Shannon Reed, WHY WE READ: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:08]I am also a newly minted USA Today best-selling author of the novel, Blake.
[0:14]I've created a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company,
[0:19]reading retreats, a bookstore, and more.
[0:21]Learn more at ZippyMedia.com or follow me on social at Zippy Owens or join the community at Zippy Readers.
[0:31]Shannon Reed is the author of why we read, on bookworms, libraries, and just one more page before lights out.
[0:37]Shannon is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh and to contribute to the New Yorkers, Shouts, and Mermer's pieces.
[0:44]Her work has also appeared in Real Simple, The Paris Review, Slate, Lithev, Longreads, the Guardian, A-Far, the Washington Post, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette,
[0:53]and most notably, McSweenies. She holds an MA in Educational Theatre and Teaching Secondary English and an MFA in Creative Writing.
[1:01]Welcome, Shannon. Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss why we read something I think about all the time on bookworms, libraries, and just one more page before lights out.
[1:13]Thank you so much. I love this book so much. I chuckled so many times. I dugured like most of the pages.
[1:22]I was just like, yes, this, yes, that, underline, squiggly mark. I mean, everything was like, yes.
[1:30]For my opinion, neither, in other words, thank you. I am another reader. The 13-step guide to how I choose a book.
[1:37]I mean, all of these things, oh my gosh. Anyway, okay, tell listeners about the book. When did you decide to write it? Why did you decide to write it? And how would you describe it?
[1:47]Absolutely. I mean, I've been calling it my love letter to reading and to book, which I know is a little cliche, but honestly it is. I just, I feel like if you're going to spend the time writing a book, which is a very time consuming a very difficult thing.
[2:03]It should be something you feel passionate about, whether it's a story you want to tell, or, you know, I mean, almost always it is a story you want to tell.
[2:11]The thing I felt most passionate about besides teaching, which was what my first book was about, was reading. I started reading when I was two years old, my grandmother taught me.
[2:21]And it's been really a lifelong companion for me. I just never without a book. It's always been that way.
[2:29]And when we first conceived of the book, when I was talking to my editor, it seemed like it was going to be sort of the series of essays about books that I'd like and books that I taught and that kind of thing.
[2:40]And as I wrote, it really turned into a memoir of essays about my own experience as a reader, which is what I think people are really connecting to, which is lovely.
[2:50]So I actually wrote a memoir called Bookends, a memoir of love, lost the literature. And at the end, like you, I have like an eight page reading list of all the books and I had sprinkled them throughout.
[3:00]And actually then I got feedback and I don't know if you did. Like, I thought this was supposed to be about the books. You don't go deep enough into anyone book. Like, where's the book report?
[3:09]And I'm like, I'm not talking about anyone specific book. I'm talking about like, how books weave into my life.
[3:15]And I am celebrating books, which is exactly what you're doing here. Exactly. Yeah. I have gotten a few people who are like, well, what about this book? You didn't write about this book. And I was kind of, I mean, they're being friendly about it.
[3:26]But I do feel like I only had 300, right about I'll do a sequel. I'll do another one.
[3:34]But one of the most clever things you did was when you say how to know if you're a character in such and such a book. Can I just read this signs you may be a character in a popular children's book?
[3:45]Can I read it? It's so funny. Okay.
[3:48]It signs you may be a character in a popular children's book. You are a pair. If you are clothing, your outfit is missing some key element, such as pants. You have severe impulse control issues, although you generally mean well.
[4:01]If you are British, you have extremely small achievable dreams like going to the sea or having a tasty snack.
[4:09]Like a hug. You probably do not work. Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to be connected to the panelistess.
[4:15]But if you do have an occupation, you are either a teacher, a maid or the driver of a large and complicated vehicle.
[4:22]You spend more time with your best friend than any actual human adult has ever. This is my favorite one. That best friend takes up 80% less physical space than you.
[4:36]Oh my gosh. I was totally laughing. It's so funny. I love it. So when you were writing this and coming up with the different categories like this, tell me about that. Is this just stuff you've been thinking all along or did it just come out?
[4:51]Yeah, it's what it is. I think all of those are based on my own reading of that genre without necessarily being a super fan of that genre, but appreciating it.
[5:04]So I got pre-school for four years. So I read a lot of children's book. And you know, kids want to hear the same. I have another piece about this. Kids want to hear the same book over and over again.
[5:14]And I really actually missed that. You know, my college did not want to sit in a circle and have me read the same book to them anymore, which is sad.
[5:28]Having done that for four years. I really started to think about like, why don't they have pants on like that's weird.
[5:35]Why are they always paired up so that one is enormous and one is very small. Like why is that a trope? So I really just started thinking about the tropes and the different genres and just wanted to lovingly mock them as I say in the book in my own life. I only tease the things and people that I truly love and I tried to get at that in the book as well.
[5:55]Yeah, no, it was not mean spirited at all. It was very lovingly received and executed.
[6:02]You wrote in the book about your hearing, like your experience with hearing loss or hearing impairment and how that affected perhaps you even, you know, theorize about how much you loved reading as a result because you could take it. You could read it again. You didn't have to ask people to repeat it.
[6:19]You didn't ever feel less than in all that. Talk a little bit more about that. I found that really compelling. Yeah, thank you. Absolutely. So I was born hard of hearing. I have a hearing loss. I now we're hearing aid in each year.
[6:32]But when I was a child, we knew I was hearing impaired, but we didn't. I was going to say we didn't know that I needed hearing aids. But in all honesty, I don't know that I did need them until I was an adult.
[6:42]It was a sort of a gradual decrease in my hearing. And I also grew up at a time, even though my family listened to me and was very loving, you know, kids were kind of like go away, like, yeah.
[6:54]And so it was really hard to assert my individuality to people as a child and just be like, I need you to say it louder. I need you to repeat it. I need you to look at me when you're talking to me.
[7:06]Even if I had had that understanding that that's what I needed. I don't know that anyone really would have been open to it again outside my own family and friend.
[7:15]And so reading became this extremely safe space for me. I could, as I, as you said, I say in the book, like I can reread something until I understand it.
[7:25]I never had to ask a book to speak up or say something again or turn towards me. It was just a really comfortable natural way for me to get information.
[7:36]And I think at times there was a gap between what I thought I was supposed to know from people telling me in school and in other places.
[7:45]And what I actually did know and books felt like a stop gap to like get over that that hump a little bit to be able to be like, okay, I don't really understand what we were just talking about in terms of geography.
[7:58]But I can read this book about geography and then okay, now I'm caught out by I have this knowledge. A lot of people talk about books being comforting or comfort read, but I think just reading itself was a comfort to me. It was such a way to get information.
[8:15]They didn't have any other form to do so.
[8:17]Well, I really appreciated it. And I was recently on a panel with and she came who read happiness falls. And she came over from Seoul Korea in middle school and couldn't speak the language and felt so much that she wasn't, she felt that people assumed she wasn't smart because she couldn't keep up.
[8:36]Whereas intelligence, of course, as you will know and exhibit in the book. Yeah, I think it's not related.
[8:41]Right. I knew I was smart and I felt that I was being treated. This is all my life. I felt like people have confused disability with it with a lack of intelligence.
[8:50]And yeah, reading was definitely a way to not just teach myself things, but to be like visibly intelligent. What intelligent looks like to us, which is knows in a book always studying.
[9:02]Let me read a few more things that I thought this was beautiful just to finish what we were saying about the hearing aids. You said if I lose my hearing aids or if they break, I lose not only what I feel comfortable calling a gargantuan sum of money, but also my ability to interact so
[9:15]cold normally with the world. I'm plunged back into near silence. My disability held at bay and almost unnoticeable at times comes roaring back. My difference is revealed.
[9:25]You were, you linked that to wonder and all that. Anyway, I just thought that was so beautiful. Oh, can I just read a couple of the signs you may be an adult character in YA fiction? Let me just do a couple of these. You are dead.
[9:37]Your spouse is dead. You were dying. Your spouse is dying. You just don't get it. I'll stop there. Then you talk about you make it really funny, of course.
[9:46]What to do if somebody gives you a book that you don't want to read or you don't think it's a good book for you to tell me about that one.
[9:52]So what are the recurring themes in the book I realized after I finished it was that I don't be like, I don't like being told what to do. I don't like being given a sign.
[10:00]men. And that entire piece is form of a letter to some friend who has very kindly given me a book
[10:07]because it makes sense. She had a love story. She loves books. I'll give her this book that I
[10:12]read and loved. She will also read and love and that we could talk about it. And I just,
[10:17]I bristle. It's very unfair of me. People are just trying to be kind, but I'm like,
[10:21]ah, I don't want to have to read, but you told me. And in fact, I usually don't read the books.
[10:30]Really awful. To all, like I carried them from apartment to house to apartment to house,
[10:36]but I still haven't actually read books. I confessed that to when I got remarried about seven
[10:45]about seven years ago. My mother and best friend threw me a shower. This is before I started my
[10:49]podcast. So I guess it was the shower was eight years. Anyway, the theme was brings of me,
[10:53]they knew how much I love to read. So like bring her a book as a gift for the shower, which is such a
[10:57]good idea. And everybody should do book showers because it fell to my library and everybody
[11:01]wrote me a note inside. But then I was like, I have looking and I was like, I know I should read
[11:06]those books. What do you think it is? Like why do we not want to do it? I don't know. I don't know.
[11:13]And I'm like, I mean, it couldn't come more highly recommended. Somebody literally gave it to me.
[11:17]I don't know. People who know you best. I know what you and I'm still like, yeah, I rather just
[11:23]take this book off the library shelf. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is either.
[11:27]It's embarrassing, but I'm glad you share it with me. You also have a thing. The five people you
[11:31]meet when you work in a bookstore. So I own a bookstore now. And this is hilarious. Of course,
[11:35]you're so funny. Heard about a book on NPR. And once to purchase it, cannot remember anything
[11:40]about the book, except it might have a blue cover or maybe blue is in the title, or it could be
[11:45]blue, B-L-E-W, or blue, B-L-O-W, or that goes to my glasses, or Bo, B-O-W. Do you have that one?
[11:52]Oh, my gosh. You're so funny. I'm like, I'm working in a library and having people be like,
[11:59]do you have the one that's about the dog? It's like... Oh, please, but I'm good to need more.
[12:07]Oh, my gosh. Okay. Last one that I'll read is in writing this book, I've come to realize perhaps
[12:13]the most important reason I've remained so the act of reading makes me feel safe. Not the book
[12:19]itself, paperback, hardcover, E, I truly do not care, but the exercise of running my eyes over the
[12:24]words, the translation from symbol into meaning the direct pleasant diction of the voice inside my
[12:30]head, the influx of information, the transport to other lives, other worlds. I've had other identities
[12:37]in my life, what you talk about, and this is who you are. You are a reader. It's amazing.
[12:42]Thank you. I mean, it's such a gift, right? It's just such a... I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania,
[12:48]in Western Pennsylvania, and my parents were actually fantastic about taking me to see places.
[12:54]We went all over the U.S. when I was a kid, but beyond that, my world was very sheltered in many ways,
[13:00]and books just gave me everything, everything from recipes to an understanding of the cosmos,
[13:07]to like a spiritual life, like books, books open the world to me. It's amazing.
[13:12]Are you going to do another homage to a category as a book?
[13:19]You know, I think that it was just... Why we eat?
[13:22]You know, someone was just saying to me, like, you need another Y title, which is their book.
[13:26]I have to say, like, I never actually intended to write two memoirs in essay form that was not,
[13:32]like, I'm so happy. I'm happy. If you had asked me five years ago, like, are you a memoirist,
[13:38]I would have been like, no, no. My MFA and creative writing is actually in fiction.
[13:43]So I have two thoughts. I actually do one more time to do another memoir in essays, actually about
[13:51]my hearing loss and being hearing. I think that I'd like to look into the science of it a little bit,
[13:57]the genetics background, how hearing impaired people, hard of hearing people are portrayed in
[14:04]culture and media. I think is really interesting. So that's, that's one idea I'm kicking around.
[14:09]And I'm also, I've been working on a novel for several years.
[14:12]And yeah, it's set at a fine and performing arts summer camp in 1997. And it's just full
[14:18]of theater people and theater jokes and 90s fashion and music. And I would love to finish it.
[14:25]I think it would be a great read for people. Did you go to interlocking or French woods or some
[14:30]place like that yourself or are you just, yeah, I worked at, I did not go, but I worked at a
[14:36]fine and performing arts camp or for summers. I was also working on my BFA and theater in college.
[14:44]So I like that. Like, if it was on Broadway in the 90s, I know a lot about it. I love theater. I
[14:51]love theater people. I love all those jokes. So yeah, my crack at it sounds really good.
[14:57]Wow. Awesome. So cool. And I have to ask because you are such a big reader if there's anything
[15:03]that maybe you could recommend that was not already out in the mainstream or something.
[15:11]Oh boy. I mean, this is such a cliche, but I like to reread the Jane Austen series.
[15:17]You know, I mean, it's not a series, but the books that she wrote, but I would actually
[15:21]highly recommend reading the annotated versions of her books. It makes them like five times as long.
[15:27]I think the Emma is like this thick because one page is the actual text and the facing page
[15:33]then is like information about the time and the culture and the people and like what this word
[15:38]means and how it's different than what we say today. And I just find that to be a super rich
[15:43]reading experience, especially if you already know Jane Austen and you're like, I've read all
[15:47]six novels twice. Like what else is there for me? It's another way of sort of engaging in the world
[15:54]of her work. So I really love that. And I've also been reading all the names they used for God by
[16:00]actually such David who I believe that came out like two or three years ago. It's a short story
[16:07]collection, highly, highly praised when it came out. And I've been teaching it to my senior seminar
[16:12]and fiction class because we wanted to read a short story collection that nobody in the class
[16:17]had read yet. So we read that. They're kind of magical realism, some strong female characters,
[16:23]but each story is really different. They're delightful. I would recommend that. Amazing. Yes.
[16:28]Next time I need an even longer book. I have I have just torn through all the Jane Austen's.
[16:38]I will get the annotated version just to challenge myself that much more. Yeah. I would say like
[16:44]if if you just went like, no, I don't want to do that. Like as I always say with all reading like
[16:50]don't read it then don't. No, no. I love that you're reading it. That's so, you know, I feel like
[16:55]it's like a flex. I am reading the annotated version. I'm like, I'm like trying to get through,
[17:01]you know, essays about reading. I mean, I will say like I take maybe a year to read each one of
[17:11]those. And so, because like a week later, I'm like, oh, isn't your page? That was a different time
[17:18]than by like now I'm, you know, reading a lot of student papers and don't have the quite the
[17:24]brain span for that anymore. Are you finding it harder to pay attention with like, I don't know,
[17:31]things in the news or just like age or are there times when you find it really hard to read
[17:36]grief? I don't know. Yeah, I do. My students and I talk about this a lot. They really have trouble,
[17:41]you know, they're chancey and they have trouble. Just devices have become so pervasive in their lives
[17:47]that to just say like, oh, put your device away is kind of impractical. And my hearing aids are
[17:53]controlled through my phone. So I also can't just like, you had device free day. That's not
[17:59]possible for me. I don't know. I feel like a lot of it is, it's just kind of training yourself
[18:05]to do it in the same way that I train my students to be writers as you sit down at the same time
[18:11]and you say to yourself, I'm going to write for 10 minutes. That's all I'm doing. I'm writing for 10
[18:16]minutes. And if I like it that I'm keep going fine. That's great. And if it's only 10 minutes,
[18:22]then at least I did 10 minutes. You can do the same with reading, you know, I'll be like,
[18:26]I, it's 4.45. I wanted to start cooking dinner at five. So I will read for 15 minutes. And
[18:33]hey, if I get into it and it's suddenly 5.30 and dinner is late, great. But even if that doesn't happen,
[18:38]15 minutes is doable. I can put my phone down for 15 minutes. I like that. 4.45. I don't think I
[18:46]ever read then. That's like not a reading time for me. I am like, go two times and that's,
[18:52]but maybe I should try. You know, set a little alarm. I mean, what did you use to like carry a book
[18:58]with you everywhere and just read in line at the grocery store or you know? I still carry a book
[19:04]with me everywhere. I always have a book in my bag. Yeah. In fact, I finished. I have three books.
[19:11]No, I brought two books on an airplane with me home from Arizona last weekend. I was a bit
[19:15]too sunflick festival. And I, and I finished them both like thoroughly. In fact, one was yours
[19:21]and I, and this other book. Anyway, and then they were like, put everything away. And for the first
[19:26]time and forever, like I didn't have another one to pull out. I was like, this is such a rookie move.
[19:31]Like, what on earth? Why didn't I have a third book here? Like, no, I just never going to be in
[19:38]that spot again. When I have a New Yorker shoved in all my bags, so I don't mean to imply that the
[19:44]New Yorker's last resort. Because I love reading the New Yorker. But like, if I do get through
[19:49]all the books, there's still like a 1997 New York that I can have something to run my eyes over
[19:58]while the plane is lit.
[20:00]I'm very sure I was looking at the drinks menu, you know, like the card in front of me.
[20:06]I'm like, what can I read that? Oh my goodness. Well Shannon, it's so nice to chat with you
[20:12]to find just connecting with the other people who love reading so much and have the same level
[20:17]of reverence for it is always such a joy. So and I'm sure you will connect with countless
[20:23]others who of course are reading it. And so obviously love to read and actually I just
[20:28]I just interviewed another woman this week, Estelle Erasmus, who wrote an advice book about writing and
[20:34]writing well and all that. She also grew up hard of hearing and felt always a little bit, I don't know,
[20:40]on the outskirts and, you know, really turned to reading as well. I don't know. I feel like you
[20:44]two would have a lot to talk about but maybe that's just a weird thing to say. I love about
[20:48]how they're hearing hard of hearing people out there like, I'm going to write books, that's what I'm
[20:52]going to do. Thank you so much. This was so lovely to talk with you and to just share love of
[20:59]reading. I love it. Thank you. I love it too. Okay, thanks. Bye bye. Thanks for listening. Two moms don't
[21:06]have time to read books. If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at
[21:11]zippy Owens and at zippy readers.