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Why Reading Matters—And What We Can Do About It · Reality Writes

0:04
Ellie Alexander: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Reality Writes.
0:09
Ellie Alexander: I am author Ellie Alexander.
0:11
Ellie Alexander: This is the podcast where we talk about all things writer-ish, reader-ish, bookish, and whatever else is on our mind.
0:18
Ellie Alexander: And today I'm here with the tech guy.
0:21
Tech Guy: The tech guy, as always, with the tech guy.
0:24
Tech Guy: Today's great.
0:28
Tech Guy: Good.
0:31
Tech Guy: I ran two miles today.
0:33
Tech Guy: Woo! I know.
0:34
Tech Guy: I know some people are probably like, really tech guy?
0:36
Tech Guy: Two miles?
0:37
Tech Guy: Like, really?
0:38
Tech Guy: Like, I trust me.
0:40
Tech Guy: I get it.
0:40
Tech Guy: To some people out there, that's not a lot.
0:43
Tech Guy: And and honestly, two years ago, to me, that wasn't a lot.
0:46
Tech Guy: That would have been like a warm-up.
0:48
Tech Guy: But um injury, life, whatever got in the way.
0:53
Tech Guy: I don't know.
0:54
Tech Guy: It's funny.
0:55
Tech Guy: It reminds me of uh that episode from Castle where he had the poker game with all the famous authors like James Patterson, and they're like, really Castle?
1:04
Tech Guy: One book a year, really?
1:06
Tech Guy: Like that's like really tech guy, two miles.
1:09
Tech Guy: But um I don't know.
1:12
Tech Guy: It's uh I'm getting back into running and I'm at the very beginning, and it's it feels awesome.
1:18
Tech Guy: Um The Runner's High is real.
1:21
Ellie Alexander: The runner's high is real.
1:22
Ellie Alexander: You heard it here first, darlings.
1:23
Ellie Alexander: Well, it's kind of a good segue into what we're gonna talk about today.
1:27
Ellie Alexander: Um, because I think sometimes on your runs you listen to audiobooks, and today we're gonna do a deep dive into why reading is so important and how you, darlings, can help.
1:41
Ellie Alexander: This is gonna be a bit of a call to action episode because um the numbers are real bad with reading right now.
1:50
Tech Guy: Real bad.
1:50
Tech Guy: Real bad.
1:53
Ellie Alexander: Start out and then I I know that you love stats, so I'll hand it over to you in a minute for stats, but it's all peppermint along the way.
2:01
Ellie Alexander: Okay, good.
2:02
Ellie Alexander: Okay.
2:02
Ellie Alexander: This topic um came up, well, I mean, it's something that is always on my mind because reading in the United States is falling off a cliff with kids under 18.
2:15
Ellie Alexander: Um, it's plummeting, it has been.
2:18
Ellie Alexander: This is like people have been screaming from the rooftops for a few years and longer.
2:24
Ellie Alexander: Um, and now we're really seeing the fallout.
2:26
Ellie Alexander: And it came to light because the London Book Fair was a couple weeks ago.
2:30
Ellie Alexander: And the head of Pan McMillan gave a talk about what she thought were the biggest threats to the industry, the book, the publishing industry as a whole.
2:41
Ellie Alexander: And I think a lot of people assumed that she would say AI.
2:44
Ellie Alexander: And her takeaway and talking point to everyone was that the biggest threat to books is the fact that there's a whole new generation coming that doesn't read.
2:58
Tech Guy: Yeah.
2:58
Tech Guy: Yeah.
2:59
Tech Guy: Is it and well, and and I would like to point out too that you mentioned that it that numbers are dropping for kids, but that's true of adults too.
3:07
Tech Guy: True.
3:07
Tech Guy: Um it I've got my first stat of the podcast here uh comes from the uh National Literacy Institute.
3:17
Tech Guy: And this is from 2024.
3:18
Tech Guy: So this is a couple of years ago, but a couple of years ago, according to this study that they did, more than half of US adults read below a sixth grade reading level.
3:29
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
3:30
Tech Guy: Think about how terrible, like 54% of adults in the United States of America read below the equivalent of a sixth grader.
3:39
Tech Guy: And if anybody out there thinks that this doesn't impact them because they know they read above a sixth grade level and all of their friends and their family read above a sixth grade level, let me tell you, you are mistaken.
3:53
Tech Guy: You're sadly mistaken.
3:54
Tech Guy: Because listen, if half of us can't read above a sixth grade level, that affects everything and everyone in this country.
4:03
Tech Guy: And it needs to change.
4:05
Tech Guy: Um, and you know me.
4:06
Tech Guy: I mean, my nickname is the tech guy.
4:08
Tech Guy: I love gadgets and technology, love them, but they are also ruining us from a reading perspective.
4:19
Ellie Alexander: Right, because we're one of, I mean, there are of course, this is a multi-layered issue, right?
4:23
Ellie Alexander: It's not just one single thing.
4:25
Ellie Alexander: We can't blame reading falling off a cliff completely on technology, but you know, with this next generation coming up, they this is the first generation that was born basically with a screen in their face and have had access 24-7 to scrolling and streaming and just that constant bombardment of information and videos and all of those things.
4:48
Ellie Alexander: And then, you know, you throw in a pandemic and just sort of our education system and and so many things have fallen through the cracks.
4:55
Ellie Alexander: But one thing that I thought was really interesting in terms of the takeaway of the keynote from the London Book Fair was that her perspective was also like, okay, well, how do we use that technology to pull readers in, you know?
5:10
Ellie Alexander: So is it um little fun stories within games?
5:13
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, one of the big focuses of uh the industry right now, and this is already happening with a lot of bigger books that have been published, but um multi-narrators for audiobooks.
5:25
Ellie Alexander: So you're really getting almost a radio play experience where instead of just one narrator, you're getting an entire cast and background sounds.
5:34
Ellie Alexander: Um, so I like this lamp that it's not just like, oh, hey, we see technology as the root of all evil.
5:40
Ellie Alexander: It's like, okay, this is where we're at.
5:43
Ellie Alexander: How do we try to like find a way in to reading through that too?
5:48
Tech Guy: Right.
5:49
Tech Guy: And I and I don't want to vilify technology.
5:52
Tech Guy: Trust me, I'm the last person in the world that would do that.
5:54
Tech Guy: But and so that's a very good point because what you just described with the multi-narrator audiobooks and everything, like that harkens back to the old the radio shows of radio shows of old, right?
6:08
Tech Guy: Where you you know, people would gather around their radio and listen to these stories being acted out by by people.
6:16
Tech Guy: Um and we like so it's it's really it's really nice to see those things starting to make a comeback.
6:26
Ellie Alexander: Okay, and then the other piece of that is that kids in general and adults are not reading for enjoyment or pleasure either.
6:36
Tech Guy: Right.
6:36
Tech Guy: Yeah.
6:37
Tech Guy: Yeah.
6:38
Tech Guy: That's another one that I have a a big stat on, actually.
6:42
Tech Guy: Um that uh I saw that the National Endowment for the Arts, um, they said that the share of 13-year-olds who read for fun almost every day.
6:54
Tech Guy: So that that was the the you know, almost every day.
6:58
Tech Guy: Um that has fallen from 27% in 2012 to just 14% in 2023.
7:06
Tech Guy: Uh it's the lowest figure ever recorded.
7:10
Tech Guy: Um, and so I imagine that's only continued to go down.
7:14
Tech Guy: Um but the other concerning stat is that this study also showed that meanwhile, the share of those same kids who say they never or hardly ever read for enjoyment jumped from 22% to over 31%.
7:32
Ellie Alexander: Wow.
7:33
Tech Guy: In the same time period.
7:34
Tech Guy: I mean, that's that's just sad.
7:37
Tech Guy: There's so many good stories out there.
7:39
Tech Guy: So many good books.
7:41
Ellie Alexander: There's so many good stories in books.
7:42
Ellie Alexander: And um, one of the sort of like fallouts that we're seeing from this um focus maybe on screens is this concept that's now everywhere, which is second screen content.
7:57
Ellie Alexander: So, for example, movies are and TV shows.
8:01
Ellie Alexander: We're seeing this in a lot of media that we consume, are now directing the storyline to basically go to the lowest common denominator and plot point because the directors and writers are assuming, like, okay, somebody's on a second screen, they're scrolling while they're kind of half paying attention to this other thing that's happening.
8:24
Tech Guy: Yeah, and we've seen that actually in a couple of recent uh movies and and TV shows that that we have watched where we're like, why did they just explain that?
8:35
Tech Guy: Like, of course that's what happened.
8:36
Tech Guy: I mean, it was just like it was so jarring to be like, yeah, we know we're watching, you know, but it was it was just like five times.
8:46
Ellie Alexander: Okay.
8:47
Ellie Alexander: So this person picked me up and took me to the airport.
8:51
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, we just saw that happen.
8:52
Ellie Alexander: Why are you telling us?
8:53
Ellie Alexander: Oh right.
8:54
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
8:56
Tech Guy: Oh, um, yeah, it's it's uh um it's really it's really concerning.
9:03
Tech Guy: It's also, I mean, it not only from just like a society standpoint, um from a business standpoint, like publishing, right?
9:12
Tech Guy: Yeah, for all the writers out there.
9:14
Tech Guy: Um you know, if you want to make a living writing, you need people reading, right?
9:20
Ellie Alexander: So uh Yeah, and I mean we sort of know that we're preaching to you know the choir here because of course all of the darlings listening are avid readers, but the problem is like, and I think this myself because I'm in my bubble of like I'm around everyone who's bookish.
9:35
Ellie Alexander: That's great for right now, but what does reading look like in five years, in ten years, in 15 years?
9:42
Tech Guy: Right.
9:44
Ellie Alexander: The entire industry could look completely different.
9:48
Tech Guy: Right.
9:48
Tech Guy: Yeah, no, that's a that's a fair point.
9:51
Tech Guy: Um I would hope that if somebody's listening to a podcast called Reality Rights, that they themselves are, you know, a pretty pretty avid reader.
10:02
Tech Guy: You know, one might probably probably um but there are a lot of benefits to reading that we haven't touched on.
10:14
Ellie Alexander: Yes, right, yes, right, exactly.
10:16
Ellie Alexander: Okay, so like we've got the pretty staggering facts that you've shared.
10:22
Ellie Alexander: We know that reading is falling off a cliff, we know that there's a whole generation coming of age that is not reading, not reading for pleasure, and also reading below grade level.
10:31
Ellie Alexander: But the thing about reading is it is so critical for so many things.
10:37
Ellie Alexander: The number one way that we build empathy is through reading.
10:42
Ellie Alexander: The way we build our creative muscle is through reading.
10:48
Ellie Alexander: The way we make connections again, da-da-da-da-da.
10:53
Ellie Alexander: Through reading.
10:54
Ellie Alexander: So it it it does speak to such a broader global cultural impact that we're gonna see if this trend continues.
11:02
Tech Guy: Right, and and the connection piece is huge.
11:04
Tech Guy: I mean, if you think about the community we built here, just with not only Reality Writes, but just your writing in general, things like the Ashland Mystery Festival, um, you know, all the book talks you go to when people are coming up and like, oh, you know, it's so great to see you again.
11:18
Tech Guy: And it's just like without if you took all if you took reading out of the mix, all of that goes away, right?
11:25
Tech Guy: No one's no one is no one is connecting to the same degree through other mediums.
11:32
Tech Guy: Um, not not in any, I guess, super like uh creative way.
11:39
Tech Guy: Um, you know, when it when it comes to uh reading, it you just get kind of the the uh like perfect storm of benefits.
11:48
Ellie Alexander: Mm-hmm.
11:49
Ellie Alexander: Well, and I think the other thing is just in terms of like um escapism, a way to kind of bring your own internal temperature, your blood pressure down.
12:00
Ellie Alexander: Like you've talked so much because you work in like, you know, the tech industry, it's really stressful.
12:05
Ellie Alexander: And reading can be a salve for that and a and a true way to just kind of center yourself and and take yourself out of that a little bit.
12:14
Tech Guy: Yes.
12:15
Tech Guy: And I have a stab for that.
12:16
Tech Guy: And it is actually one of the reasons this particular study, because I do read these things, um, right, read them.
12:24
Tech Guy: Uh um and this one was like it it hit close to home, but and this is kind of a did you know moment.
12:33
Tech Guy: Did you know?
12:34
Tech Guy: And this is according to the university, a study that the University of Sussex did.
12:39
Tech Guy: So shout out to the Brits.
12:41
Tech Guy: Um did you know that six minutes of reading cuts stress by 68%?
12:51
Ellie Alexander: Whoa.
12:52
Ellie Alexander: No, it's not right.
12:54
Tech Guy: Yeah, it it's more uh it's more effective than listening to music or even going for a walk.
13:01
Tech Guy: Um so uh and it's because when you read, your your brain disengages from the you know the daily problems.
13:10
Tech Guy: So if you've had a tough day at work, if you if you've you have like relationship stuff going on, if you know, whatever it is, political stuff, um all the things.
13:22
Tech Guy: Yeah.
13:23
Tech Guy: Um when you pick up a book and you start reading, your brain shuts all that off because it's focused on this content that you're consuming.
13:33
Tech Guy: And especially if it's good writing and the story is engaging and creative, it like allows your muscles to relax, your blood pressure to drop, which is good for me.
13:44
Tech Guy: Um, so uh I I couldn't believe it though.
13:48
Tech Guy: Six minutes is all it takes to cut your stress by 68%.
13:53
Ellie Alexander: So, I mean, darlings, this is if you get any pushback for reading, you can just be like, look, I am working on my health right here.
14:00
Tech Guy: Right, right.
14:01
Tech Guy: My doctor said I had high blood pressure.
14:03
Tech Guy: I have to read more.
14:04
Ellie Alexander: I must read for 12 hours a day.
14:08
Tech Guy: Right, right.
14:09
Tech Guy: No, and I it's um I this year especially.
14:14
Tech Guy: Um, I have like I upped my goal for reading, and I'm already on book seven for the year, you know, and we're mid mid to late March right now.
14:24
Tech Guy: So for me, that's that's huge.
14:25
Tech Guy: And again, I know there are people out there that are like seven books, tech guy, really.
14:31
Ellie Alexander: You're two miles and your seven books.
14:34
Tech Guy: A couple of them have been really long, though, I will say.
14:38
Tech Guy: Like the book I'm reading right now is over 600 pages.
14:41
Tech Guy: So, you know, your mileage may vary, I guess, but it's uh I I love it.
14:46
Tech Guy: Um, and it is really a big stress relief for me reading just in general.
14:51
Ellie Alexander: Well, yeah, and I think um to kind of dovetail on that, there it there has been kind of this pressure cooker sometimes of Bookstargram and feeling like, oh, I have to turn my reading into a competition with someone else to be like, oh well, like you're saying, you know, you only read seven books, well, I read 12 and and that kind of mindset.
15:12
Ellie Alexander: And I what I think is interesting is I'm really seeing a shift in that over the last year or so.
15:17
Ellie Alexander: But and but and but and this also ties in to sort of the judgment sometimes around reading of someone being like, oh, you're just reading a cozy mystery, or oh, you're reading a rom com or oh, you're just reading a fun sci-fi.
15:35
Ellie Alexander: Like, no, we need to be reading for pleasure or enjoyment, whatever that is, in whatever form, um, and to really like reclaim that as readers, to be like, it doesn't matter if you know the woman next to me or somebody else on Bookstagram is reading 500 books this year.
15:52
Ellie Alexander: If I'm reading seven and that's helping me, aces, keep going.
15:57
Tech Guy: Yeah, yeah.
15:58
Tech Guy: And and your your patrons out there um who are listening know my feelings on this.
16:05
Tech Guy: That is a that is a very touchy subject for me because I uh I tend to enjoy books of the sci-fi and fantasy nature.
16:16
Tech Guy: And those are not literary masterpieces, according to some, I I would say.
16:25
Tech Guy: Um I joined I joined a book club at work, and the first book we've read was God of the Woods, and it was a mystery, but it you told me after I started reading and I had all these questions, and we were talking about it, and you said, Oh no, but it's I it's considered a literary mystery.
16:46
Tech Guy: And I'm like, what that that word just like so I'm like, what does that mean?
16:51
Tech Guy: Like that just sounds like pretentious, and and and for people who enjoy that, that is wonderful.
16:59
Tech Guy: But to your point, nobody should judge anybody else by what they read.
17:06
Tech Guy: If you're reading, you're you're you're reading.
17:10
Tech Guy: Like that is that is it.
17:11
Tech Guy: We're all reading.
17:12
Tech Guy: That's why there are millions and millions of books out there.
17:16
Ellie Alexander: Right.
17:16
Ellie Alexander: And I think you know, the takeaway today should be that, and this is gonna probably segue us into why we are bringing a call of action to you, darlings, is that we should all be reading more.
17:29
Ellie Alexander: We should be encouraging other people to read more, and we should be finding ways to actively be engaged in helping young readers.
17:38
Ellie Alexander: So, off the cuff, there are a few things that I think are easy wins.
17:44
Ellie Alexander: Number one is reading aloud.
17:48
Ellie Alexander: If you have young kids in your life, if you're a parent or a grandparent, I know it sounds so simple, uh, but it's not necessarily easy, right?
17:57
Ellie Alexander: We all have busy lives and we're working and you know, screens are part of that and all the other things.
18:02
Ellie Alexander: But if you can even take 15 minutes a day to sit down and read aloud to a young child, that makes a critical difference in their literacy and their enjoyment of reading, right?
18:17
Ellie Alexander: Because that's how we, you and I, certainly became the readers that we are today because we had people reading aloud to us and story time was like my dream.
18:27
Ellie Alexander: Like I couldn't wait for library day at school.
18:30
Ellie Alexander: So figuring out ways to engage with young readers is my number one call to action for you.
18:37
Tech Guy: Get the kids hooked on books.
18:39
Ellie Alexander: Get them hooked on books.
18:41
Ellie Alexander: Let's go.
18:42
Ellie Alexander: Book pushers.
18:43
Tech Guy: Yeah.
18:44
Tech Guy: No, I was like, I uh that one of the things that I was so proud of for a long well, still am, I guess, but um I was on the with Scott little little tiny.
18:56
Tech Guy: Well, he wasn't tiny, he was a big chubby baby, but uh, but he was a baby.
19:02
Tech Guy: Uh, and I was on the cover of the Vancouver uh public libraries um you know uh baby like story time brochure that he handed out uh for a while there.
19:16
Tech Guy: That was pretty cool.
19:17
Tech Guy: Um uh and he loved going to story time, like all the kids did that were there.
19:23
Tech Guy: It was so fun to go and and be with them while one of the librarians was reading a book out loud and and they were just they loved it.
19:31
Tech Guy: They were eating it up.
19:32
Tech Guy: They didn't even understand the words, but it was just the activity of being amongst those books and hearing a story being said, the cadence of the words and the expression of the reader and everything that they just um and you know that kid now, well, he's not a kid anymore, but he he consumes books like most kids consume candy.
19:53
Tech Guy: That's right.
19:54
Ellie Alexander: So we did our job.
19:56
Ellie Alexander: Uh well, I think that's another great way to get involved is reach out to your local library.
20:02
Ellie Alexander: So many of them have volunteer programs.
20:05
Ellie Alexander: Uh, so that would be a great entry way.
20:08
Ellie Alexander: I love the organization.
20:10
Ellie Alexander: Reading is fundamental.
20:12
Ellie Alexander: And we can link to it, I think, in the show notes, right?
20:15
Ellie Alexander: They have volunteer opportunities all across the United States where you can get involved.
20:19
Ellie Alexander: There are lots of also organizations like rotary clubs that will go and read to kids.
20:24
Ellie Alexander: Your public school has all kinds of opportunities for you to get involved and volunteer.
20:31
Ellie Alexander: I used to go read aloud once a week at Sky Guy School.
20:35
Ellie Alexander: So any way that you can actively get engaged in helping this next generation get excited about reading, I think is fantastic.
20:44
Tech Guy: Yeah, for sure.
20:45
Tech Guy: And and to tie it back to that technology thing, again, we were talking about this earlier.
20:50
Tech Guy: Um, you know, we have we have apps that that help us limit our screen time, but I've never heard of an app that is out there to help limit your reading time.
21:03
Ellie Alexander: Right.
21:04
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
21:04
Tech Guy: And you think about that for a second.
21:06
Tech Guy: I mean, that is that's kind of wild, right?
21:08
Tech Guy: I mean, we have apps that help us limit a lot of things, you know, how much we watch screens, how much we consume, all of those things.
21:17
Tech Guy: There's nothing out there.
21:18
Tech Guy: The only apps out there are to track how much you've read.
21:23
Tech Guy: Not to tell you to read less, but to help you read more.
21:27
Tech Guy: So there's I I think that's a uh that's very telling uh I think that's pretty profound.
21:34
Ellie Alexander: No, it actually gives me goosebumps.
21:35
Ellie Alexander: It's true, because there's there's no like con of reading for too long, I don't think.
21:42
Ellie Alexander: Sort of like maybe you'll be sleepy the next morning if you stay up too late.
21:45
Ellie Alexander: But like you can speak reading right now.
21:48
Tech Guy: Like, I mean, get outside and take a walk every once in a while for sure.
21:52
Tech Guy: But you know what?
21:52
Tech Guy: Listen to an audiobook while you do it.
21:54
Tech Guy: There you go.
21:54
Tech Guy: Win win.
21:55
Tech Guy: There you go.
21:56
Ellie Alexander: Dun dun dun.
21:57
Tech Guy: If if reading for six minutes lowers You're stressed by 68%.
22:01
Tech Guy: If you add walking on top of that, man, you are going to lead a stress-free life.
22:06
Ellie Alexander: You are going to lead a stress-free life.
22:08
Ellie Alexander: And there is also so much interesting new research uh about crossing the uh brain hemispheres.
22:14
Ellie Alexander: So if you're walking and listening to something on audio, like that's really good for your brain health too.
22:21
Tech Guy: Yeah, just uh watch watch the curbs.
22:23
Tech Guy: They get a little tricky sometimes.
22:24
Tech Guy: Oh, yeah.
22:25
Ellie Alexander: I mean, especially for me, that's true.
22:26
Ellie Alexander: But uh my other thing that I would encourage you, darlings, to do is to support your local indie bookstores because they're doing a lot of events for kids.
22:37
Ellie Alexander: Storytime at local indie bookstores is free.
22:39
Ellie Alexander: Like, you don't have to buy the book for them from them.
22:41
Ellie Alexander: I mean, please do if you're financially able and support them, but like find out what other ways that you can be involved in an indie bookshop.
22:50
Ellie Alexander: I also personally started a Mysteries and Mocktails book club here with my local independent bookstore in California, Lee's Books and Sunnyvale.
23:00
Ellie Alexander: And it's created the most wonderful community that has like gone and blossomed on its own.
23:06
Ellie Alexander: So if you're at home and you're thinking, okay, I don't have a book club, I don't have a local indie bookstore near me, like how do I get involved?
23:14
Ellie Alexander: This is your sign to start something.
23:18
Ellie Alexander: Like, even if it's reaching out to a neighbor who you don't know or doing a post on next door and saying, hey, let's all anyone who wants to read this book, let's meet at this coffee shop, like find ways to create a bookish community in your world in any way, shape, or form.
23:36
Tech Guy: Right, a bookish third space, right?
23:39
Tech Guy: Third place, third space.
23:41
Tech Guy: What is it?
23:42
Tech Guy: Third space, yeah.
23:43
Tech Guy: And then one thing I'd say about indie bookstores, I mean, besides just supporting small businesses being better for everyone, um, and I know this doesn't go for all indie bookstores, but there are many out there.
23:55
Tech Guy: I know Lee's is one of them.
23:56
Tech Guy: Um, you know, books are expensive.
23:59
Tech Guy: Like we get that.
24:00
Tech Guy: Like it books can books can cost a lot, and that's where libraries come in handy.
24:03
Tech Guy: But independent bookstores, a lot of them also have like used books and they have buyback programs.
24:10
Tech Guy: Um, so if you buy a new book, you can take it back in if it's in good condition and get credit toward the purchase of another book at an indie bookstore.
24:18
Tech Guy: So um, and the other thing that I will say about pretty much every independent bookstore that at least that we've had experience with, which now after many, many years of doing this, is a lot of indie bookstores.
24:30
Tech Guy: Yeah, they love to support anything to do with reading.
24:35
Tech Guy: So if you've got an idea for something to get the community more involved in reading, to get more books in the hands of kids and everything, talk to your local independent bookstore owner, and you'd be surprised.
24:47
Tech Guy: Like uh they probably would jump at the chance uh to get involved and help out.
24:53
Tech Guy: I mean, they're not going to give you millions of dollars of books for free, but because they are a business.
24:58
Tech Guy: Um, and they, you know, they are trying to make a living, but they will they will definitely uh be supportive of anything that you, you know, any ideas that you have that uh that will help increase literacy within the community.
25:12
Ellie Alexander: And most of them, like the vast majority of indie bookshops, do support literacy in the community.
25:18
Ellie Alexander: I'm thinking of vintage books in Vancouver, Washington.
25:21
Ellie Alexander: Right.
25:21
Ellie Alexander: They donate books for free for any school kid who comes in.
25:26
Ellie Alexander: And um, when Sky Guy was in elementary and middle school, we were trying to round up books and they were immediately like, here, let we're in.
25:33
Ellie Alexander: Like, how can we help?
25:34
Ellie Alexander: So, yeah, I mean, I think any way that you can collaborate and create community around books is a good thing.
25:42
Ellie Alexander: We have too many books in our house, if there is such a thing.
25:46
Ellie Alexander: Um, we've been trying to make a commitment to filling local libraries whenever we can.
25:52
Ellie Alexander: Little free libraries.
25:53
Tech Guy: Little free libraries, yeah.
25:54
Tech Guy: Little free libraries.
25:55
Ellie Alexander: Sorry, don't take your books.
25:57
Ellie Alexander: Well, I mean, libraries can do friends of library sales, but um, little free libraries.
26:02
Ellie Alexander: Thank you very much.
26:02
Ellie Alexander: Yeah, yeah.
26:04
Tech Guy: And I uh just in case, I'm I'm sure most, if not all, listeners out there, darlings out there are familiar with little free libraries, but those are the little like cases that you see out in front of some people's homes that have books in them.
26:19
Tech Guy: And it's free.
26:20
Tech Guy: You can come take as many books as you want, leave as many books as you want.
26:24
Tech Guy: Um, and it's just community, a great way for the community to share books for free um and to kind of spread the love.
26:32
Tech Guy: So again, going back to that uh the whole you know, books can be expensive thing, it's great to kind of spread the wealth, I guess.
26:40
Tech Guy: And so we do when we go on long walks, which is like, you know, well, you know, every weekend together, we'll take a look at our bookshelves and go, okay, you know, I mean, what last time, last time we discovered we had three copies of the same book, like on different bookshelves.
26:57
Tech Guy: And we were like, What, why?
26:58
Tech Guy: Why?
26:59
Tech Guy: What happened?
27:00
Tech Guy: At some point, we we acquired three copies of the same book.
27:05
Tech Guy: So we took those and we dropped them into various little free libraries that we encountered along the way.
27:11
Ellie Alexander: That's right.
27:12
Ellie Alexander: Yeah.
27:13
Ellie Alexander: And I guess to wrap it up, darlings, in the comments, we would love to hear from you.
27:18
Ellie Alexander: Like, what other ideas do you have for creating community around books to getting this next generation excited about books?
27:26
Ellie Alexander: I want to hear.
27:28
Tech Guy: Yeah, or things that you're already doing.
27:31
Tech Guy: Um, share those in the comments because this is such a connected community of readers and writers.
27:38
Tech Guy: Um, it would be great.
27:39
Tech Guy: And it would probably help other people in different communities to implement those ideas.
27:45
Tech Guy: And and again, just get the get everyone hooked on books.
27:49
Ellie Alexander: Hooked on books.
27:50
Ellie Alexander: That's our takeaway.
27:51
Ellie Alexander: You get a book, hook those good on books.
27:57
Tech Guy: That's right, right.
27:58
Tech Guy: There are a lot of other bad things that can get hooked on, but books is not one of them.
28:01
Tech Guy: So all right.
28:05
Ellie Alexander: Well, on that note, until next time and happy, happy reading.
28:10
Ellie Alexander: Thank you for being readers in the world.
28:12
Ellie Alexander: You are you're doing the work.
28:14
Tech Guy: That's right.
28:15
Tech Guy: Until next time, happy reading.