Levenger: Tools for Serious Readers

One of my favorite online stores is Levenger. They offer a wide variety of products from furniture to bookmarks that help make your reading life more enjoyable.

The Levenger product I use most often is page points. It is my habit while reading to tag passages that inspire me. Highlighting isn’t good enough because it’s hard to go back and find the passages again. Sticky marking flags aren’t great either because they often fall off and aren’t reusable more than a couple of times. Page points are ideal because they’re paper thin and clamp on tight to the page without leaving a mark.

Steve Leveen, one of Levenger’s founders, writes Living Your Well-Read Life, a column that highlights little tidbits readers can identify with. In Giving Up On Books, he says that professional readers, such as reviewers, editors, and booksellers, stop reading a book by page 50 if it hasn’t captured their interest. Leveen compares it to wine tasting. In a yearly reading schedule of about 50 books, giving up on a dozen books means that we’re “tasting” enough books.

What a concept. If I had a well-stocked public library readily available, I might consider doing this. But, since I pay $15-20 USD per book, I’m darn well going to finish it even if it means propping my eyes open with toothpicks.

I also identified with his other article, To Lend or Give. I’m always uncomfortable when people insist on lending me books because I have a long list of books that I want to read and theirs is usually not on it. If I end up borrowing their book, I feel tremendous pressure to read it in case they want to discuss it. Leveen suggests the following way to deal with these awkward moments.

When someone offers to lend me a book, I now thank them but explain that I prefer to buy my books because I write all over them. I say, “So let me just write down the title and also some reasons why you like the book so much…..” Besides being completely true, this flatters the person–and we both dodge those dangerous rocks of amateur book lending.

So, if you’re trying to figure out what to give me for my birthday this year, I’ll accept anything from Levenger especially this Reading Island chair and ottoman.