Reading in Public No. 56: Reading lessons from the National Book Award

Or adding even more reading intentions to my 2025 agenda

Ok, this is going to be my last National Book Award post for awhile (I think?!), but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share some of my reading related takeaways. Meeting some of my author idols and hearing literary luminaries discuss what they believe to be the value of literature stretched me, challenged me, and prompted me to think about my own (private and public) reading life. Here are some of the reading lessons I’m taking from The Biggest Night in Books.

• Pay attention to imprints and editors. A while back I wrote a piece about my distaste for using too much data to plan our reading. I still think that very online readers have a tendency to let too many factors and too many opinions guide our reading lives and that using data to predict a “successful” reading experience will never be for me. But I’m going to admit to being wrong about this in one area: I will now, to the best of my ability, try to track the imprints and editors of the books that I read. This is mostly inspired by

  Traci Thomas
  and her epic spreadsheet (IYKYK). But it really clicked when I was talking to an editor at the NBA ceremony who was the editor on three of my favorite books from the last two years and has edited some of my all-time favorite writers. Our conversation made me realize that I am as big a fan of her as I am of those authors and that I should be more meticulously following her books.

• Keep considering how books are “in conversation” with each other. There was something about seeing all of these fantastic writers in rooms together having conversations with each other that made this obvious. Authors who are working now are friends and competitors. They read, review, and judge each other’s work. I have always liked to think of books as talking to each other across time and space, and seeing their authors talk to each in real time and in the same space emphasized how valid it is to read that way.

The winners of the 2024 National Book Awards. Photo cred: Beowulf Sheehan.

• Read more nonfiction and read it better. I read very little nonfiction this year and the nonfiction I did read wasn’t particularly good or substantial. After meeting some wonderful writers of nonfiction last week and hearing about some exciting forthcoming nonfiction titles in 2025, I’m going to try to recalibrate that. I believe that just as reading fiction improves the way we approach nonfiction, reading more nonfiction will enhance my reading of fiction. But beyond simply reading more, I’m going to strive to be a better reader of nonfiction, bringing the close reading I use in my fiction reading into more nonfiction titles. Additionally, I’m not going to solely relegate nonfiction to the realm of audio. I love audiobooks and will certainly be continuing to listen to a lot of titles, but I personally don’t engage with audiobooks as deeply nor remember them as well as print books. If I want to get more out of my nonfiction reads, I need to give more to them.

• Read art that makes me uncomfortable. A theme of the night was a celebration of books that challenge readers and force us to confront aspects of humanity that are tempting to ignore. I know that comfort reading is important to a lot of people, and I find myself needing that occasionally too. But this trip got me fired up to dig into the books that rattle me and the ones that are straining against the status quo of art and life.

• Champion “political” books. I have always bristled when I hear people say they don’t like overtly political novels. Life is overtly political! It’s absurd to think books should not be. I know that what people tend to mean when they say this is that they harbor a distaste for reading experiences that feel like a political statement is driving the whole enterprise rather than an authenticity to the characters and plot. And that I do understand. But I think we’ve thrown around the idea that politically-driven novels are bad for so long that we outright dismiss any stories that verge into political territory. Listening to Barbara Kingsolver’s speech at the NBA ceremony made me eager to reclaim the concept of the political novel. Literature has always influenced and been influenced by political thought, and contemporary books that acknowledge and engage with this ought to be celebrated not shunned. I highly recommend watching her speech in full. I might devote an entire essay to it at some point.

• Read (and respond to) more book reviews and literary criticism. There are so many smart people writing literary criticism and engaging with their ideas can make us all deeper, better readers. This isn’t because we ought to adopt the views of other critics, but because considering how someone frames what they think is good and bad in literature can help us determine what we think is good and bad in literature. For me personally, I’m also thinking about how while I’m not physically located in an area where I get to engage in a lot of literary events, I can participate in the literary discourse by consuming criticism and using my platforms as a way to respond.

• Read fewer, better books. I’m certainly not here to tell anyone what is too few or too many books to read in any given period of time. However, I know that if I want to get the things I want to get out of my reading, I need to be reading fewer, better books every year. For me that means reading more slowly, reading more in print, reading challenging books, and rereading—sometimes shortly after finishing a first read. One way to be a public reader is to offer an opinion on all of the buzziest books of the moment, but I want to embrace another role by offering more in-depth analysis of particularly interesting texts.

• Team Book is the team I want to be on. The camaraderie I witnessed and was part of during these incredible events was inspiring. Last week I wrote about wanting to engage in more creative collaborations and I’m feeling that even more deeply now. I’m thinking about new ways to support authors, champion books, and collaborate with other public readers. Team Book is my team for the long haul.

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Happy reading!

Sara