What the carmannews newsroom is actually reading now

A few times a year the carmannews team shares what we’re individually reading — no group consensus, no themed list engineered around a season, just what each of us actually has open right now. The honesty is the point: a real reading list is more useful than a curated one, because it tells you what people genuinely return to rather than what they think they ought to recommend.

Why an honest reading list beats a curated one

Most published reading lists are performances. They’re assembled to look impressive, to fit a theme, or to recommend the books a person feels they should be seen reading — which is why so many of them feel oddly lifeless and oddly similar. An honest list is different. It reports what people are actually reading, including the unfashionable, the re-read, the half-finished, and the genuinely loved. That candour is exactly what makes it useful: you’re seeing real reading behaviour, not a curated image of it.

The value compounds when the list comes from a group with varied taste rather than a single curator. Different people reading different things, each able to say in a line why a book grabbed them, gives you a spread of genuine recommendations to sort through — and the variety means something is likely to match your taste, even if much of it doesn’t. A monoculture list recommends the same handful of titles everyone else is recommending; a varied, honest one surfaces things you’d never otherwise find.

How to actually use a list like this

A reading list is only useful if you read it actively rather than passively scanning and forgetting. A few ways to get value from one:

• Match the recommender, not just the book. The most useful signal isn’t the title — it’s whether the person recommending it tends to like what you like. Find the one or two people on any list whose taste overlaps yours, and weight their picks heavily. A recommendation is only as good as the match between recommender and reader.
• Read the one-line reason, not just the name. Why someone is reading a book tells you far more than the title does. A short, specific reason — what it does, who it’s for, what surprised them — lets you judge whether it’s for you. Skip anything recommended without a reason; the reason is the recommendation.
• Add to a list, don’t buy on impulse. Note the ones that appeal and let them sit. Coming back later, the picks that still pull at you are the ones worth your time. This filter costs nothing and dramatically improves your hit rate over buying everything that sounds good in the moment.
• Embrace the eclectic. The point of a varied list is range. Don’t dismiss a recommendation because it’s outside your usual lane — the unexpected picks, vouched for by someone whose judgement you trust, are often where the best surprises come from.

Used this way, a reading list becomes a tool rather than a passive scroll. You’re not looking for permission to read something popular; you’re mining other people’s genuine enthusiasm for the few things that will land with you specifically.

Building your own honest reading habit

The same honesty that makes a shared list useful makes a personal reading life better. A few principles:

• Read what you actually want to read. The fastest way to read more is to stop forcing yourself through books you feel obligated to finish. Reading is sustained by enjoyment; a book you love pulls you back, a book you endure pushes you away. Permission to abandon a book is permission to read more.
• Keep your own running list. A simple list of what you’ve read and want to read is its own small pleasure and a genuinely useful reference. It also helps you notice your patterns — and spot when you’ve drifted into reading only one kind of thing.
• Recommend honestly in return. When you pass on a book, say plainly why and who you think it’s for. Honest, specific recommendations are far more useful than generic praise, and they make the whole exchange of books between people work better.
• Re-read without guilt. Returning to a book you loved is not a waste of reading time. Re-reading is one of the quiet pleasures of a real reading life, and it belongs on an honest list as much as anything new.

What we’re after with this feature — and what we’d suggest for your own reading — is to drop the performance. The best reading lives are honest ones: read what you love, abandon what you don’t, recommend candidly, and treat other people’s genuine enthusiasm as the most reliable guide there is.

A note on what we leave off

Because this is an honest feature rather than a curated one, it deliberately includes the unglamorous: comfort re-reads, books we picked up and may not finish, older titles with no current relevance, and the occasional guilty pleasure. We leave off only the books nobody on the desk is genuinely reading — which, on a curated list, is often most of them. If a recommendation here looks unfashionable, that’s the feature working as intended. The aim isn’t to look well-read; it’s to tell you the truth about what landed with real people, so you can find the few things that will land with you.

The short version

• An honest reading list — what people actually read, including the unfashionable — beats a curated one engineered to impress.
• Use it actively: match the recommender to your taste, read the one-line reason, add picks to a list rather than buying on impulse, and stay open to the eclectic.
• Build your own honest habit: read what you want, abandon freely, keep a running list, recommend candidly, and re-read without guilt.
• This feature deliberately includes comfort reads and unfashionable picks — the candour is the point.

A curated list tells you what someone wants to be seen reading. An honest one tells you what they actually read — which is the only useful part.

Amelia Ferrante, Lifestyle Editor, carmannews