how they approach books. I wish more power readers would post more about how and why they read, and the importance of reading in their lives. Reading books by any standard you see online is regressing, and we need to reverse that trend. At the very least, children need exposure to lots of books and the power and joy of reading.
Here’s to reading!
I read every day. Because I’m bored, because I crave a story, because I feel a little empty. I read to understand what my friends are going through, to breathe some hope into life. But most importantly, I read because I love it. Every day I read, and I’ll keep reading.
Sometimes a single sentence is more powerful than a whole book.
Jean Grenier, in La vie quotidienne, says that books are like a guide in life. Books are friends we make along life’s journey. And as the French political philosopher Charles de Montesquieu says, ‘I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.’ I want to remember the book that has healed me today.