"Perfect for all of us who can never get enough time with good books. It not only urges us to indulge deeply and often, it shows us how."-Myra Hart, professor, Harvard Business School

"Readers and want-to-be readers will be encouraged by the advice to read more, more widely and more systematically."-Michael Keller, university librarian, Stanford University

"An ideal gift for both sporadic and relentless readers."-James Mustich Jr., publisher of A Common Reader

"A worthy addition to even the most well-stocked personal library."-Ross King, author of Michelangelo & The Pope's Ceiling

Do not set out to live a well-read life but rather your well-read life. No one can be well-read using someone else's reading list. Unless a book is good for you, you won't connect with it and gain from it. Just as no one can tell you how to lead your life, no one can tell you what to read for your life.

How do readers find more time to read? In The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, Steve Leveen offers both inspiration and practical advice for bibliophiles on how to get more books in their life and more life from their books.

His recommendations are disarmingly refreshing, as when he advises when not to read a book and why not to feel guilty if you missed reading all those classics in school. He helps readers reorganize their bookshelves into a Library of Candidates that they actively build and a Living Library of books read with enthusiasm, and he emphasizes the value of creating a Bookography, or annotated list of your reading life. Separate chapters are devoted to the power of audio books and the merits of reading groups.

The author himself admits he came "late to the bookshelf," making this charming little guide all the more convincing.

Steve Leveen is the author of "The Little Guide to Your... " personal-enrichment books. The first, "The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life," was published in 2005 and reprised as an e-book in 2019. The second, "The Little Guide to Your Bilingual Life," will be published in late 2019.

A preview of "The Little Guide to Your Bilingual Life" can be found at the end of "The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life" e-book.

The first "Little Guide" was about book love. The second is about language love. Both are about enhancing the ways that we humans can connect with each other, and with ourselves.

Says Steve: "In 'Your Well-Read Life,' the point is not how many books you've read, but whether you are in book love today. In 'Your Bilingual Life,' it's not about how good your Spanish--or French, or Arabic or Chinese--is at the moment, but how you are enjoying learning your adopted language every day, and living the larger life that bilingualism brings."

Steve is the co-founder and former CEO of Levenger, the first company in America to design products with readers in mind. More recently, he founded the America the Bilingual project, which encourages Americans to come to know, on their own terms, a language in addition to English.

His America the Bilingual podcasts feature some of the country's leading thinkers and educators in global languages, as well as both accomplished and aspiring bilinguals. Steve puts himself in the latter category, with his Spanish.

Steve was also a longtime board member of the National Book Foundation, where he championed its newest award--for translated literature.