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[music] -Reading plays a vital role in our lives, from sparking imagination to fostering empathy and understanding.

Hello, I'm Peter Noll.

On this edition of Tennessee is Talking, the topic is the importanc..

In an increasingly fast-paced world, it can be hard to find time to sit down with a good book, and even harder to get younger generations excited about reading.

Let the conversation begin.

[background conversations] -That's so cool.

-Then that's when I said that.

-The problem with that idea is-- -Wow.

That was amazing.

-Then I came up with a solution.

-What was that about?

-Here's what I think about it.

-Now we're talking.

-West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee is Talking.

Let the conversation begin.

-Thanks for joining the discussion here on Tennessee is Talking.

Hello, I'm Peter Noll.

In a world filled with distractions, the simple act of picking up a book can open doors to new perspectives, ignite our imagination, and deepen our understanding of ourselves and others.

Here to tell us more is bookstore owner, Angela Redden and author Sarah Jenkins.

Thank you both for joining Tennessee is Talking.

We're happy to have you on the couch.

Let's start with reading today.

What challenges does the act of reading face in 2024?

-Peter, I think the biggest challenge is the smartphone, the smartwatch and smart technology, because it is constantly trying to connect with us.

It's trying to tell us to look at this, or do this, or do that.

Notifications, having your notifications coming through constantly.

When you do sit down to read, whether that's digitally, if you're reading it on an e-book or a good old-fashioned paper book, you still have those notifications.

A lot of people are wearing smartwatches, so your watch is going off, and just that little second that you look to see what it is, is drawing you away from the long-form literature that you're trying to look at.

-I was reading a book, and it said, are you controlling your technology, or is your technology controlling you?

There were several things they said to do.

It's like, don't have your phone in your bedroom.

Mine's downstairs on a charger and I've turned off all notifications.

It doesn't even ring.

It's sound or vibrate, so I'll see it.

If it's important, I'll eventually see it.

-We're all living in a distracted world because everything's vying for our attention all the time.

One of the tricks that I've learned fairly recently was using the focus on your smartphone.

You said, is your technology controlling you or are you controlling it?

I went in and put in automatic focus things, so that when I go to work in the morning, people can't interrupt me from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM, my phone will not notify me of anything.

Then all of a sudden, at 11:00 I get [onomatopoeia] All those things come in, but you can go into your phone settings, and there are key people that can interrupt me because they need to be able to.

My children, my husband, my best friend.

There's a list on each one of my notification or my focus things that those people can get through, but the things that are going to distract me and pull me away from my work aren't going to get through until I'm ready for them to.

That's been a huge help for me because I've been an avid reader, and I'm trying to read books and stay up to date on the books that are coming out.

I was having a hard time keep.. and being able to sit down and read.

I would sit down and read at night, and I find myself, all of a sudden, I'm on Facebook or I'm on Instagram, and I think, "I'm working.

I need to keep up."

Right, Sarah?

Sarah and I, we have all these social media things, we have to do that, but realizing that you don't have.. You don't have to be available to your technology 24 hours a day.

-Sarah, when are you reading?

When do you read every day?

-Oh, man.

I try to find times either early in the morning or .. or moments, if I'm in a waiting room at a doctor's office, if I'm in the car, take my son to piano.

While he's in his piano lesson, that's reading time or writing time and things like that.

It's keep a book with me is my philosophy.

I have a bag that I can easily fit more than one book in if I need to, and then wherever I'm going, it may be a few pages here, a few pages there, but that way, no matter how busy I feel like I am, I've got time to remember, hey, it's time to pull some pages open here and get some reading in, because it is hard.

We are distracted.

-It is hard.

-For those viewers that can remember pre-smartphone days, I've noticed the change at the airports, in the doctor's offices, those places where people used to traditionally read a book or magazine as they waited.

-They're watching film now a lot of times.

I recently took a trip, flew to DC.

On the plane where we used to get on the plane, and you'd look around and you had magazines and books, you have people pulling their phone out, setting their tablet out, and they're watching a movie, they're watching a show.

I found myself thinking about that.

How is literacy changing?

Film is a form of literacy.

You are still connecting, but as things change, do we want to completely go to that film mode of taking in information?

Do we want to go there?

I own a bookstore, so no.

We don't, but people are still doing the same thing.

They're just doing it in a different form.

-Now, you mentioned the bookstore.

I remember when there were lots of bookstores and lots of chains, and now they started dying off, but now I heard there's a resurgence.

Is that true?

-That is true.

That is true.

I'm trying to keep up as best I can, but I'm a small business owner in a small town, and just trying to keep the doors open takes a lot o..

I'm not an expert by any means, but I notice trends, and then I speculate, that scientific method, you know there's things-- -Your bookstore is called?

-Reading Rock Books.

-Reading Rock Books, located in Dickson.

-Yes.

-Where in Dickson?

-Right on Main Street, in downtown Dickson, Tennessee.

-How long has it been there?

-It has been there for 16 years.

I've owned it for six.

-Six years ago, what said, "I'm going to buy this bookstore?"

Some people said, "Is she crazy?"

Why did you do that?

-A lot of people said, "Is she crazy?"

I was a teacher for years, and I was looking at starting a business doing something education related.

Walked into the bookstore, asked the owner if she had space for me to rent.

She said, why don't you buy the bookstore?

I did.

There you go.

That's the story.

-You said you have children?

-I do, yes.

-How are we getting children to read?

What are you doing as a mother?

What advice do you have for other parents out there?

-That's a great question.

One thing I do is limit screen time, which is very difficult this day an.. One thing that I have found is that when you stick to that, you have consistency, and you set the boundaries, "This is when you can have screen time."

Then outside of that, they've got to come up with things to do on their own.

You offer them books, you offer them creative things to be engaged with, you offer them projects that they can do.

Sometimes you say, "Just go outside and get some fresh air," and they will occupy themselves.

My kids have, and I've got grown kids, but I have one still in school at.. and he has grown to love reading because he discovered he can escape into another world and to another adventure and connect with characters on those pages when he opens a book.

He doesn't have to have a game out or the television on.

That's been really refreshing to see that if you give them the opportunity and you encourage it, you can grow that mindset in these young ones.

-Did you read to your children growing up?

There was story time every night?

-Yes.

With all the voices.

You got to do the voices.

-I remember sitting on my mom and dad's king-sized bed in the middle of the Minnesota winter, and we were reading The Long Winter, being from Minnesota, it was the Little House on the Prair.. That was just like, oh my gosh, reading can take you anywhere.

It makes you imagine things.

It stretches that part of the brain rather than this is what they're imagining.

-Oh, absolutely.

-Let's talk about audiobooks.

I've heard whether you're listening or reading, it's still the same, it's still as good.

Do you guys believe that?

-That's a fun debate.

It still counts as reading, yes, but it is not the same.

-How so?

-It's not.

Sarah, talk about that for a minu.. Let me formulate my thought.

You've got to come back to me though, because I'm going to formulate something.

-They both reach two different parts of your brain.

Auditory learning versus that visual learning.

You're making different neural connections in the brain.

I think it's good to have both.

You mentioned something at the very start of the show that I thought was interesting about slowing down.

I think when you open an actual paper copy of a book, or I guess a kindle, I'm a paper fan, you're forcing yourself to slow down and be in the moment with that book in that moment, because I can be washing the dishes and listen to an audiobook.

I can be doing other things.

In a world where we try to multitask all the time, I think audiobooks are another way to just fit something in and maybe not be as engaged with the story as we are when we sit down and read.

-Exactly.

I agree totally with what she's saying.

If you think about it, we have our five senses.

Is smelling a pizza the same as tasting a pizza?

No, it's two totally different experiences.

It's the same with reading.

You're listening to it.

You're still getting the story, but you're connecting with the words orally, not inside your own mind.

The imagination part of it.

Part of your imagination doesn't have to engage because you're hearing the voices that somebody else has already decided are going to be the voices of that character.

When you're reading it to yourself, you get to make up the voices, you get to visualize all of that.

You don't have someone else in between you and the written word.

-Let's switch gears a little bit to the writing of books.

Sarah, you've written at least one.

How many books?

-I've written several.

One that is published.

-One that is published.

It's called what?

-Every Beaten Path.

-Every Beaten Path.

People can get that where?

-At Reading Rock Books in downtown Dickson, Tennessee, or on bookshop.org if they're ordering online.

-What advice do you give to authors today, because a lot of people say, "I want to write a book," or, "I should write a book," or, "You should write a book," and very few people actually get it done.

-It feels like this gets repeated over and over again whenever anyone has asked this question, but the best advice always comes down to consistency.

You have to write.

In order to be a writer, you have to write.

You have to stick with it th.. frustrating moments and the positive ones.

You should be an active reader, especially within the genre that you're writing.

In any genre, you've got to read a lot.

We always talk about reading broadly.

I think that is so important.

-Define that for us.

What does that mean?

-Read across genres.

It's fine to have your little niche, we all have our comfort zone [crosstalk] -If we're just reading harlequin romances every day, all week long, try something different.

-Yes, that's great.

Read a biography, read a memoir, read a mystery or something, and just broaden your horizons of what you're reading.

You just have to write every day.

That seems very simplistic, I think, sometimes, but that's where you begin.

That's the start of writing and being a successful writer, is to make a point to write every day and to keep going with that.

-What responsibility do you as an author have to promote literacy?

-Oh, wow.

I think it's a big responsibility.

Anything that I write, I have to be cognizant of what I'm putting into that, what I'm representing, what I'm putting out there into the world.

Then I have a responsibility to show people that books are important, that stories are important, that how we connect with other people are important, and that developing empathy for others is important.

I think it's a very large responsibility.

-Speaking of all the digital technology that's taking up our time and attention, you guys also host a podcast.

Tell us about that.

-We do.

We host a podcast.

-We do.

-It's called The Way We Word.

-The Way We Word.

-The Way We Word.

-Is there a theme song?

-There should be.

-Not yet.

-That's a dance number.

-It's coming.

It's a podcast that we host.

We put out an episode every week.

It is, give us the tagline, Sarah.

It's about story from the idea in the writer's mind.

-The concept of the idea all the way to a book in the reader's hand and everything that happens in between.

It's the world of writing, reading and publishing from everyone's point of view.

-Including the bookseller point of view, which-- When I bought the store six years ago now, there were a lot of, I don't know that there were a lot, but there were podcasts that I was listening to and there were booksellers who were starting to podcast about bookstores.

One that I listened to and loved is Annie B. Jones from the bookshelf in Thomasville, Georgia.

I thought, "I have to do a podcast.

We're buying a bookstore, I have to do a podcast."

Sarah and I have known each other and we had talked about it and talked about it and what we're going to do.

She has other podcasts that she is involved in.

She just kept, "When are we going to do this?

When are we going to do this?"

Then we finally made it happen.

I think what we have that is unique in the podcast sphere is that it's an author and a bookseller.

It's a different perspective than what I have been able to find out there in podcasts.

We do talk about books all the way from the very beginning of the idea to when myself or one of my booksellers hand sells that book to the reader when they come through our door.

-Do you think our world has changed so much that there could never be another Harry Potter series?

Because you remember when that came out, there was Borders, Walden, there were all these book chains and the kids would be .. for the midnight release of every new episode.

They'd all be dressed up as Harry Potter characters.

We would do news stories about it, and kids would be all over the bookstore reading on their backs and pillows and they just couldn't wait and they would read these thick books that thick.

Could that happen again today?

What is it going to take?

-I think in some ways it's happening.

-It's starting to happen already.

As you were talking, I was like, "Oh, brain, activate," because there are-- -Sarah J. Moss is not quite as big as that, but she's writing these really gigantic books that people of all ages, from young people to older people are reading.

Everyone is reading some of these books and Rebecca Yarros, I believe, also has a series out that's become very, very popular.

-What we have now are like book talk and there are online influencers who are reading and then they make videos about what they're reading and they're really influencing the book industry and you're starting to see them because these are the-- The people who are reading Sarah J. Moss and Rebecca Yarros are the same people who read Harry Potter and now they've discovered, "Oh, I can continue to read and have that excitement as an adult, and there are authors who are writing for me now at this age and I can get lost in a book."

You're starting to see them want that same experience of let's do a midnight release party.

I've seen lately, that's why I'm like, "Where did I see that?"

I think when I'm reviewing catalogs for books that are coming out in spring 2025, we're starting to see the publishers are saying, "Hey, let's do a release party.

Here's a release party kit."

It's coming.

It's coming back.

I think with social media, people, there's a connection they're getting online with their favorite book talker, their favorite book reviewer, but now they're realizing we need to get together and meet in person.

Can we do that?

How do we do that?

I think you get some of that feel when you go to book festivals, which that's another topic.

There are different kinds of book festivals.

You go to book cons, you have the conventions where people are coming together.

-Are there like book festivals and book cons here in Tennessee?

-There's the Southern Festival of Books.

[laughter] -We'll have to book you again to tell us about that.

-It's happening at the end of this month, but it is a traditional book festival.

-I've never been to a book festival or a book con, but I want to go.

-You do.

-I do.

-You really do.

-Where's it at?

-I'm still on my Mississippi Book Festival hi.. aren't I?

I've been talking about the Mississi.. for weeks now because it was amazing.

Southern Festival of Books is in Nashville.

It's October 26th and 27th.

They bring in authors from all over the South and the country.

They're these festivals [crosstalk] -There's these festivals, these cons that I'm sure you can Google if people want to find out more.

-Oh, yes.

They're thematic as well.

A lot of them are genre-based.

-Those are more like what I would consider a con.

That's what I'm saying.

A traditional book festival, to me, those are the ones that have been around for a long time.

They're bringing in authors that-- It's not thematic, maybe it's regional.

In the Southern Festival, your book has to have been released in the last year.

You apply to be accepted or to be able to come and present your book.

They arrange conversations and panels.

It's wonderful.

You get to go and listen to auth..

It's just fabulous.

It's a celebration of books.

Mississippi Book Festival was different to me because it's not all books that were released in the last year.

It's conversations that they want to have.

They'll pull in authors that have written something on that topic or whatever.

It might be somebody that wrote something this year, but it may go back to someone who wrote something 15 years ago.

They put them in a room and have this great conversation.

You get to sit there and go, "Wow, that's amazing," and make those connections.

Eudora Welty and Natasha Trethewey, I never would have connected the two of them in my mind, but going to Mississippi Book Festival, from now on, the two of them will be forever connected in my mind bec.. a student of Eudora.

She was influenced by Eudora Welty.

It's so obvious to see after hearing her talk about Eudora.

Then they did a screening of a film that they just created for Eudora Welty.

It's just amazing.

It's a celebration of literacy and bringing all these great authors together.

Then you have the cons.

You have indie authors.

Reading Rock Books is the bookseller for a festival that's happening in Nashville in March.

It's a lot of indie authors who are coming together for a workshop.

The festival planner really wanted a bookstore to be there.

He's like, I want these authors to see what are the newest releases, what's coming out, what is out there in the book world, not just focusing on their own independently published books or their thematic books.

It's exciting.

-You helped to create one in our communi.. -I did, didn't I?

-She did.

[crosstalk] -I forgot.

You tell them about it.

-The Arts, Reads and Tunes Festival.

Reading Rock Books, along with the Chamber of Commerce and the Dickson Arts Council, created this beautiful event over the summer where they had musicians and authors and just artists to all come together and to celebrate what is beautiful about all of those things.

-Let's say we've sparked the interest of a viewer out there that has not been reading.

They're on their phone all the time, they're busy with kids, family, but now they've decided, "I'm going to start read.. Where do they start?

What should they start with?

How do they make that happen in their lives?

What advice do you give to them?

-My advice is go to Reading Rock Books or your local independent bookstore.

Unfortunately, I think Light Trap Books was your local independent bookstore here in Jackson, and I don't think they're still here.

I think your choices, if you live in Jackson, are Books a Million, and there are people who work there, I am sure, who love books or they wouldn't be working at a bookstore.

Track one of those booksellers down and ask them, "What books do you recommend?

What should I be reading?"

Look at the displays in the store.

I'll be honest with you, the last time I was in Books a Million, I was a little disappointed because it didn't feel like a bookstore to me.

It felt like a toy store because toys and games were more prominent than the great books that I really expected to see on the end caps.

You're going to have to find somebody who's reading and say, "What should I read?"

Because those people who are reading all the time, like I'm reading all the time, I'm not going to recommend every book I read to every person.

I'm going to match you to the book that's going to appeal to you.

-Sarah, what lifestyle changes would you recommend someone make who hasn't been reading books but they want to?

-Wow.

That's a big question.

I would say, first of all, slow down a little bit.

I remind myself that every day, slow down, don't take on so many things.

Learn to set boundaries.

Also just incorporate a little bit of that into when you sit down to breakfast.

Instead of picking up your phone to scroll, maybe open up a book or a magazine, an article, get your mind reading something, and all of those little moments.

Anytime you find, "Hey, I've got 20 minutes," instead of scrolling Facebook and seeing what everybody ate for lunch, let's see what's happening over here in this book.

I think you have to start small and you have to build a routine and you have to really work on that.

It takes time.

-Thank you, guys, for coming on.

-Buy a purse that a book will fit in.

-Just remember, it's a good day to read a book, as your teacher says.

-It is a good day to read a book.

-Angela, Sarah, thank you both for coming on and sharing.

I think we've just opened up a whole world of books for people and hopefully started some reading.

-I hope, yes.

-Thank you both for coming on.

-Thank you.

-Sadly, we are out of time for this.. We want to thank Angela Redden and Sarah Jenkins for stopping by and telling us about the importance of reading.

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[music]