First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee – May 27, 2026
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On making time for reading, even though we don't all have the same 24 hours in a day, and other thoughts on tracking books read and that 📀🐎, competition, scheduling our lives, and why audiobooks rock.
This is Michael Ulloa, Personal Trainer & Nutrition Coach, who I follow on Instagram and really like for his practical advice and scathing debunking of "wellness" influencers. https://www.instagram.com/michaelulloapt/
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Thank you for listening! You all take care.
00:01.24
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, also writing as Jennifer K. Lambert, author of epic fantasy romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.
00:14.90
Jeffe Kennedy
Delicious. to- Today is Wednesday, go figure, May 27th. And yeah, it's a weird day for me to be doing the podcast, but um I don't know. I blame Memorial Day. I blame my weird schedule now because I am in this hiatus phase where I'm catching up with business and I'm I don't know, doing life things, visiting with friends. I just had a nice zoom session with Dorinda Jones and caught up with her. We had not gotten catch up for a while. And so that was fantastic. That was really great.
00:54.71
Jeffe Kennedy
So, um, yeah, it was really, it's good. It's good for me to be doing these things. And I appreciate all of you not particularly caring what day I record and put out the podcast.
01:10.10
Jeffe Kennedy
um I know I have said this many times before over the years, and it's it's interesting for me to to reconnect with this truth, ah as the kids say, which is that when I am not writing a book, I have so much energy for other things. And it's like I always miscalculate how much or maybe...
01:35.30
Jeffe Kennedy
underestimate how much writing actually takes out of me energetically. And when I'm not actively drafting a book or I think revising to, ah I have energy for other things.
01:48.73
Jeffe Kennedy
And so it's good for me to mix up my schedule and to not feel like I am pushing so hard. So this is my longtime listeners or ah least consistent recent listeners will know that this is something I've been working on and ah, it feels so good.
02:09.43
Jeffe Kennedy
And so related to that, I want to talk about reading books. Today is about reading instead of writing because I've been seeing discourse.
02:22.10
Jeffe Kennedy
um I always think of it, my my friend, um C.M. Nascosta, whenever she does this, cause she's clever. She always does the um disc, like the CD disc and the horse for discourse, which is just amusing because it's like, yeah, it's,
02:40.22
Jeffe Kennedy
social media discourse deserves its own name because there's always the people putting up the hot takes for engagement and people taking extreme positions and um in ways that they would not speak in person.
02:59.83
Jeffe Kennedy
Right? so so yeah, discourse. I'm going to put that in air quotes. Uh, and maybe on the show notes, if I remember, I'll use the emojis for the, the disc horse.
03:16.47
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, so reading, there is ongoing discourse about how many books people read per year and the, uh,
03:31.93
Jeffe Kennedy
There is of course the whole aspect of the books to Graham and book talk community, uh, publishing a lot of stuff for engagement. They want to be influencers. Um, it's a whole, it's a whole ecosystem that survives on its own predator price cycle, right? So there's the whole concept of reading and reviewing books, um, making content regarding books for engagement and so forth.
04:03.16
Jeffe Kennedy
But how much of that has to do actually with reading the books is something that seems to be coming up over and over again, because there are people who read very, very fast. And there are people who, but well, so here's this latest thing is there was conversation discourse about,
04:25.05
Jeffe Kennedy
um that people were are only reading the dialogue, that they're going through the books and reading only the dialogue. And this kind of dovetails in with the conversation that someone had told me a long time ago that Kindle Unlimited readers read down the center of the page looking for the good stuff. And that came up again in this discourse that it wasn't just the dialogue, but that people were coming...
04:54.17
Jeffe Kennedy
coming were maybe that too. Uh, but people were reading for, uh, the smut scenes that they would basically skim until they got to the smut scenes and read that.
05:08.38
Jeffe Kennedy
Which there's nothing wrong with that, right? You get to read for whatever reasons you want to read. And, uh, if you want to just read smut scenes, you know, go on with your bad self.
05:22.66
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, I certainly have books of erotica that I have read for precisely that reason.
05:31.35
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, and there ends up being feelings about this because there are people saying, well, can you say that you read this book if you only read the dialogue and skip the description, or if you only read the smut scenes, um,
05:52.34
Jeffe Kennedy
And it's like, no it it it brings in this level of competition, right? You know, and it's like, well, you know, Becky Bookstagrammer says she read 500 books this year, and I only read so many, and...
06:10.30
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, then you end up feeling inadequate. Like how, how come I can't do like book Becky books to grammar is, and is Becky actually cheating? Is she just reading dialogue or just reading the spot scenes or only reading the, um, AI summary or whatever?
06:28.50
Jeffe Kennedy
And it's like, yeah, I get it. i I understand. But also, it's a question of what are you trying to do? You know, the influencer sphere is inherently competitive. And if you're trying to be in that space, then I probably can't help you. But why are you reading books? Do you count books?
06:50.26
Jeffe Kennedy
reading books and so forth. I count my dnfs. Um, I count my books that I start to read and um, don't finish, do not finish, did not finish. Uh, and Because i am keeping track of my reading for a different reason. And that's part of what made me want to talk about this today was I saw somebody with not many comments and so forth. And and I actually replied and I haven't looked to see if um anyone replied to my comment, but she was saying, why are we even keeping track of what we read? What's what's the reason for this?
07:28.73
Jeffe Kennedy
And I think it's a fair question. It's like, well, are you using this number to, you know, bludgeon other people with and brag, you know, and say, well, I read 500 books and therefore I am the queen of the bookstagram community or something like that. Yeah, it's a little obnoxious.
07:46.81
Jeffe Kennedy
But if you're, you do you have an opinion. Killian doesn't read books at all. He's kind of lazy that way. Yeah.
07:58.62
Jeffe Kennedy
Yeah. Let me see what he wants. But what I commented and the reason that I keep track of my numbers is partly, ah as a goal setting process, which I think is true for many readers that it's, um, that I want to read at least this many books. Uh, one of the things that came up in this conversation was, uh, somebody saying that they didn't think it was possible to read 30 books in a year.
08:29.78
Jeffe Kennedy
And which surprised me because you know there's 52 weeks in a year if you're reading a book a week you can easily read 30 books.
08:40.70
Jeffe Kennedy
Now, can you easily read a book in a week? That's a different question. And it reminds me of like the wellness influencing community too, right? Where there's a lot of people, the success people in those obnoxious types, just saying that, you know, we all have the same 24 hours in the day. And, um, Michael Ulloa, who I really like, he's a fitness coach and,
09:07.00
Jeffe Kennedy
does a lot of debunking of the wellness influencers and grifters out there. I enjoy Instagram a whole lot. Uh, I should, I should, um, I'll try to put it in the show notes.
09:19.82
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, let me make a note. Okay. I, brought up his page so i'll remember to put it in the show notes anyway one of the things he talks about is anyone who has ever had a toddler oops sorry if I hit the microphone there I've got a little gnat flying around uh anyone who's ever lived with a toddler knows that you do not have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else uh it's it's one of those
09:51.99
Jeffe Kennedy
What do they call that? Like a truism? Like it sounds good? Because sure, technically, we do all have the same 24 hours in a day. Ha ha ha.
10:03.80
Jeffe Kennedy
What we all don't have the same as responsibilities. So there was this, um oh, I don't know, some sort of entrepreneur, idiot, geek asshole guy, uh, posted his schedule to threads or one of the social media the other day. Um, and actually let me just share this with you.
10:29.72
Jeffe Kennedy
Okay. This is what this man posted. He says, um, Oh, and his handle is so stupid. It's James clear atomic habits.
10:43.21
Jeffe Kennedy
It's like I can't even with this, but he says my perfect day looks extremely boring. You have to say on that kind of plummy accent 430 AM wake up 430 to 5 AM reading 5 AM to a 5 to 8 AM deep work.
10:59.74
Jeffe Kennedy
What is deep work? We don't know. 8 to 9 a.m. Family Breakfast. 9 to 11 a.m. Lift slash Run. 8 to 12 p.m. Family Lunch slash Walk. 12 to 5 p.m. Deep Work. 5 to 7 p.m. Family Dinner slash Hang. 7 to 8 p.m. Sauna slash Cold slash Reading. 8 to 8 30 PM hang slash show. We don't know what he's showing 8 30 PM sleep. And he says, I wouldn't change a thing. Boring is seriously underrated. And it's like, yeah, okay. So,
11:36.76
Jeffe Kennedy
how are these meals magically appearing on the table, dude? ah So many women chimed in on this kind of thing. It's like, what a total princess this guy is that he's just like showing up for lunch, um showing up for breakfast.
11:56.82
Jeffe Kennedy
People were asking what school are these kids going to? That family breakfast is from eight to nine.
12:04.34
Jeffe Kennedy
one of my favorite comments was somebody said now show me your wife's schedule. I was like yeah so do we all have the same 24 hours in a day. um Yeah.
12:15.61
Jeffe Kennedy
On the surface yes. But do we all have the same responsibilities in a day? No absolutely not. So I am really talking about reading here because fitting in reading is something that takes time and quiet, right? You know, ah it takes not being interrupted by toddlers. It takes have, you know,
12:42.74
Jeffe Kennedy
not having to do other things at the same time and this is why so many people love audio books right because you can read a book while commuting to work. Ah, even if you're the driver they frown I used to have a friend um when I was in middle school whose mom would put a book on the steering wheel show drive us around with a book on the steering wheel. Um, yeah, gen X that's that's what we went through. Ah,
13:10.36
Jeffe Kennedy
you know at least an audio book, uh, allows you to still drive a car. Uh, people, you re listen to audio books while cooking dinner, um, doing dishes, doing the household chores that this guy, Mr. Atomic Habits is clearly not having to do. Right. Um, he's not, I didn't see, uh, you know, seven to 8 PM do the dishes. Um,
13:37.47
Jeffe Kennedy
or at 7 to 7 30 do the dishes. Ah.
13:44.28
Jeffe Kennedy
You know all of these things that take time even if you have someone clean your house like I am fortunate to do. There's all the little things the picking stuff up. Right? How much time how much of your life are you spending picking up after other people.
13:57.98
Jeffe Kennedy
Ah, can you read a book at the same time fantastic. Not everybody likes audio books I don't. Um, because I don't concentrate on them while my mind goes elsewhere. I'd actually start spinning my own stories which can be useful but um, yeah, not so great for reading other people's stories.
14:15.70
Jeffe Kennedy
So. Cycling around to why do i track how many books I read? Well, I used to be an exhaustive reader and of course I grew up pre-internet era You know back in my day. We did not have cable TV. We did not have endless streaming possibilities We did not have um all of the wonderful show options that we have now we did not have social media. Uh, so, you know, reading a book was a great, know, I spent growing up hours upon hours upon hours reading books, which was a huge influence on me and
15:06.58
Jeffe Kennedy
I started writing in the early nineties. Um, first published work was like 94. And I discovered that particularly when I began writing fiction that I read much less, uh, because I found that on the feature side that writing novels,
15:34.49
Jeffe Kennedy
ah occupied that same energy and story space, that wonderful, delicious thread of being immersed in a story. That was the same for me as writing as in reading.
15:48.47
Jeffe Kennedy
And I loved it. But what that meant was, is I wasn't reading so much. Now, looking back on it, this also coincided with the burgeoning of the internet and social media. And I started spending more time doing that. And also with, you know, like Netflix, when they would mail us movies, I had a lot more opportunities to see movies that did not necessarily come to the movie theater in our small town. Being able to go back and watch things that I really wanted to see again, that I didn't have to wait for them to cycle up on network TV. All of these really influenced
16:31.00
Jeffe Kennedy
ah how we spent our leisure time. And all of this time that I used to devote to books now had other things competing for that attention. And that often was easier, right? You know, so much easier to chill to a movie or especially something that I'd seen before and do like a whole Buffy rewatch, right? Instead of reading a fantasy doorstopper.
16:57.56
Jeffe Kennedy
that combined with um this thing that many many writers experience once you start writing you don't read so much so all of this has been a very long 15 minute way of saying that I had to reintroduce reading to my life and one way that I did that was by ah, creating goals and tracking on my spreadsheet so that I would read more books and it was now that I have the habit again.
17:29.40
Jeffe Kennedy
um I read much more than I watch anything and I limit my social media time and so forth. But I aim to read about a hundred books a year. A hundred to a hundred and fifty books a year and I usually hit that.
17:43.83
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, yes I do count my dnfs as I said. um i I could stop reading a book at any point. I used to make myself read at least 25%, and I don't do that anymore because life is short, and I'd much rather spend it. I find that um if I'm reading something I don't like that I'm not enjoying, I read it very slowly, and so then it ends up sucking up this time I'm much more likely to be distracted and go do other things. So if I'm not loving it if I'm not reading at a good speed then i
18:21.85
Jeffe Kennedy
Yeah, I bail. um So can you read 30 books in a year? i don't know. Can you make the time to do it? And yes, listening to audio books totally counts as reading. I i don't understand why people want to gatekeep that.
18:35.51
Jeffe Kennedy
um But yeah, it's not always easy, especially if you are a deep reader and read more slowly. Also, people read at different speeds, you know, just like people write at different speeds. And so this whole comparisonitis really is a plague upon the community. And that's my, um, what I'm wrapping around to here is, you know, keep track or don't, but don't compare yourself to anyone else because that is the the thief of joy and reading should be about joy.
19:12.06
Jeffe Kennedy
And on that note, I'm going to go do some business and maybe keep reading a book. Currently reading ah Lois McMaster Bujold, continuing the full read of her Vorkosigan cycle. I am reading Warrior's Apprentice.
19:28.95
Jeffe Kennedy
So I will talk to you all on Friday. You all take care. Bye-bye.