The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life
Steve Leveen
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Levenger Press
ISBN: 1929154178

How to get more books in your life & more life from your books.

Spend just three hours with this Little Guide & add years of fulfillment to your reading life by discovering:
 • how to read 12 more books a years even if you have no more time to read.
 • why part of your personal library should be empty & a large part filled with books you want to read.
 • how to get a “reading” on a book before you read it.
 • when to give up on a book(even if it's a classic!)
 • how to create your very own reading biography.

I've always wished I'd kept a catalog of all the books I've read since I started. That's often why my editorials feature certain authors whose books made a difference to me, or lists of those I remember during certain eras of my life. So here is Steve Leveen with a charming & articulate way of writing, showing us how we can get more of what we all like into our lives, as well as how we can extract more from what we are already doing, & loving.

& his suggestions come in five easy chapters from Book Love Regained through Uncovering the Books That Will Change Your Life onto Seizing More from Your Reading through Reading with Your Ears to Sharing the Fellowship of Books & A Life Uplifted.

Now, who is Steve Leveen & why would anyone listen to him about ripening our joy of reading? He & his wife, Lori, founded Levenger & started selling “tools for serious readers” -- reading lights, bookcases & such. Having been transformed into a merchant by reading a book, he found himself unable to fulfill his customers' oft-expressed wished that he could also provide them with more time to read. So he set out to consider how a reader could get more out of what, when & how they do what they love to do.

The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life is probably his first foray, & it's useful & amusing. Some of the things covered are:
 • to write or not to write in the margins of your books.
 • to buy books you want to read before you have time to do so.
 • how books change our lives.
 • Some “Classics” are not as hard to read as you might think, while others are rather pointless.
 • keeping a list of what you'd like to read.
 • creating your own library.
 • borrowing from public libraries.
 • how to get more out of what you're reading.
 • retaining more, speed reading & writing to authors.
 • audiobooks.
 • talking with friends & strangers about books.

The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life is a satisfying handbook on a subject we tend to take for granted, & the black & white illustrations are enchanting!
(04/24/05)

Rebecca