Setting the Scene
Dear Reader,
Something that is often half-considered at most is the setting in which you read. We’ve briefly explored one component of this in “Setting the Soundtrack,” which comfortably nests inside today’s piece. You may have anticipated today’s topic given the stray line about “a distinct sense of place, a distinct ambience,” which wasn’t really about soundtracks unless we’re getting deep into a metaphor. (We aren’t.)
Some of this will be a bittersweet essay, a sadness for certain scenes for reading which are presently absent. Yet I trust there will be enough suggested here that you won’t require stumbling around in great sadness. For there are many opportunities here for the present, along with ones to be stowed away for future use.
The Beverage
Coffee
Black Tea
Green Tea
White Tea
Herbal Infusion
The Sparkling Refreshment
The Adult Beverage
There’s quite a bit of variety above, and that list is not all-inclusive. Where is your lemon-infused water, you ask? I won’t dwell on every possibility. I’ll trust your imaginations to fill in those possibilities. Part of the fun of reading is to work on completing the incomplete. I will, however, work through one of them a bit more, simply as it’s too plain above.
Coffee.
You see, even coffee can be played around with. There’s the PSL, an imaginative fall drink—or a most basic one for those of you who hate fun—that fits well with a certain class of fall reads. I prefer a maple latte, myself, but I’ll do one PSL a year, mostly for nostalgia anymore. And I pair those dessert drinks (not to be confused with a drink one has with a dessert) with one of two types of reads: either a fun read or a read that requires a treat incentive (think headache-inducing density). So the dessert coffee drink is either a perfect match or the opposite, as a sort of encouragement.
I’m mostly a black coffee drinker when I’m having coffee, although my regular drink is the iced Americano, a choice much debated as to whether it’s “real coffee.” I like the darker roast, just as I prefer my black tea smoked (lapsang souchong is the best). Give me those husky overtones. The Americano meshes well with any read, though a cold-brewed iced coffee blends best with more academic material.
A hot coffee goes down well when you’re freezing, of course, but it also pairs splendidly with poetry, academic reading, or a long novel. The stimulus is as much the wafting steam as the caffeine in your bloodstream. Interestingly, how you’re reading can influence how you’re drinking, too. There’s the slow reflective sip, as you pause and consider what you just read, but there’s also the rapid gulp, where your eyes never leave the page and your brain barely processes that you are drinking.
Depending on what I’m reading, or whatever mood strikes me, I might head to the one place that offers Turkish coffee in my area—and down that muddy deliciousness goes, with an enjoyably dainty, porcelain cup and saucer to match. Flat whites, cappuccinos, pour-overs—there exists a host of coffee options to pair with your read. Select the read; select a coffee drink to match.
(Okay, my favorite college study drink was this café that offered a full tea tray including a large teapot, cream, and rock candy on the end of toothpick stirrers. It was definitely a low tea compared to those found in the UK and certain imitative US variants, but the stirrers were a delightful touch, as was the ability to camp out by yourself or with another, sipping your tea and sliding into studious contemplation.)
I barely got into discussing coffee possibilities for your read, and the rest of the list is wide-open. Do you have a specific drink for any reading? Or have you tried different drinks for different reads?
Placemaking
The place in which one reads surprisingly matters. Even different coffee shops can alter how you read.
Some you can stand and read at, with natural light passing over you. Others you find yourself seated in a dark corner, an LED light that will momentarily blind you if you look at it directly somehow barely lighting your pages. Some coffee shops invite the conference-call startup-type patron, a crowd that may prove difficult to do much reading around unless you’ve chosen a parallel business-type read. Other coffee shops are filled with students, low-humming conversation and unwieldy, strangely named books framing your own chosen read.
The places we can read are, in fact, vast. And some people have probably considered this conversation already too precious. Who cares about what one drinks while reading? Who cares where you are while reading? You just read.
Such wonderments are natural from bookworms who do indeed read whatever wherever. (I might, ahem, call them out for being philistines on this point, something I find amusing as they consider more reluctant readers to be the philistines.)
My amusement aside, I’m mostly in agreement. A person can read whatever wherever. I get to do it regularly.
I’m unpersuaded, however, that the setting can’t improve matters. I’m unpersuaded that the setting lacks the power to alter our read. Sometimes a place forces you to read differently. Much like a work suit can help your mind focus in a different way from a sweat suit.
Reading in a beautiful library reminds me that other minds have found beauty in ideas and books—it can remind me that there might be something of value in sitting here with this book that I find challenging. Reading in a library humbles me as I realize how much I haven’t read. I’m more likely to push through one last hour of reading when I’m at the library, whereas if I’m at home I’ll simply go do the dishes, which for once look like an inviting chore.
Reading on a picnic blanket allows my mind to glance away with the clouds floating overhead. A drifting in and out of the read. The attendant guilt I might feel in a library for such hazy distraction is instead made appropriate by the picnic blanket setting.
And here’s the thing: for a reluctant reader more than any other—those who are trying to build reading habits—finding a setting or two for the types of reading one wants or needs to do can transform a frustrating reading experience into a possible one.
I recall a student of mine who went to a coffee shop one day to study something I’d assigned and his comment afterwards was “I felt like Kreigh.” Now, he was partly mocking me to his fellow laborers, but he was also noting that that transferred existence—whether it was a shared experience with me or he was inhabiting a role as a kind of actor—had helped him to complete his reading as he needed to.
Thus, aside from my own idiosyncratic appreciation for choosing “fitting” reading settings when I can, I value the consideration of settings because they provide encouragement for others, whether or not they truly influence the read. And so I offer the following as possible reading settings:
The Home Couch
The Lattice Window-Light Read
The Park Bench
The Hammock
The Library
The Bookstore
The Coffee Shop
The Desk
The Picnic Blanket
Beaches and Boats
My current town seems to be home of the traveling hammock. People cart them around and set them up wherever they can. Frankly, I delight in this whimsy, though I do not yet possess my own hammock to join them in their felicity. But I fully support this setting for a read, though I cannot claim to know which sorts of reading material are best suited to it.
Reading with sunlight streaming through a lattice window onto a cozy rug—now that is a read I adore. Sadly, I haven’t lived in such a house since I was about ten, but sitting cross-legged in the early morning sunshine, book in hand, is a “place” I won’t forget. (This is not least because early mornings were the only sure bet that I’d be able to read undisturbed by parents or siblings…)
Reading of the Hours
Yes, the time of day can influence your read. This might be because certain reading “winds you up” and you’d rather not try it before bed. This might be because you’re studying and you’d like to sleep on the material. (This can be a useful study technique, by the by.)
The time of day can dictate the quality of read you give it yourself. If you think of the essay “Pay Attention!,” some of the attentive practices mentioned in there cannot happen when you’re too tired or anticipating a full day’s events—opposite ends of the day can mess with deep reads, though they can also allow for them.
I don’t like doing in-depth research late at night anymore. I find I can’t unwind afterwards. I can still do tough academic material if I’m in the mood, but it can’t be central to my research projects. (Occasionally, one stumbles into that territory accidentally, and it’s annoying.)
A book that should be a great late-night read for me is Zena Hitz’s Lost in Thought, but because the Milwaukee chapter of the Society of Philosophers in America is hosting her on June 2nd, I have to take a few notes on the read in preparation for our conversation and the digital handout for attendees. And so that read can’t be a casual read anymore, which is frankly a great source of irritation for me as it’s a book suited to casual reading.
Business books are great midday reads; books requiring notetaking are likewise well-suited to the naturally-lit hours.
Place and purpose obviously influence matters as much as time, but you can actually orient your entire reading day around its hours if you so desire. When I’m fully at leisure, I’ve absolutely done so. It’s a fun changeup.
But again, reading of the hours isn’t constrained to holidays and other occasions of full leisure. Letting the rhythm of the day influence your selected reading often happens naturally. It’s a helpful orientation as well if you’re trying to retrain reading habits. Sometimes we don’t want to read only because we’re intending to read material that’s ill-fitting for the time of day. And so reading of the hours can possess more importance than one might imagine.
Unnecessary Necessities
Mug
Stained-Glass Lamp
Snacks
I like many people of a certain age have several mugs. (Well, I had several mugs even growing up, so I guess that’s the nature of a family with too many coffee mugs. I go to my parents’ house and can still drink from my own mugs there.) When they are all washed and I’m alert enough, I select the type of mug I want for the type of reading I’m doing.
Mega mugs for mega reads. Loose-leaf tea mug—it’s glass and of genius design—for more contemporary reads. My Pink Panther mug for when I want something fun in my reading day. Utility mugs for utility reads—this the most common mug of choice.
I have a stained-glass candlelit lamp that I acquired completely unintentionally, but the moment I saw it I had to purchase it. (The backstory involves Craigslist and my going into someone’s basement and my somehow not getting murdered but instead leaving with this stained-glass treasure.) It’s predominantly for evening reads, though if the day is dark and stormy, I might light it midday. My house is drafty enough that gusting winds outside seem to get inside, and thus the lamp flickers hauntingly. I reserve this lamp for reads where I want the room a little darker, warmed by a yellow beeswax candle’s blaze lighting orange and blue glass panels. Fantasy works, older books, reads that warm the heart—these are the reads to be paired with the lamp.
As for snacks, I know no commentary from me is needed. I’d simply suggest avoiding the kind that generate plentiful food dust.
I must admit that even though I’ve been thinking about this particular essay since week one of writing these, and even before then, I fear I may have left something out. If you think I have, whether minor or major, please let me know.
Whatever gaps I’ve left, I invite you to fill them for yourselves. I do believe I’ve at least offered enough introduction to what setting the scene for your reading can look like. And so, with that,
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. Yes, we did lose a piece on Friday. I was a bit under the weather and couldn’t quite finish up this essay or any other, and so last week was once again only two. I am considering moving to twice a week anyway, as the spring invites more gardening and the like, but I’ll strive for three this week and next. After all, it’s still snowing…