Welcome to the start of a series where I talk to reading super sharers and learn their secrets for building deep and meaningful connections with other readers.

Amy is a high-volume reader finishing 1 to 2 books per week, and she loves talking about books. She said an “Ask me what I’m reading” t-shirt is tailor-made for her. As she broke down her reading process, three dimensions of connection came into focus: her inner circle, strangers, and Reddit.

Amy described the traditional book club as “stifling” and “too many expectations.” She talked about a recent book club hosting experience where she had put a lot of thought into prepared questions. But they didn’t land and, feeling pressure, she scrambled to find conversation topics for nearly an hour. “It ended up being a lot of work, that was hard.”

Instead, she has, by my count, at least five people (including two family members) with whom she speaks with about books on an ongoing basis. “It's great to have a focused but really informal conversation about a book.” I call this her inner circle.

The majority of conversations with her inner-circle are not in-person and one of them is even asynchronous where they trade voice notes about their current book. And yet, this group isn’t a part of every book she reads. After finishing Project Hail Mary, Amy wanted to talk through the science, but nobody in her inner-circle had read it recently.

Larger digital communities like Reddit are another space for connection. When Amy has a specific question, like what happened to a character at the end of The God of the Woods, she reads Reddit threads without posting. "If I've had this question, somebody else has had this question.”

In between the specific questions of Reddit and the rich inner-circle conversations are serendipitous interactions with strangers. Amy described a recent experience with her husband:

The challenge of this connection method hinges upon finding a shared book with a stranger. Amy described an exchange with someone reading Verity by Colleen Hoover and, mistaking it for another book with a similar cover, Amy struck up conversation. “Through the course of the conversation in like 30 seconds, I realized I actually hadn't read the book…but I still get such a buzz out of talking to somebody even when the connection wasn't actually a real connection.”

When it works, it works well, like when she conversed with an employee at an independent bookstore who wrote book recommendations for customers. “We started talking and I found out that she read the same, she read most of the same books that I had. So then I looked at all the cards that she'd written recommendations for and I bought a few of those.”

Each of Amy’s reading connection dimensions has strengths and weaknesses. With her inner circle, her team can have fulfilling conversations on an ongoing basis. But sometimes the team is reading different books and, for a high-volume reader like Amy, she can find herself with no one to talk to.

The large digital communities like Reddit offer community around the nuance and specifics of books. But it’s a one way street. She never engages and has no personal connection with the other community members. It’s pure info exchange and lacks the emotional element.

Last is her willingness to talk with strangers about books. I think this speaks to her personality (this might be hard for other people), but it also surfaced some challenges. She has to know what they’re reading, has to initiate the conversation, and has to be okay with it being a short, one-time conversation.

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Doomscrolling (and kids) destroyed my reading habit. Could the ‘Booker Challenge’ save it? (CNN)

Lamenting his declining reading habit (and attention), this journalist develops a goal, deadline, and challenge to rekindle the joy of reading.

He finds creative ways to sneak in reading, battles old habits, and even learns of a government campaign against “brainrot” that pays people to read for 15 minutes a day.

The article tracks with much of what we’ve heard from other readers. They miss reading, want to get back into it, but really struggle (mainly at the hands of addictive and ever-present technology).

We think your tribe and other people might be the counterforce to help overcome these barriers. I wonder what this challenge would have looked like with a reading team.

Nearly all readers love connecting over a book. But the pathway for how to get there appears limited, unclear, and inconsistent. That intoxicating buzz of talking about a book should be a core part of our reading practice. We’re on a mission to make it so.

Read well, friends.

-Joel