On Talking About Reading
And how to get better at it
I love to talk about books. Obviously. I’m not sitting here writing this without the incessant need to hold forth about what I’ve read, what I’m reading, what I want to read, and all that falls in between.
But I’m not sure I’m that good at talking about what I read. I spend a lot of time reading, but I often struggle to find the right words to articulate what about a book — its cadence, writing, character development, or plot — moved me deeply or frustrated me, without returning to the same tired tropes. I find I often use the same language to talk about books that were important or interesting to me, when, really, the books I’m discussing are quite disparate in subject matter and had quite different effects on me intellectually and emotionally.
As I think more about my approach to reading, I want to be better at articulating my thoughts and pushing myself to pin down the nuances of a text. After all, words are how we communicate thoughts. We describe our feelings in words. If you can’t describe a feeling, if you can’t find the words to relay an emotion, it’s hard to identify that feeling or further engage with it. Translating thoughts from inside your head to outside of it can be a challenge — or so it seems to be for me, at least.
So, the million-dollar question: how do we get better at talking about the books we read? I don’t know the answer, but I have some ideas that I am planning to try. By adopting new habits in my approach to reading, I hope to get better at reading, and in turn, better at elucidating the particulars of a book that were meaningful to and influential on my thoughts and feelings.
Give Yourself the Time and Space to Focus
I like to bring a book with me wherever I go. If I know I’ll be on public transport, sitting at a café, or in a doctor’s waiting room, I’ll always bring something to read so I don’t idle away this time scrolling. But sometimes, these short intervals can be distracting, and I’m not actually that focused on what I’m reading. I’ll return to my book later to find I have no idea what the past four pages said. The same goes for when my mind just isn’t totally in it (no matter the location), and I catch myself re-reading the same page repeatedly, absorbing nothing.
Rather than just pressing ahead, as I am wont to do, I need to S L O W D O W N. This may sound obvious, but “preassing ahead” is a habit I’ve fallen into, one that I’ve yet to correct. When I catch myself doing this, I need to take a break from the page, come back to it, and read it again, slowly, when my mind is settled. To talk about what we read intelligently — the way I hope to — we need to give ourselves the time and space to do so and be intentional about it. This feels like an important place to start when it comes to being able to talk about books with emotion and accuracy.
Practice Vocabulary
Paying attention to words I don’t know when I read will be huge in… well, expanding my vocabulary. Developing my vocabulary will give me more ways to describe things I read and their effect on me. Shocker. Picking up meanings of words via context clues is certainly a skill, and one worth refining, but too frequently I rely on context clues rather than actually learning the new word. Sure, I’ll always google a word I don’t recognize (if you don’t do this already, this is the place to start beefing up that vocab), but am I ingraining it into my brain? Am I using the word in conversation? Am I learning a new word? No. No, I’m not.
I recently read How to Fix a Lazy Vocabulary by
Consider the Themes, Then Try to Parse Them Further
I gravitate towards stories that are more character-focused than plot-driven and focus on the inner thoughts and emotions of the characters. There are other themes or topics that I enjoy, too — excellent writing, stories about women, stories about climate change, emotionally fraught relationships, and plot points.
The challenge, then, becomes distinguishing between these common themes. I have developed a vocabulary to talk about the kinds of books I read most frequently, yet it is not nimble or broad enough (I feel) to convey the differences between books that share themes. But my thought is that examining two books I enjoyed because of their similar themes, and then pushing myself to find the similarities and differences will be a useful exercise. As a result, my ability to discern their strengths and weaknesses will improve, and so will my ability to speak cogently about what I’ve read— at least, that’s the hope.
Consider the World in Relation to What You Read
Books do not exist in a vacuum. While you may be sucked into the world of what you are reading, there is a great big world around you, too. Try to connect the literary world you are engrossed in with the world you are living in. Does the plot remind you of movies, magazines, music, or art you’ve seen? Do the characters resemble anyone you’ve encountered in your movement through the world; relationships with lovers, family, service workers, colleagues, or otherwise? What landscapes, animals, or events does the book make you think of?
These might seem like random, unrelated questions, but I’ve found that this exercise helps me stretch my brain and think creatively rather than literally. Drawing connections between literature and the larger world strengthens the mental muscle of dynamic thinking. Ultimately, this augments my capacity for perception and provides points of reference for discussions about my reading material. Leaning into this, I think, will help my cause of being better at talking about what I read.
Find More Book-Brain People
Finding people to talk about books with is a gift. It can be in a book club, with staff at a bookstore, or with friends, but it’s always electric to feel a shared connection over the effect of a book. But the key is to find people who expand your view of the books you read. You need people who will suggest genre-defying books you've never heard of, and who have approaches to reading that are different from your own; who view the world differently and thus have a different lens through which they view the text at hand. The person/people who do this for you I’m fondly calling your book-brain people.
In my case, my brother is my number one book-brain person. We are constantly recommending books to one another. While we often like the same things, chatting with him always makes me think about something I’ve read in a new way, in a way that I wouldn’t have reached on my own. I also am in a book club, which offers an opportunity to unpack a book with a collection of readers from different backgrounds with different tastes and opinions. Seeing a book through the eyes of others always adds to my understanding of a book. I aim to connect with more fellow book-brains who can help me widen my scope, see things from new angles, and improve my dissection and discussion of what I read.
I am trying to strengthen my ability to talk about books meaningfully, accurately, with insight and emotion. To grow, we need to do things differently rather than trod the same path, expecting different results. I am going to try some of these things and see where they take me and my reading.
What do you think? Do you feel like you are good at talking about books? What reading practices have made you a better reader and talker about books? Is this something you think about at all? I’d love to know.
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📖 Currently reading:
Comemadre by Roque Larraquy
📚Recently finished:
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, LOVED this, so excellent
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Fabulous. Loved it, broke my brain a little.
Love Junkie by Robert Plunket, very funny with a great command of voice; lighthearted & silly
The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada; super weird
Clear by Carys Davies; Good, but very similar to The Colony by Audrey Magee.
A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan; truly off the rails insane kookoo bananas
👉🏼You should read: Why We All Need Little Journals by
from . As an aspiring journaler, I found this piece so charming and invigorating! I love to see the ways that other people make space for creativity in their lives, and Sandy does a great job of it with her journals! 📓🖊💌 Email me book recs and other literary thoughts at emilygatesjohnson@gmail.com
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I once read Sophie’s Choice and wrote down all the words I didn’t know. It filled like four journal pages and I bet I could have done better on the GRE if I’d read it first.
Aidan and I were JUST talking about Brave New World. Dying to read. Also - best way I learned how to talk about books…taking English classes in college. The people in those classes were the smartest people in the entire world and had the most ingenious observations I’ve ever heard.