Connecting With Readers

Lory and I have gone through starting to think about doing a podcast, talking about what the podcast might be, settling (Sort of; things are still evolving.) on what we were going to do, actually making it happen, and then living our first three months of podcast episodes and blog posts.

There have been so many ideas. How would we even guess how many? Through all of it, one idea was always floating around. We wanted to connect with people; we wanted to touch readers. We’ve tried to be clear; we aren’t setting ourselves up as experts. We aren’t going to tell anyone what they should read or how to read.

We might sometimes talk enthusiastically about books we like, but always in the spirit of sharing not pontificating. Our hope, it might not be too big to say, our dream, was to find ways to connect with readers; to somehow touch reading lives with our podcast and website.

It is exciting. We are starting to hear from people. We are starting to hear about connections that we have made. We are touching people!

We have a friend whose reading was limited to his college required reading. Reading for pleasure had become a foreign idea to him. We had talked with him a couple of times about reading for pleasure. He agreed that he should, but didn’t seem moved to action. Recently, Lory put a favorite book, The Boy, the mole, the fox, and the Horse, in his hands. “Read it. You’ll love it.” He admired the handwriting and the drawings, and said maybe he would read it.

We saw him again and he told us that he had read half of it and was enjoying it. He was enjoying reading as a direct result of Lory finding the right book for him.

Another friend, after listening to some of our podcast episodes and watching our interview with Patti Callahan, said she was going to read more in 2023, and that she had started a 2023 reading list.

Speculating on the impact of the Internet on attention spans, another friend suggested that we do an episode on attention spans and reading, and another on listening to audio books and is that reading?

So much fun! We are looking forward to hearing more of your stories and suggestions.

Email us at twosides2thestory@yahoo.com