Read With Us Lounge: 6/1/26

Welcome to the Read With Us Lounge, our brand-new online adult summer reading program!

This summer, we’re throwing out the rules, the pressure, the reading quotas, and the guilt. Read With Us Lounge is built around one simple idea: No rules. Just fun. 

We know that many of us carry around a lot of ideas about what “counts” as good reading. Maybe we think we should be reading more classics, more nonfiction, more award winners, fewer thrillers, fewer romances, fewer rereads, fewer graphic novels, listening to fewer audiobooks. Maybe we feel guilty for abandoning books or for reading something light when the world feels heavy.

This summer, we’d like to challenge those notions together.

Read With Us Lounge is an anti-book bingo experience. No rules. No assigned categories. No pressure to optimize your reading life. Just an open invitation to read whatever feels right to you.

Want to spend the summer immersed in cozy mysteries, giant fantasy novels, beach reads, food writing, poetry, fan fiction, childhood favorites, or books with dragons? Excellent. Want to reread beloved books instead of chasing the newest release? Wonderful. Want to listen to audiobooks while gardening or walking the dog? That's great, too.

Our goals are simple:

• Challenge the assumptions we hold about reading and books
• Encourage joyful, pressure-free reading
• Build camaraderie and community through questions, conversations, and shared experiences
• Gather for a couple of casual LOUNGE hang-outs via Zoom
• Distract ourselves from the daily horrors in the news for a little while

Throughout the summer, look for our blog posts on Mondays where we’ll post discussion prompts, conversation starters, and questions designed to get us thinking and talking. These are definitely not meant as a test of whether you “did the homework” because there is none. There are no reading minimums and no expectations except kindness and curiosity.

Think of the Lounge as a comfortable chair, a cold drink, a stack of books, and a group of fellow readers who are happy you showed up exactly as you are.

So bring your library stack, your neglected TBR pile, your weird reading habits, your favorite rereads, and your enthusiasm. Or your reading slump. Those are welcome too.

Read what you want. Join us in the Lounge this summer for No rules. Just fun.