Welcome to The Better Reader.

Hi! I’m Ellen. This newsletter is my love letter to fiction and my apology for why you need to read it. Not just because I like it, but because learning to read better will make you (and me) a better person.

We all technically know how to read. (Although, shockingly, that’s not actually true: 54% of American adults read below sixth grade reading level). But I’m not talking about phonograms and sentence diagramming; I’m talking about reading well. This means setting aside our own lens, whatever it might be—moral, political, religious, etc.—until we have seen the text clearly and without distortion, on its own terms. Only then can we judge whether or not we liked it, or agreed with it, or were inspired or disgusted by it. Judgement must be secondary to understanding.

This is particularly important in reading fiction. Nonfiction is fun, but more obvious. You can access the whole wonder of a book about octopuses by simply understanding the words on the page, because octopuses are amazing and the book provided you with amazing facts. But you cannot access the whole wonder of, say, Moby Dick, by simply reading the words on the page. You would miss the entire heart of the book and everything it had to offer you—except for the whale facts.

Reading fiction in this way is a learned skill, not one that can be intuited, just as learning to recognize letters and sound out words is a learned skill and not one programmed into our brains at birth.

I learned how to do this in college, in pursuit of my English Lit degree. I’ll never forget what one professor said during a lecture on Don Quixote: “You need to learn how to read stories well. Otherwise how will you learn to read the story of your own life? To be a bad reader of one’s own life is morally dangerous.”

The Better Reader is my space to write about this overlap between story and life. I’ll be posting regular reviews of books I’m reading and books I’m reading to my children. I’ll write about what being a good reader means and how to approach fiction in a fruitful way. And I’ll write the occasional reflection/essay/rant/opinion about the whole “reading one’s own life” part—the part where life happens and I have thoughts about it.

I’m still learning to read my own life. I’m still using literature to practice. I hope one day to be a better reader. And I hope you’ll join me.

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