Many thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing/Hanover Square Press for gifting me a digital ARC of this wonderful book by Shannon Reed - 5 stars!

Written by a lifetime reader, writer, and educator, this is the perfect book for readers. Shannon has short essays about why we read, what we read, and how it all impacts our lives. I laughed my way through this book and I guarantee you will find a chapter or five that speak to you. Who remembers the Pizza Hut Book It program? While I didn't participate in it, my kids did. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who doesn't always love to get books as a gift - the pressure! Plus, there are so many books she discusses here - from Gone Girl to Shakespear. I found myself adding more and more books to my TBR - but she included a list of every book mentioned in the back just for that reason! Shannon's writing is so honest and funny (don't miss the footnotes!) - this is an absolute must read for book lovers!

"On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out," WHY WE READ by Shannon Reed is a LibraryReads non-fiction selection for February. She is exploring views "On Our Lifelong Love Affair with Books." Even though I had heard positive feedback about this text and agree wholeheartedly with many of the author's sentiments, I found it surprisingly difficult to stay engaged with this text. Reed has compiled a series of essays, roughly in chronological form, filled with favorite book titles, observations (when "reading, I was never lonely, the way I sometimes felt in real life") and funny stories. There are avid readers who will enjoy this (overly?) personal reading journey and quasi-memoir, but others will prefer to be entertained by a different text of their own choosing. So many books, so little time ...

Book: Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out
Author: Shannon Reed
Format: Digital
Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir/Biography
Places Featured: N/A
Review Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 (rounded down)
Review: Shannon Reed is a literature and writing professor at the University of Pittsburgh. She calls on that experience (and her love of books) in this collection of essays about reading, books, and more. She covers some interesting topics like diversity in reading, understanding Shakespeare, the importance of representation in books, and reading “classics” in literature. I especially enjoyed the insight on being a professor (both the good and the bad) and wish she had been one of my teachers. The book brought back some great memories of going to the library, discovering certain books for the first time, and a lot of memories from high school and college English discussions. Reed is humorous and insightful (and very prone to footnotes which can be a challenge while reading digitally). But the book lacked direction–I’m not sure what I was supposed to learn, I had different expectations based on the title and description, and even though I am a reader and knew many of the references, I found the book sometimes slow-going.

*I was given a version of this book for free in exchange for an honest book review--thank you to @netgalley and @harlequinbooks. The book will be released on 6 February 2024.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, and maybe I did for the first third. After that, it felt like a slog, and it certainly did not live up to the title. The book was focused on why Shannon reads, and the attempts at humor often fell flat for me. I am grateful for Netgalley for the advanced copy, even though it's not a book I would re-read, flip through again, or recommend.

This is more of an ode to reading and being a Reader than a scientific look at why we read and I'm all for it. Shannon Reed and I are of a similar age and background when it comes to being a reader (started reading early, read ALL THE TIME, and really don't like being assigned reading) so I definitely identified with a lot of her personal anecdotes. I also really enjoyed her perspectives on reading through the teaching of her college-level creative writing classes and how each class, level and interest of students, and materials assigned brought different realizations to her own personal reading journey. If you'd like a look into the mind of a somewhat humorous, often lost in a book, can't wait to talk about the best book, but appears to be slightly disorganized about what they've read lately type of person (me, so much me in this book), Why We Read is probably a book for you.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the free e-book.

Why We Read is a great look at why, how and the importance of reading and the many different ways that books affect people throughout every age and walk of life.

University professor and humorist Shannon Reed's collection of essays is a love letter to books and reading. Reed goes into the many reasons "why we read" but ultimately says that we should read for pleasure. I found this amusing at times, but not laugh-out-loud funny. My TBR is much longer after reading though.

Reed traces her life of reading. The joy, challenges and career that she has built as a reader, teacher and reviewer.

Why I started this book: I eagerly requested an ARC based on the title alone... and then ignored it for months, turn this delightful read into an assignment. An assignment due next week, so I knew that it was time to pick it up.

Why I finished it: Reed shares her love of reading, the whys, hows and peculiarities. She shares her individual quirks and universal experiences. The joys of teaching, the frustrations of stretching yourself and the fears and insecurities of judging yourself before someone else can. This was great book about celebrating and examining a life of reading. Specifically Reed's life as she tries to share her love with the world. I laughed at the various checklists to tell if you are a character in different genre books.

Well of course librarians are going to love this book. I've already recommended it to some of our book clubs.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for free access to this e-arc for my honest opinion.

Such a wonderful book!! Readers will see themselves in many of her anecdotes and reasons for reading. Well rounded and full of delightful tales both from her younger life and her days as a teacher. Highly recommended!

Are you a reader? Do you prefer reading to going to parties? Do you constantly have a book or two or three that you have with you to read while waiting in line or for your meal to arrive? If you do, than you are a kindred soul with Shannon Reed and will enjoy the tales she tells in Why We Read.

Shannon Reed lays out the arc of her life, especially her life with books and libraries, in short chapters. Chapters such as "to Get to Go to the Library" or "To Finish a Series" or "Because I Wanted Free Pizza." A really fun chapter was "Because Someone is Paying You to Teach a Class about Vampires" when Shannon Reed was an adjunct professor really dislikes horror!

Shannon Reed provides interesting quizzes and vignettes between the chapters of her life. Some of these include "How I Choose a Book: A Thirteen-Step Guide," Signs You Might be a Character in a Popular Children's Book," or "The Five People You Meet When You Work in a Bookstore." These interesting asides sometimes feel out of step with topics in other chapters, but are fun reads.

So if you like to read or are interested in why others like to read (or both!), pick up a copy of Shannon Reed's Why We Read and settle in for some quality you time!

Why We Read felt like such a nice warm blanket for readers. It may not have offered new insights, but it was a pleasant and happy read regardless.

George Saunders, a writer I admire (full disclosure: I am a paid subscriber to his online Story Club), recently posted a prepublication chapter from this forthcoming book of essays, in which writing teacher Reed describes the experience of teaching Saunders’s eccentric, imaginative novel Lincoln in the Bardo with her students at the University of Pittsburgh. Reed does a brave thing: she does not read and analyze the book beforehand: she reads it, chapter by chapter, from scratch, alongside her students. Together, they all try to figure out what this crazy book is about. The creativity, perseverance, openness, and sheer fun of the adventure is disarming and entertaining. I love books about books, about readers and reading, and this one looked promising; NetGalley kindly obliged me with an advance copy.

It quickly became apparent that the title is a misnomer: it should be titled “Why I Read.” Not that we don’t have things in common, and not that her various explications of why people spend hours absorbing printed text aren’t valid (“Because We Had To,” “Because I Wanted a Free Pizza,” “To Feel Less Alone,” “To Feel Superior,” “For Comfort”). But Shannon Reed is the focus in chapter after chapter: her focus is her reading, her choices, her experiences. This is not “On Bookworms,” but “On A Bookworm.” So readers should expect an idiosyncratic, personal memoir of her own reading habits and preferences. That said, I found her sections on her teaching and her students to be the most engaging – the comradely exploration of Saunders, the unexpected joy her tenth-grade girls found in Jane Eyre, how her not-very-diverse classroom coped with an essay about a Black man’s experience of being perceived as a threat. One of the more successful personal pieces worked through how Atul Gawande’s sensitive and powerful book Being Mortal affected her in the aftermath of her father’s death – and was one of the few written with a more serious, heartfelt, and honest emotional tone.

Because – and your mileage may and almost certainly will vary – Reed is considered (and considers herself, and tells us this several times) a humor writer. She clearly works very hard at it. And sometimes when you work that hard at it, it’s not funny. It’s labored and heavy-handed. I found the numerous “footnotes” which were basically cute or smart-alecky asides tedious. Not sure if they were intended to be a satire on scholarship, but they weren’t particularly sharp – more like what a snarky teenager would mutter in the back row of a boring class, thinking how clever she is. Sometimes my impatience was just a matter of taste: she boasts on never having read a book I love, and champions a series I gagged on (yes, Anne of Green Gables…). One of my measures of a book about books is whether it gives me a title or two that I need to go find and soon. This one, I’m afraid, did not.

People who read, who love to read, who couldn’t live without reading, will certainly find plenty of head nods, agreement, and things to appreciate in Reed’s equal devotion to the power and joy of books. She may be a very good teacher, who respects and enjoys her students and sharing their journeys through stories and characters and words. Had her focus stayed more on things other than Shannon Reed’s eccentricities (a terror of sea creatures?) and proclivities (a very long wander through the writing of cookbooks) and inclination toward smart remarks, this might have been a much more affecting and absorbing book than it is.

And I would like to tell her that if Gawande touched her, she needs to read Middlemarch (well, except for Will Ladislaw, who really is irritating).

I'm a simple woman. I see a book about books, and I HAVE to read it. This book (and author) was such a delight!

I love how short the chapters are. It makes for a seemingly quicker read. I was able to relate to this book a LOT. Especially the chapter about the 5 different people you meet working in a bookstore. (I work in a bookstore and can confirm I've met all those people plenty of times).

Shannon Reed has a unique sense of humor and I really wish I had her as a professor.

I really enjoyed this book! It makes me wish I'd studied creative writing in college! Who knew there were actual college courses on contemporary fiction??
The author is well-read without being superior (nay, she admonishes reading snobbery!), and I definitely felt we were kindred spirits.
I can't speak to her appeal outside of the 40-50-year-old lifelong readers; but, finding myself within that rarely targeted demographic, I thoroughly enjoyed the romp through a bibliography of stories and books I too have loved.
At times I felt a little disoriented - lack of chronology? Unclear objectives? - issues I hope easily remedied in final print (vs an unedited galley). For instance, if chapter titles are "why we read" then asides like "signs you may be..." and "five people you meet..." could be more clearly noted as non-chapters in the TOC. And is "Someone Is Paying You to Teach a Class about Vampires," an acceptable reason why we read?
I think referencing the bibliography in the TOC might make the book more accessible - I feel like non-fiction works aren't always suitable to reading cover to cover but picking out a chapter here and there of interest makes the task less daunting. Some of these chapters cover scores of books, and then some chapters are pages on the value of a single tome. I am 100% glad I read them all, but would be more likely to purchase if I'd flipped to the table of contents and seen the beloved titles she includes.
Overall, I loved the book - might be neat to have a few of the authors she discusses and/or a few self-declared lifelong readers (ahem) also answer the question Why Do We Read? and throw those answers in between chapters (i.e., Because Ms. Black assigned it. - Jack, 13yo and Because it takes my mind off work. - Pam, neurosurgeon, 48yo) just to make it more than why the author reads... although I did love all of her answers!

4.5 stars. I really loved this book about the joys and rationale of a reading life. The author, Shannon Read, is a long time educator at the high school and college level. She has taught English and Writing classes to many a young person and has delightful stories about the impact of books across the generations. It was a delightful reading experience and actually really funny at times. The story about Jared, the pretentious reader, had my laughing out loud and her experiences teaching George Saunders Lincoln in the Bardo while simultaneously reading it for the first time was equally entertaining. I read an advanced reader’s copy of this book but I am definitely going to buy the hard copy so that I can return to certain chapters again and again. I received this from the publisher through NetGalley.

I was really looking forward to this one, as I love reading paeans to books and readers and libraries, being a voracious reader and librarian myself. Unfortunately something about the writer's voice just didn't connect with me and I did not find the pieces to be as interesting as I expected. There is nothing wrong with the book, I just didn't find there to be a lot of dynamism to the storytelling style, and it felt more like an autobiography than a series of typical essays. This wasn't a great fit for me, but it is still a lovely homage to books and reading and definitely worth picking up to see if the writer's style works better for you than it did for me.

Reed doesn't come up with anything new on why we read, but it's always fun to read the experience of someone else who loves books too. Of course, those are the reasons we read books, and will continue to read books.
What I found particularly fun were the little sections in between, such as how to know you are a certain kind of character in a book. Those were really funny.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

I was hoping this book would have some interesting insights into reading and the enjoyment we get from it. That might be the case, but it was more of an autobiography of the author and some books that she found interesting for one reason or another throughout her life so far. It had some amusing insights, but mostly it was the story of her life and teaching career . . . over and over. I'm not sure why this would be of general interest to anyone but the author and maybe her former students who might recognize themselves in her recounting of things that happened in the classroom. I just couldn't be drawn into the story of this random lady and what happened on that road trip with her family that time or how the students reacted when she assigned that one book.

This is a nice love letter to books, reading, and teaching. Some of the essays are more successful than others, but overall, it’s full of humor and heart. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advanced copy.