Once, when reading A Little Life, a particularly intense 832-page emotional crucible (highly recommended BTW), I sent a 437-word novella of a text after a two-minute conversation. It got a thumbs up.

As you can infer, I have no trouble jumping right into a book conversation. In fact, I love it. It might even be the main reason I read.

Yet, for the longest time, it was also maddening. I feel and think so much while reading, but would often get stuck attempting to translate it to others.

Maybe it was the pandemic. Maybe it was social media. Or our phones. Whatever the cause(s), humans are spending less time connecting with each other.

I’m planting a flag in the ground. Because of their nuance, depth, and soul that awakens our deepest humanity - books are the most overlooked connection tool we have.

But there’s a catch. And it starts with a confession. I'm a well-known repeat offender of the dreaded after-the-fact text, “Hey, I forgot to ask, what did you think about this from the book?”

Surprise to no one, these texts rarely work. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a quick sentence back but often it’s a word or, yes, an emoji. I missed the moment. So much potential wasted. Sucks.

It’s the worst with a Reading Team. I know we’ll talk, and my mind starts to grab everything of interest from the book: “oh this, and this, yes this!” I end up assembling a formidable and chaotic army of shareable topics/ideas/gobbledegook.

I arrive at the conversation, and my mind is abuzz. How can I unleash a more manageable (enjoyable?) army of thoughts on the poor souls sitting with me? I get so preoccupied with trying to decide what to share that I end up missing things I really wanted to discuss. To add insult to injury, I don’t fully listen to the others. Double loss.

Bottom line, the potential for meaningful connection is there…but it needs to be properly unlocked.

Many readers I’ve spoken to have a deeply established reading habit. The place, the book format, the note-taking method, the time - all of it is ironed out and replicated over and over again with unwavering consistency. They love it, follow it religiously, and their reading habit is second nature. A certain someone I know reads every night while brushing her teeth. Next level.

I see a reading habit as a near-unconscious series of actions that helps you quickly get lost in the book. A sharing ritual is how you convey that full experience to others. It is the deliberate act of translating the expansive intersection between you and the book into a conversation framework that works for you. It’s being able to escape your own mind, answer the question “what did you think?”, and keep going down the human connection rabbit hole as deep as you’d like.

Okay, great talk, but what the hell does a ritual look like in practice? And how do I create one? I’ll speak to mine.

I break it down into three levels, each one building on the previous with a guiding question I must be able to answer:

Reading habits are so ingrained they happen without us noticing. They help us eat through books and don’t feel like work. A sharing ritual takes intentional thought, and can help us get the most out of reading with others. The reading habit brings us together, and the sharing ritual opens up the door to meaningful connection.

***

Why you should read this out loud (BBC News)

Yes, silent reading is the norm today - “But a growing body of research suggests that we may be missing out by reading only with the voices inside our minds. The ancient art of reading aloud has a number of benefits for adults, from helping improve our memories and understand complex texts, to strengthening emotional bonds between people.”

I’m always on the hunt for ways to unlock deeper reading connection with others, and adding a read-aloud to my sharing ritual fits the bill. Hard part? Finding just one section to read.

“A few months ago, two of my girlfriends and I started a book club together. Like many thirty-something millennial moms, we first met while volunteering at our kids' elementary school.

While our friendship was initially built around our children, after a couple of years, we began to connect and spend time together outside of PTA meetings and fundraising events.

One evening, over dinner and drinks, I brought up a book I had just finished, Strangers by Belle Burden.

It turned out they had both read it too and shared similar opinions. My mind immediately went to a C.S. Lewis quote about friendship:

‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’

As we split the bill, I asked if they would be interested in us starting a book club together. In unison they replied, ‘YES!’

The last book we read together was Alice Feeney’s My Husband’s Wife. If you love mystery novels with an unexpected twist, you will absolutely love this one. Without spoiling the ending, from start to finish, the three of us thoroughly enjoyed it. As we met for our book club cocktails and shared our thoughts, my biggest takeaway was simply how wonderful it is that, besides our kids, we found yet another thing we all love: books, especially psychological thrillers.”

-Bianca, member of Passage community

Books and reading create such a special opportunity to share and talk with others. Do you feel like you know the secret to great book conversations? Let us know.

Thanks for being with us on this journey to unlock reading connection.

-Joel