Reading is a gift made for everyone

Dear Readers,

When I founded Book Post a few years ago, I had in mind my own old friends and family, curious people outside the guild of those who follow books for work, who would ask me, a supposed expert, when we got together for holidays and so on, what I’d recommend from what I’ve been reading. I would be flummoxed. I didn’t have an answer to this question. I was on my own eccentric path that I couldn’t even quite explain, much less adapt to anyone else. How to be both genuine and useful? I found myself groping toward an answer that would help my questioner find a way for themselves. Finding a satisfying reading life is more about ways of reading than finding a particular book, weaving reading into who you are.

I know I haven’t quite achieved it, but I am trying with Book Post to give a taste of different ways of reading, of different models of enjoyment and appreciation and illumination, by introducing readers to writers I think have an angle on it. I hope that by not engaging directly with politics I can help people step back a bit from the passions of partisanship and see a common basis for looking closely at things that reward attention and coming to informed conclusions and shared appreciations. I think we should be cultivating this across the culture—which is why I advocate for bookselling and libraries and authorship and independent publishing, thriving sources for ideas and culture within communities.

I hope you will consider giving Book Post to your own friends and family who might be open to clearing a little space for engaged reading in their week. You can time a gift Book Post subscription to bloom at a certain moment and you can add a personalized message.

I would like Book Post to grow beyond the little garden of the already bookish, much though I love and value those people/us. I want it to be part of a bigger effort to build a nourishing, humane, shared culture of ideas. And for that I need you!

Give the gift of Book Post, a present that is more a road ahead than a thing in a box, for the holidays. Or if not Book Post, support an independent bookseller, publisher, or outlet for journalism with your holiday giving. Help us resist the corroding forces in our public discourse with positive forms of informed engagement.

And thank you for reading!

Your editor,
Ann
Ann Kjellberg
Founding Editor
Book Post