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Steve Leveen is also the
CEO & co-founder
of
Levenger
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Author of
The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life
A well-read life
as defined by Steve Leveen is something that all of us can
attain. What's most important is not which books you read or
even how many. Instead, says Steve, it's "whether you are in
book love today, tomorrow and next week."
And yet it's only
been in the past few years that Steve started to fall in book
love and learned how to stay in book love. It's ironic, given
that Steve is the CEO and co-founder of Levenger, the retailer
offering "tools for serious readers." But he readily admits
that he himself was late to the bookshelf, and only recently
has considered himself a serious reader.
A personal odyssey with a how-to
epiphany
It was, Steve
says, "pangs of missed opportunity" that motivated him to
write The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life. He
had devoted his years to business and family but gradually realized
that a full life
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He readily admits that he was late to the bookshelf, and only recently
has considered himself a serious reader.
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include a life filled with books. His Little Guide recounts a personal
odyssey that most time-starved, overscheduled, rather-be-reading,
want-to-be-living people can relate to.
Steve's epiphany
as a reader didn't come from a book that he read—at least not in the conventional manner. Rather, it happened when he
listened to his first audiobook, Elephants in My
Mailbox, by Roger Horchow. That was the beginning of his
rebirth as a reader, a baptism of desire that immersed him in
the delights—and time-shaving benefits—of reading with your
ears.
He now ristens
(i.e., reads by listening) when he's at the gym with his older
son, washing the dishes, washing the car, and waiting in long
lines at the airport.
Giving voice again to
reading
Recently Steve
ristened to The Great Gatsby, a book he had read in
the conventional manner 22 years ago when he and his wife,
Lori, were on their honeymoon in
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Steve's epiphany as a reader didn't
come from a book that he read. Rather, it happened when he
listened to his first
audiobook. |
Maine. It is one of a
number of books he has read with both his eyes and ears.
Through audiobooks
Steve came to appreciate and practice another form of reading,
and one that Winston Churchill urged his children to do:
memorizing poetry. Robert Frost and Pablo Neruda are two
favorites. Steve finds it takes him about a week to
comfortably commit a poem to memory. "It teaches you to
appreciate writing in a way nothing else can."
Dostoyevsky's accidental
reward
He has also come
to grips with the classics, realizing that like other books,
not every classic is right for every reader.
Two-thirds of the
way through Crime and Punishment, he finally gave up
("not enough crime and too much punishment"). And he came to a
simple but startling realization: it's okay not to finish
a book you don't love. It's more than okay, in fact:
you should be giving up on more books because that
means you're sampling more of them.
The athletic reader
This sampling is part of the active
approach to reading that Steve advocates: to be the athlete rather
than the spectator. Instead of having a few books to read, you
develop an ample Library of
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Asked who should
read The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, Steve will tell you: "Someone who
wants more from their books—and from their life."
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carefully chosen books that map with your interests, aspirations,
dreams and goals. In his home in Delray Beach, Florida, he devotes
an entire wall of his study to his candidate books; biographies
feature prominently. Another wall is dedicated to his Living
Library—the books he's read.
While a graduate
student at Cornell, Steve wrote letters to Lewis Mumford after
reading his Technics and Civilization, and then to
Ray Bradbury, praising There Will Come Soft Rains.
As part of his well-read life he has revived the practice of
writing short letters to authors whose books resonate with
him. (He keeps a copy inside their book.) Some of the more
recent recipients include Anne Fadiman, Ann Patchett and
Malcolm Gladwell.
Books as
connectors
Gladwell's
Tipping Point is one of the books Steve gives to
friends and acquaintances. He finds that sharing in this way
helps him connect (and reconnect) with people. Reading may be
a solitary pursuit but it can be highly social. Witness the
growth of reading groups in the past few years.
Steve devotes a chapter of The Little Guide to reading groups, a phenomenon he was
initially skeptical of but that won him over because of their sense
of fellowship. He started his own group and found
reading Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
more rewarding because of the group's discussion, which was,
he says, "an amazing, heartfelt conversation."
His group of 12
men meets every two months in a restaurant for an early dinner
and extensive conversation. Steve christened the group The
World of Mules Book Group, borrowing from Ogden Nash's
couplet, "In a world of mules/there are no rules."
The
Well-Read Life campaign
Asked who should
read The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, Steve will tell
you: "Someone who wants more from their books—and from their
life." That's the reason for the three-year Well-Read Life
campaign that Steve has embarked on. He wants to help others
who are seeking what they correctly sense is waiting for them.
"My life changed
from black and white to color when I seized my well-read
life," he says. "Have you ever wished you had more time to
read? You may as well wish you had more time to live—and you
do." There's no time like the present to fall madly, deeply,
joyously in book love.
There's more to enjoy. Read
our interview with Steve. Click
here
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