On Why I Will Never Be An Influencer, and What You Learn From 50 Podcast Episodes

I don’t know if I’m more or less distracted than most people these days. You pick up the phone to do one thing and suddenly there’s a notification, and before you know it you’ve spent an hour thumbing through moving stories and adverts (too many) and you’re reminded you should be reading, not scrolling.

I love reading more than anything else. More than film or television or music or even theatre. And nine times out of ten, more than socializing or taking part in reality. Reality is overrated.

So I was - until very recently - quite happy to be an ambitious reader. I set goals for a number of books per year, made physical TBR piles - near to toppling over but certainly in the desired reading order, I made pacts with other people to read certain things together so I wouldn’t get distracted. You see, I like to read four books at once - the same way no one really has an issue with keeping up with four or more television series at the same time. But all of these efforts should have been made for moi, not because I was eyeballing the other book nerds and and comparing my volume to theirs, my list to theirs, trying to book the same authors on the podcast, or making a concerted effort to book different authors who weren’t getting as many opportunities at the microphone.

No one should ever be comparing themselves in the way I have been: setting these goals and bullying myself into trying to keep up with the Joneses of Instagram on what other people are reading. I find myself thinking: “Thank goodness I finally read Whistler or Fruit Fly or Villa Coco.” And this interior monologue usually happens weeks before the books even come out because I have galleys, but I’ve been tapping at the phone box and I’ve seen that other people have already read these books, unboxed these books, made videos about these books, written reviews about these books.

I’ve been at this since before the advent of iPhones. In the early aughts I was a producer and entertainment reporter at SIRIUS XM Radio. I got lots of bookmail. I made the rounds on the talk shows to talk about what was coming out. I had a jingle. So, in may ways, this is old hat to me, but the current pace is one I can’t maintain. The act of being an influencer is like running a buffet for a tapeworm - it’s just never enough.

So now, after 50+ episodes of the podcast, I’m taking a moment to look back and hear what all these wonderful writers have been telling me for the past three years. Dan Brown told me that he exclusively reads non-fiction. Roshan Sethi told me he exclusively reads classics. Daisy Goodwin tears through more books in a weekend than I do in a month. I’m not sure which of those boxes I want to fit into (probably none of them) but I know I don’t want to keep comparing myself in the book world.

A big part of my “work work” life has been reading books - getting manuscripts at such an early stage that it’s just a Word document and entire sections will change over the next two years. I read them to see what could make a terrific film or television adaptation. Not only that, but the vetting process includes seeing which ones are placed with publishers who will create a real push to drive the marketing and publicity when the time comes. So I’m reading for adaptations, podcast consideration, book reviews or pure joy. See the wee video I made yapping about all that here:

Moving forward though, I’m making a pact to make no pacts. I’m going to keep my TBR here on the desk and it will ebb and flow depending on my mood on any given day. I don’t want to read all the hot new books, I don’t want to read all the Booker Longlist books (maybe four, but let me see the synopses first) and I don’t want to spend more time talking about books than reading books.

Now here’s what I will do: Starting in September, every Tuesday I’m going to pick one book and write a little sprinkle about it. It might be a book that comes out that day, or it could be a book that came out during the days of Marie Antoinette. I’m going to make it up as I go. Instead of a BOTM (Book-of-the-month) I’ll be featuring a BOTW (Book-of-the-Week). No mandates, just joy and the spreading of the joy. I’ve already picked the first four for September and am eager to share them with you. I’ll be over here on my own program, and skipping the trends (except for the one about the most recent picture of one’s dog - that I’ll do).

Thanks for lending an ear and I’ll see you here on Tuesdays for BOTW and Fridays for The Weekend Read. If you haven’t done, please do subscribe and follow here on Substack and over on YouTube if you prefer motion pictures.

Keep on reading :)

John-Paul