The Well-Read Life

Imagine recovering time for yourself by putting your phone down and feeding your imagination and intellect through reading great books. The Well-Read Life: Nourish Your Soul through Deep Reading and Intentional Friendship is a step-by-step personal guide to reading well and reading often. No matter where you start, you can succeed by taking small but determined steps in the company of like-minded friends.

In The Well-Read Life, Marcie Stokman and Colleen Hutt of Well-Read Mom, a rapidly growing national women’s book club, offer practical, inspiring advice based on their own experiences and the experiences of others just like you to help you rediscover the importance of reading and setting your own reading goals. With the authors by your side every step of the way, you will learn to:

• Rebuild and strengthen your intellectual, imaginative, and spiritual capacities that have been dulled or weakened in the digital age.
• Identify and reclaim leisure time and space so that reading time becomes the best, most anticipated part of your day.
• Understand and apply what you read in a way that allows you to grow personally and spiritually.
• Connect with others in more meaningful ways, especially through the sharing and discussing of worthy literature.
• Choose books with characters who will inspire you and enrich your life.
• Make room in your life for things that matter—the ideas and images based on goodness, truth, and beauty that lead us ever closer to God.

Each chapter contains down-to-earth advice on how to step away from your screen and create a space to learn and grow at your own pace, free of guilt and pressure. Action steps at the end of each chapter will help you set and achieve your reading goals, evaluate worthwhile reads, overcome reader’s block, and find reading groups near you.

Discover the liberation and confidence that come from exploring and understanding the moral imagination and creative genius of the literary greats of the ages. Through great and worthy books, you will begin to reclaim your life—and your world—and make room for all that is good, true, and beautiful.