A Few of "My Favorite Things": A Reading Area Without a Reading Room

As a lifelong bibliophile, I've always loved the idea of a special room or nook devoted to reading. However, in my adult life, I have not been able to yet make this dream a reality. I grew up in an open-concept house with a library room. Currently, I live in an open-concept house, albeit with a *lot* of bookshelves. Our "library" consists of tall shelves in the living area, by the laundry room, and next to the kitchen table. So, there is not one dedicated, single-function space for my reading nook.

This has bothered me for a while. So, through researching for this post, I hope to get myself on the road toward transforming a corner of the very multi-functional space into a mental and physical "hideaway" for a reading mama. Come along with me on this journey!

What the Internet Says a Reading Room Should Be Like

According to almost every source, a reading room should be dedicated, more or less, to reading. One institutional example of this is the Library of Congress reading room. The Library itself contains over 56,000 volumes with various topics and years of publication. This room accommodates adults (16+ years) who are there to research, and has spaces to read, access to a selection of the books each day, and reference librarians. People are allowed to bring only items pertinent to their own research into the room (related books, note-taking materials, a warm sweater).

What about a personal example? I would guess that none of us have a room in our homes quite as large as the LoC reading room. However, we may have one room that contains some or all of the books we own and/or have checked out from the library. That room becomes our reading room. Most ideas for setting up your own reading room in this post came from here and here.

What items should we have in a reading room? Ideally, this should not be a cluttered place. Each item should support the purpose of the room - attentive, calm reading. Some ideas are:

• Books to read.
• A comfortable, yet sturdy, seating surface. I prefer an armchair with an ottoman available for when the knees need to be straight (plus, having one's feet up allows cats to cuddle!). Others might prefer a thick rug by the fireplace. Or (like my brother) an adult-size bean bag.
• A small table one can sit at. This is especially helpful if you are going between books (as when researching or cross-referencing) or taking notes on what you're reading.
• An empty corner of a room, if an entire room is not available for reading.
• Pets (depending on your pet). If your companion animal is willing to actually stretch out on your lap or cuddle on your shoulder, without getting the zoomies, scratching your face/neck, or otherwise needing a lot of attention, s/he can be an excellent reading companion.

How can we set up the atmosphere of our reading room? Overall, the atmosphere should be cozy yet studious - we (maybe) don't want to fall asleep in the middle of a good chapter when we have more to get through! Some ideas include:

• Plenty of natural light, which is kinder on the eyes and helps us stay alert by suppressing the production of melatonin. 
• Good-quality artificial light, whether from candles, lamps (movable or upright), or other source.
• Textiles with textures and colors you like and associated with reading. I like having an afghan, too, but it's very easy to get sleepy!
• If you're a plant person, and the other inhabitants of your house (I'm looking at you, Merlin and Maybelle) aren't prone to eating whatever they come across, a vase of flowers or a houseplant or two can bring additional pleasure to the reading experience.
• Time to read. This is very often in short snippets for me.
• Quiet, with non-distracting ambient noise (like a crackling fire in the fireplace).
• Lack of distractions, including your phone, TV, and other source of internet.

The Physical Setup of My Reading Room

I'll say this here: I am not a Pinterest person (though I do have a business account there), and my house is most certainly not a Pinterest house. If you've looked over any of the ideas for setting up your reading room that I've linked to, you may be wondering what my present reading area looks like. Here it is!

Surrounding this multifunctional space (also used for nursing a very active Baby) is our kitchen table behind the sofa, my husband's book piles at the other arm of the sofa, a fireplace and plushy rug in front, kitchen to the left, and 7 tall bookshelves holding the majority of our home library. On the TV table that houses the immediate portion of my TBR, I have space for a water bottle or giant mug of tea, pen(s), some gently used index cards for bookmarks/shopping lists, and my devotional stack including Bibles, journal, and prayer notebook. Quite often, Maybelle will also be sitting in the sunny spot.

This is currently the only spot in the house where I can really read - the basement doesn't have a proper chair or good lighting, upstairs is relegated to office and nursery, and my back isn't a huge fan of the sofa even with pillows. So, what can I do to improve my reading space?

The back problem can be addressed by moving to an orange easy chair with another ottoman (you can see it from this sofa seat) and putting my reading "helps" into a basket or shoebox on a high part of the shelf by the chair. The attention problem can be helped by putting my phone into the bedroom right after Baby goes down for the night, and lying down for a few minutes during the day to help me be more alert for post-baby-bedtime reading.

The Mental Pieces for My Reading Room

While many websites describing a reading room include thorough descriptions of the physical setup, I find that the mental setup can make or break a consistent reading experience. Eight skills recommended for an effective reader or re-reader (student, leisure, or other) are:

1. Cultivating an overall attitude that one needs to perform "before," "during," and "after" tasks to get the most out of reading. (This is consistent with a blended learning and flipped classroom approach.)
2. Creating questions before and during reading, and seeing how the text answers them. To deepen one's level of understanding farther and farther, Socratic questions are a good set to use.
3. Activating past knowledge and experiences beforehand - which vary depending on the reader - to guide interpretation of the text. This unfortunately includes conscious and unconscious biases that may shift the reader from an authorial-intent standpoint to a reader-response standpoint, but one does also need a level of background knowledge to understand a text within its historical context.
4. During the reading process, self-monitoring. This ensures that the reader is always aware (metacognition) of his or her level of attention to and understanding of the text. If something is unclear, go back and re-read the sentence or paragraph with more attention and less speed.
5. During, creating a visual in one's head or on paper. Graphic organizers like concept maps or Venn diagrams (first example in previous link) can give visual structure to an otherwise meandering piece of prose or poetry.
6. During, searching for information and selecting the most pertinent bits. This may require outside sources (dictionary, handbook, etc.)
7. During and after, summarizing the text. These can be interim (after every paragraph or section) and after the entire quantity one has read.
8. During and after, making inferences toward logical conclusions or implications of the text. This is particularly important for philosophical books, and any other material that contains arguments with and without logical fallacies and other reasoning errors.

Given these skills, and where I'd like to be as a reader, where am I right now in this department? A few things: fairly consistent motivation, knowledge that the skills above are helpful for reading, some (sporadic) use of said skills, bits of time throughout the day plus about an hour in the evening, and a massive TBR list.

What do I need to get to where I'd like to be? I need more alertness and brainpower during the times available to me for reading, a note-taking system (since I love to learn/remember by writing) to help maintain my focus on more difficult material, and removal of my principal distraction (phone).

How am I going to get there? Stay tuned . . .