A Can we read? update

August 20, 2024

Hello, lovely humans.

Today I’m sharing a little behind-the-scenes update about what’s going on with Can we read? these days, including some changes coming soon.

First, this newsletter — and your humble newsletter writer — appeared on the front page of my small-town newspaper a few weeks ago. There is no online link to read the (very lovely) article without a subscription, so I can’t share, but there is my face.

This was especially nice, because I freelanced for this very paper when I was 25yo and trying to figure out how to make a living as a writer

Second, recently my family and I won a kidlit trivia contest held at our local public library — which, for the record, the youth services librarian encouraged me to participate in even though I said I didn’t want to come and crush some little children — and we crushed all the little children and their parents. I am proud to say that it wasn’t only me, either — my family members held their own, even my husband, who is the least obsessed (see: not-at-all obsessed) with children’s books and yet was still the only participant in the room who was able to answer the bonus question about Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo (“What was the name of the grocery store in this book?”)

Looking at this photo later, he said to me, “That’s a very rare smile from you. That smile only comes out once in a great while, when you’re really, really happy.” (He’s not wrong.)

📸 Photo by the incomparable youth services librarian Hannah Klapperich-Mueller, who was the only person in the room sweating from the intensity more than I was

Ch-ch-changes

It’s once again time to change some things here.

Many — but probably not most and definitely not all — of you know that Can we read? is my side project. I work full-time, outside my home, for a nonprofit technology/IT organization and I travel a lot for my career, the demands of which have recently ramped up a lot. I also serve on the board of a state-wide library organization as well as the board of my beloved local public library. That’s just my work life — I’m also a mother and a wife, I have hobbies and need to sleep, blah blah blah.

I have poured everything in me into this newsletter for the last 4.5 years and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. In fact, I seem to have doubled down on my mission to help grownups find good books for the kiddos in their lives, to the degree that I am trying to find a publisher for the book I want to write about it. By some miracle (or perhaps just my formidable will), I cranked out a proposal in something like 27 days — !! — and my wonderful agent and I are putting the finishing touches on it now.

And let me be abundantly clear that this newsletter, which I’ve produced twice a week, pretty much without fail and without a large number of breaks for almost the entirety of its existence, has given back to me in spades: 4843 of you subscribe today.

I started with 12 subscribers and even a year later, had only 111 — I am not one of those Substackers who has experienced quick, explosive growth — and I never take your support for granted. (I really don’t — it’s often what keeps my dedication to and love of this alive.)

But I’ve reached a point where the metronome of my life is out of sync with the needs of my body and my heart.

Left to my own devices — and my own brain, which is 50% BS on a good day — I will just keep going and going and going and going. I can be extremely tenacious, sometimes to my own detriment, sometimes to the point of not noticing (or more accurately, willfully ignoring) my own needs.

I just don’t want to do that anymore.

It’s not that I can no longer keep up, it’s that I no longer want to push myself this hard. And the solution is not to increase the speed — or even maintain the speed — of my metronome. The solution is to go slower.

This is the current state of my home office, and I've resigned myself to it always looking like a bomb full of children's books went off in here

What to expect going forward

I have not thought out every last detail of what slowing down means for Can we read?, but some upcoming changes include:

One post a week

Beginning on October 1st, I will publish only one post a week, on Thursdays.

My creative projects always tell me what they want to be. I don’t know how to explain it. But this creative project is currently telling me, even aside from my very real, aforementioned human needs, that now it wants to be a one-post-a-week newsletter.

So that’s the plan, and I know no one is going to complain about receiving fewer emails.

(Continued) republishing

I’ll continue to mine my own archives for reviews I wrote years ago, because republishing helps me ease the burden of work, but more importantly, helps you discover excellent titles that are buried deep in Substack’s haystack. (No idea where that little analogy came from, but we’re going with it.)

Monthly highlights

On the last Sunday of each month, I’ll send a “monthly highlight” to help you catch up on what you’ve missed.

I know there’s a lot in this newsletter, so in addition to cutting back on my output, I’m trying to find ways to make it easier for you to get the most out of what I am creating here. (Thank you to subscriber Matthew Kravutske for suggesting a version of this idea in my most recent survey.)

I’ll send these through the end of the year, experimentally, and then assess whether or not they’re helpful to you.

Reduced book lists

I will no longer include additional suggested titles at the end of my seasonal and Spotlight On issues.

These lists not only significantly increase the length of those posts, many of you have told me that you dislike these long lists and/or would like me to include links to those books. I am not going to include links — that’s one thing I truly don’t have the time to do — so I’m removing the lists entirely.

I will still include lists in my mini issues — e.g., children’s books about dinosaurs, women in STEM, cooking and baking* — as the whole point of those are the lists themselves.

*Want to see all of my mini issue in one place? Follow the link and scroll down ⬇️

Can we read? Resources

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Some of you have been with me since the very beginning and some of you subscribed yesterday. In the year of our lord 2024, it is no small thing to take up space in people’s inboxes, and more importantly, to ask you to spend your time and attention — please know how grateful I am for that, along with your enthusiasm, support, dollars, replies and messages, and the thing I most cherish, your energy on the other end of this thing. You are the best part of this newsletter 🩷

I’m going to leave you with a photo of a recent acquisition for my messy home office — a purchase that has brought me more delight than practically anything else I’ve bought this year.

The first person to correctly identify her in the comments will win a special little surprise from me.

With love and gratitude 🙏
Sarah