Make the Most of Your Reading Experience With The Curious Reader: A Journal for Book Lovers

By Ellen Gutoskey |
It's OK if Joan Didion's favorite book doesn't make your list.
It's OK if Joan Didion's favorite book doesn't make your list. / Insight Editions
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In May, Mental Floss published The Curious Reader: A Literary Miscellany of Novels & Novelists, which is positively jam-packed with facts about your favorite books and authors, as well as dynamic illustrations to match them.

In other words, it’s not exactly the type of book you’d go scrawling in the margins of—and there isn’t much room to do so, anyway. But it is the type of book that inspires plenty of thoughts you might want to jot down as you read, from books to add to your own TBR pile to less-than-warm feelings toward novels everyone else seems to love. To give you a place to park those and other literary musings, Mental Floss and Insight Editions are releasing an interactive companion book called The Curious Reader: A Journal for Book Lovers.

You can write in this one.
You can write in this one. / Insight Editions

In addition to book-related quotes, trivia, recommendations, and more, the 144-page journal also features a number of prompts to help you lean into book culture and enrich your reading experience. Is your personal favorite book series conspicuously absent from our list of best ones to binge-read? There’s a handy space to add it in and explain what makes it great. Haven’t gotten around to tackling Stephen King’s unedited edition of The Stand (which his publisher forced him to cut down simply because the book binding wouldn’t be able to hold it together)? Write in the title of the longest book you’ve ever read, and tell us whether all that length was necessary.

Among other prompts are “Literary Places I’d Like to Visit,” “Who I’d Invite to a Literary Dinner Party,” and “My Favorite Books This Year.” In short, the journal proves what every book lover already knows: Reading is more a lifestyle than an activity.

The Curious Reader: A Journal for Book Lovers is available starting September 14, 2021, and you can pre-order it here.

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