quadrant 2 reading

what grows us deep and wide

I have done something wild and radical in my reading endeavors this year.

I have gone from reading ten books at a time to...eight. (It's a wild party around here every day, let me tell you.¹)

Over the last couple years of writing posts about my favorite books of the year, I’ve realized that even though I read mostly non-fiction, what I truly love is fiction. Classics. Mostly British lit. So why have I pushed myself to focus on so much non-fiction every year? Because I felt like I should.

Gaaaahhh, why do we do things like this to ourselves? How much have I really gained from "responsible" reading? How much more would I have gotten out of reading more books that I really, genuinely, loved? (I can hear Aslan right now: "To know what would have happened, child? No. Nobody is ever told that."²)

So here's what I did – and it's probably not at all what you should do, but I hope it will help you reconsider what you are doing if you're not happy with it, and make a shift toward a different routine that works better.

I am now reading four novels, like normal. But not like normal, I am only reading four non-fiction books (instead of six). And in the last month of making that change, I am (relatively) flying through them.

I get bored if I only read a few books at a time, and it’s never really been feasible as a homeschool mom who’s already in the middle of a bunch of books with the kids, anyway.

The thing that's always limited me to four novels at once, though, is not wanting to confuse the plots and characters. So I try to make sure the four fiction books are as different as possible: one modern fiction, one 19^th century or older, one mystery, one fantasy, for example. It doesn't always work out, though – while we've been in Gone With the Wind and the Civil War, I've also been in Jeff Shaara’s Revolutionary War series. And that was bad timing. For example, I can tell you for sure that I read about Ticonderoga, but I don't remember which book it went with.

But here's the question:

What are you reading? And are you enjoying it? (Sorry, that's two questions. This is a blog about reading and writing, not math.)

Also, some more questions:

Are you plodding through a bunch of books you don't really like and aren't getting much out of because you feel like you're supposed to? Are you being "responsible" while ignoring other books you would truly enjoy?

Yes, we should challenge ourselves to read harder books, and reach into topics that aren't normally in our wheelhouse of interests. But also, we should love most of what we're reading.

So let's invent a new concept, called Quadrant 2 Reading. (And here’s a chart, so you can pretend it’s about math if you’d like.)

If you're already familiar with the four quadrants, or Stephen Covey's Seven Habits book³, you'll know where I'm going with this. If not, we can quickly summarize as we apply them to reading:

• Quadrant 1: Important and urgent, like important mail/email/texts, a recipe you're cooking, or a frantic inernet search for whether or not chickens can eat canteloupe that your kids threw into the run (they can and love it, just so you know). Anything that applies to what you are doing right now and can't be avoided goes here.

• Quadrant 2: Important but not urgent. This is whatever you read that grows you deep and wide – books, research, studies, letters from loved ones.

• Quadrant 3: Not important but urgent – and "urgent" should be taken with a grain of salt, because this stuff isn't important. Like social media notifications.

• Quadrant 4: Not important and not urgent, like social media scrolling, most of what we browse on the internet, and books by Steinbeck. (I kid, I kid…sort of.)

Quadrant 2 is always, always, always where we want to spend the bulk of our time. When we spend more time there, we reduce the demands of quadrant 1 and we starve the beast that tempts us into wasting time in quadrants 3 and 4.

So read what grows you deep and wide. Read the stuff you'll want to have under your belt in a year, or ten years, or twenty years. Read what you’ll need to know before you get chickens. Read a balance of what challenges you and what inspires you. Find a rhythm that works for you, and don't be afraid to change it.

Here's a fun way we do that in our house.⁴ We modify this list a little every year and have yet to complete it (there are over 100 categories) but we keep trying. This is last year’s list:

And here’s this year’s list. You are welcome to download and edit it for what fits you, your family, or your group of friends who want to tackle it together.

Booklist 2025

16.6KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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Happy reading,

Shannon

P.S. Looking for book suggestions? Here’s my list of favorite reads from last year, with links to the previous years’ lists, too:

best books of 2024

And if you’re a writer and journaler, you might appreciate what I wrote earlier this week.

keep going

1. I recently advocated for an introvert version of our church’s New Year’s Eve party, complete with bookshelves, knitting corner, coffee and tea bar, and a 1000 Piece Puzzle Competition. Jury’s still out on this.

2. From Prince Caspian, by C.S. Lewis.

3. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People — I also talk about the quadrants in this post.

4. I talk a little more about this in this post.