Heya <<First Name>>,
I’ve been traveling around the last few months …
![](https://mcusercontent.com/9bebf7e5024a649447d31ffa5/_compresseds/db998b9c-27bc-997b-0260-efa384feeb43.jpeg) Rome.
![](https://mcusercontent.com/9bebf7e5024a649447d31ffa5/_compresseds/ea390403-e5a9-90a5-6759-ffca859ec78d.jpeg) Jaffa.
![](https://mcusercontent.com/9bebf7e5024a649447d31ffa5/images/463f68e2-facc-d426-c3b4-b149885c49d2.jpeg) Paris.
… and I’ve had a lot of time to think about how reading with kids can change the world for the better.
But lately I’ve been wondering what reading is actually for — what does reading lead to when you’re a grownup?
Here are three things I came up with.
For what it’s worth.
1. Books make a home
Whenever I move into a new rental place, the first thing I do is set out the stack of books I’m hauling around.
![](https://mcusercontent.com/9bebf7e5024a649447d31ffa5/images/e99ba50b-d93e-b6b5-02a1-bd0168c7f701.jpeg) Some of the current batch.
That’s because a new country can be disorienting.
(To wit: I was just in a small grocery and bought what I thought was milk. It was a yogurt drink. Which is not very good on granola, though I may get used to it.)
Books can be that stable center when life gets swirly.
2. Reading can make the mundane sublime
I had a Kafkaesque airport experience yesterday, involving all kinds of technology problems, security-line waits, and violations of my personal space.
The whole time, though, I was reading a novel (see below) I’d chanced upon at a used-book store in Tel Aviv.
![](https://mcusercontent.com/9bebf7e5024a649447d31ffa5/images/cd6b4cab-fd86-3551-c012-bdb07bb04209.jpg) Halper’s bookstore, Tel Aviv.
So instead of feeling like the world was interrupting me to death, I got to do something I enjoyed.
3. Reading feels meaningful
As my flight was coming into Antalya, Turkey, the plane hit a vivid patch of turbulence.
I barely noticed it, though, because I was racing to finish J.D. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” before we landed. I was anxious to see if the characters found something that felt like … purpose.
Hmm. That’s a weirdly on-the-nose analogy about the virtues of reading in a turbulent world.
![](https://mcusercontent.com/9bebf7e5024a649447d31ffa5/_compresseds/d2861f29-6e00-ce2f-9054-379c4451bda0.jpeg) We landed.
But yeah, I think reading is a path for finding meaning. Not the only path, to be sure, but a really good one.
Lately I’ve been wondering if there’s even more to the idea.
Most Sunday mornings, I try to read for a while from the books in my stack. I love the reflective place I drop into during those two or three hours.
And beyond a certain (and not all that lofty) quality threshold, it almost doesn’t matter WHAT I’m reading.
It only matters THAT I’m reading.
![](https://mcusercontent.com/9bebf7e5024a649447d31ffa5/_compresseds/0220d70a-afeb-f7ea-1f76-529d25822f91.jpeg)
For those few hours, I’m deeply attentive to other voices, other lives, other ideas.
Questions about what else I should be doing, producing, or achieving in my life all disappear.
Reading feels … I don’t know … devotional.
Like the reason to read is reading.
Hope you’re well, and …
Happy reading,
… who believe that reading with kids can change the world for the better.
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