I want to stop with the in one ear

And out the other

But I don’t want to go back to school either. You and I both know I don’t have the time and money for it.

But here’s a little list of books I’ve read recently:

1. Herodotus’s the Histories (Books One and Two)

2. Foreign Affairs Magazine (I’d say the latest issue but one just came out so now…)

3. The Body Keeps the Score

4. Time Management for Mortals

5. The Brothers Karamazov

For some of these books I’ve been lucky enough to carve out the spacetime to talk through the book like when I talked Brothers K through with my brother or Time Management for Mortals through with a friend who recommended reading it.

These conversations have been great sweet spots for my “reading life.” I’m no scholar. I’m not publishing papers/reviews. But I do want to get more out of what I’m reading. I feel like reading is purely for distraction’s sake if I don’t have one of these sweetspot conversations about what I read. And unfortunately your average book club doesn’t suffice. One I’ve been part of is great but hard to schedule frequently enough. I’ve heard many others suffer from being social gatherings, and never actually talking about the author’s work.

So here’s the problem: When I read it goes in one ear out the other and I don’t have time and it’s not really that fun to go the distance and “study” it deeply. And book clubs don’t help either and school is too expensive.

Photo by Juri Gianfrancesco on Unsplash

What to do?

Enter Extragrad.com. It’s not undergrad. It’s not going back to grad school. It’s most definitely not “post grad.” It’s just a little “extra grad.”

Here’s how it works now and how it could work in the future for sessions at least (lit travel is a whole ‘nother story which I’ll get to in a separate post):

For Now

1. Fill out the form on the page

2. I’ll reach out and we’ll agree to the book to read and a deadline

3. We’ll read the book and either have a deep dive dialogue about it after we finish or a couple times along the way

4. I’ll write about our conversation and I’ll encourage you to do the same

5. I’ll also guarantee you’ll say things afterwards like my brother did, “I wouldn’t have understood half of this without this conversation. The book wouldn’t have made much sense to me at all. But now I feel like I kind of get it.” (not verbatim but you get the gist)

In the Future

1. Fill out the form on the page

2. I’ll reach out and we’ll agree to the book to read, someone for you to digest it with and a deadline

3. Maybe us, but more likely, you and this great interlocutor trained in the art of dialogue facilitation will read the book and either, as above, have a deep dive dialogue about it after you finish or a couple times along the way

4. I’ll still guarantee you’ll say things afterwards like my brother did above

5. I also hope that more and more great dialoguers will join me to become creators not of the content creator economy but of the conversation creator economy. Creating spaces for aha moments rather than the latest TikTok dance craze to watch teens all over record with their tripod+ringlights roadside.

With this post I wanted to point to extragrad.com but I also wanted to, for myself, return to my squareone, my proverbial “why” I started writing about my reading life (even if I highfalutinly called it yours). I hope you find a similar sweetspot in your reading life or join me for an extragrad session or maybe just join me for this journey to encourage more and more people to enjoy digesting what they’re reading out loud.

---

Follow on Social: TikTok, Instagram and YouTube