How We Read Books is Radically Changing
I love books and spend much of my life reading, but the way I read books has been undergoing a radical tranformation recently. When Kindle came along, I shifted from reading books in paper form to digital. And then in the last couple of years, I’ve shifted most of “reading” to listening to Audible books. And after discovering Hoopla, that is now my primary way for consuming books.
Turns out, I’m part of a much larger trend – reading habits are rapidly changing. According to a recent NEA survey, reading rates across all age groups in the US are plummeting. This article says, “Experts say literary reading could virtually disappear within 50 years.”
I listen to books on Hoopla.com, an app that connects to your library. You’re allowed to check out six books a month. I listen to books on 1.5x speed while I work out, sit in the sauna, and drive. Usually I’m able to get through at least a book a week. I’m mostly a nonfiction reader. I read for ideas. But I read widely on a variety of subjects.
Are you a reader? How have your book reading habits changed? Here are the books I’ve read in the last couple of years. Any books you agree with or want to add to the list as suggestions?
Life-Changing Nonfiction
Voice in the Night (Sithole)
The Art of Possibility
Trillion Dollar Coach
Midlife and the Great Unknown (Whyte – only available on Audible)
When Breath Becomes Air
Freedom’s Forge
Living A Life of Fire: Reinhardt Bonnke
Almighty is His Name (Clarke)
American Prometheus
Sam Walton: Made in America
The Everything Store
Finding Chika
Fiction Favorites
Temeraire – Napoleonic War with Dragons (9 book series)
Beneath a Scarlet Sky (based on true story)
A Gentleman in Moscow
Other books
Growth Hacker Marketing
Living Fearlessly (Winship)
Leading Apple with Steve Jobs
The Inner Landscape
The Idea Factory
Judgment of Paris
Rome Sweet Rome
The Other Half of the Church
Take Back Your Family
Make it Stick
The House of Morgan
Scattered Minds
Hillbilly Elegy
Bird by Bird
City of Fortune
Empires of the Sea
Clear Mind, Wild heart – Whyte
The Song of Significance
Rare leadership
Killing the SS
Killing the Mob
Killing Lincoln
Birthing the Miraculous- Baker
The Seven-figure Agency Roadmap
Chasing Daylight (Lewis)
Chasing Daylight (McManus)
Scary Smart
Garden City
The Art of the Memoir (Karr)
Outlive
Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy
Mentoring 101
On the Brink of Everything- Palmer
Canoeing the Mountains
The 5 Lost Superpowers
The Element
Working Identity
Start with Why
One World Schoolhouse
Spiritual Direction (Nouwen)
Story (McKee)
The Journals of Jim Elliott
Suffering is Never for Nothing
Re-ignition
So Many Steves
Two Chairs
The Dichotomy of Leadership
Letters to the Church
Someday is Today
In the Shadow of the Banyan
Soul of Desire
The Intentional Father
Integrity (Cloud)
World Class
The Rough Riders
The Socratic method
The Servant
Servant Leader (Blanchard)
Courage Required
Jake Morris
Seth, I am not surprised that you are an avid reader. Reading broadly is one of the reasons why you are an insightful commentator on culture and faith! Do you have a way of summarizing and reflecting on what you read? Or revisiting learning points from time to time?
I am a fellow bibliophile. About 70% of my reading is kindle, and the other 30% is audible. It is challenging to get physical copies of books here in Papua New Guinea, so I am grateful for kindle!
sethbarnes
Hey Jake, good to hear from you. Glad I could recommend a resource that is awesome: readwise.io/
Readwise takes your highlights on Kindle and sends them to you in an email.
There are also new AI tools like shortform.com that summarize books and articles and websites for you.
Paul Loeffler
BTW – My current fiction that I am collecting (slowly, as I get gifts) is the “Barker and Llewellyn” series by Will Thomas. Excellent mystery series in Victorian era of Britain. It’s a little historical fiction, humor and “Sherlock Holmes” – ish style of detective works. I’ve read the first three, and am looking fwd to Christmas to get the fourth.
sethbarnes
Thanks, Paul. I checked it out and will listen to “The Heart of the Nile” on Hoopla. It’s good to hear from you. Hope your Thanksgiving is going well.
Butch Maltby
Thanks for this missive, my 40 year, faithful friend. Absent the narrative here is data talking about the tactile,
auditory and olfactory stimulation from touch, smell and feel of a book, newspaper or magazine. For example, the joy of a New York Times Sunday Edition in hand with coffee’s aroma nearby or the amazing history flowing into nostrils yearning for more of the inimitable Yale University library collection. As T.S. Elliot wrote, “Where is the life we have lost in living?” Pushing information into our sugar crazed, nanosecond fueled and sensory dulled synapses isn’t my trek. l won’t own a Kindle and have never listened to an audiobook, even though l’ve been asked often to record them for a professional fee. “Less, is more.” The journey is our destination. Love never fails.
Butch
sethbarnes
You have always been a super reader, Butch. You had to read so widely in your academic career. As for the feelings while holding a book – more power to you, I say! Whatever works. For me, I want to fill up the empty spaces in my day with the ideas that challenge me and help me to dream.