Book Dragon Confessions: How to Keep Reading While Living on the Road

Sponsored by RV Roofing Solutions

 Afraid life on the road means giving up your books? Jennifer is joined by full-time RVer and health insurance advisor Dealora Snyder, a fellow book dragon, to bust that myth wide open. With Tasha busy moving into her new rig, Dealora steps in as guest host to share her own confessions, tips, and tricks for staying well-read while living the RV life.

From Little Free Libraries to audiobooks, there are ideas for every kind of reader — digital, physical, or audio — without compromising your storage space.

Learn How:

•           RVers can access hundreds of books for free or almost free

•           Digital library cards work on the road

•           Audiobooks can replace screen time on long travel days

•           Physical book lovers can keep reading without the clutter

•           Families & roadschoolers can find curriculum & kids’ books affordably

•           Virtual book clubs connect readers across time zones

Links & Resources:

🚐 RV Roofing Solutions (sponsor): rvroofingsolutions.com

📚 Libby: libbyapp.com

🎵 Chirp: chirpbooks.com

🎧 Hoopla: hoopladigital.com

📖 Amazon Kindle: amazon.com/kindle

🎶 Spotify: spotify.com

📍 Little Free Library Map: littlefreelibrary.org

📚 Book Club is My Alibi (Facebook): Join Here

🏫 RoadSchooling Resources: learntorv.com/roadschooling

📍 RV Travel Tips: learntorv.com/travel-tips

👥 Join Our Free Facebook Community: Learn to RV: The Podcast Community

📸 Follow Our Adventures: @LearnToRV

👉 More RV Life Resources: learntorv.com

📺 Watch on YouTube: Learn To RV Channel

🎙️ Podcast Website: learntorvthepodcast.com

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💬 Are you a book dragon? Share your favorite reading spots and go-to apps in our Facebook community!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hey Natasha, did you forget we're recording today? We're recording Jennifer, I'm moving.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

What do you mean you're moving?

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Oh. So we're supposed to be recording books on the road today.

SPEAKER_03 0:19

I have I have eight books. They're in a on a shelf over there.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Okay, so it drops in two days. Do I need to find a co-host that like I don't want to take you out of this? What do you think? Should we find like a guest co-host for this episode so you can focus on moving? Wait a minute. What do you mean you're moving?

SPEAKER_03 0:38

We got our new rig. So we're moving from Flick to our new toy hauler. And I was so excited because I was like, look at all the shelves. But all the cabinets are much shallower than our cabinets in Flick. So yeah, there are more of them, but they they're not as deep. And so I'm really struggling to find ways to make things fit. But I did find things. I found a place to put my book. So maybe the episode I could just be like, look, this is how you can fit your books on the road, and I can just read my book titles. Do you think maybe you maybe you sh maybe you should get a co-host to fill in for me?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Well, I mean, who all right, but you're gonna be back next week, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Yes, yes, 100%. I this is just this is I'm drowning. I'm drowning in quote.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I got this. I actually think I know exactly who to ask. They're an avid book reader. Do you know who I'm thinking of? I think so.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

But you you tell me who you're thinking of.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Well, you know what? I think you might just have to wait till you edit this to find out who I chose. And that way Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

I'm gonna have some serious FOMO going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

I know, but you know what? You get to see it before everybody else does. That's true and it's gonna drop Monday for Patreon, so you're gonna get to edit it before everybody else does, anyways. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

You know, okay, all right, okay. That's fair then. I'll take it. All right.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Well, we'll see you next week. Save that time, save that channel, but hopefully the house is a house by then.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

I hope so. That I hope so.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

And your camera and your light are all back because you look a little green today.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

I don't even know where my video camera is right now. I don't know where my microphone is.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Well, you go find all those things so we can record next week, and then I will go reach out to the person I'm thinking of. Okay, and I will touch base with you soon, okay?

SPEAKER_03 2:34

Okay, and I will be surprised.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Hey there, guys. Welcome back to Learn to RV, the podcast. Today is kind of different. Um, I'm actually here with Dolora Snyder. She's a friend of mine. You might have recognized her from season one. She's actually been on the podcast a couple of times talking about how she specializes in healthcare coverage. So welcome, Dolora.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yep. So um we're gonna actually not talk about healthcare coverage, but I want you to just kind of do a quick intro about how you travel and go on the road full time and what you do helping people with healthcare coverage.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Sure. So my family and I have been on the road for about six and a half years now. We're going on seven. We launched from North Carolina just before COVID. So we lived COVID in the RV. And we've traveled all over the US a couple times, a few times now. Um, I do remote work as a health insurance advisor, so that's how we have income on the road. And I just love it. I've helped so many RVers because we all need health insurance that travels with us. So it's it's really been great. I met Jennifer on the road. Meeting friends on the road is always the best. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Awesome. Well, thank you. So today we're not gonna talk about health insurance, we're gonna talk about something, I don't know, that's just as important in some ways. I have entitled this one Book Dragon Confessions. I invited somebody that was also what I would probably consider another book dragon on the road. If you don't know what a book dragon is, it's somebody that reads while they travel. But a lot of people wonder, how are you ever gonna do that? You know, once you get on the road, how do you do that? So do you carry a stack of books with you, or do you, you know, so we're gonna dive into all of that today. I think to a certain degree, that means that you're kind of a bookworm to a certain degree. How many books a month would you say you read?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

On a good month, if I have my way and I have enough time and everybody leaves me alone long enough, 10 to 12, something like that. I read a lot.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yeah. So I mean, one of the things that people asked me was, did you give up books on the road? And my answer was always absolutely not, you know, and it looks very different today, 13 years later, than it did when we hit the road full time. But, you know, we're gonna get into kind of all of that and we're gonna tell you exactly how to do it. I thought it'd be fun to do just kind of a book dragon confession as we start out. So, what would you say the biggest thing you've ever done? Like for me, it was like I rerouted like 40 miles just to go to a bookstore. Do you have anything like that that you'd, you know, be willing to share?

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Not that um, I usually read electronic books now just because I can take it with me everywhere. My confession right now is I probably do have a stack of eight or ten books next to my bed that I'm like, oh, I'm gonna read it. It's been there for like two years. Because when you get into it and you start reading, and especially when you're d a digital reader, um, you know, you always see like when you're finding your book that you want to read. It has all the recommendations, and I'm like, oh, I want to read that. And so I just always have a pile of books everywhere. I have a pile on my phone, I have a pile like physically in the bedroom. And I I do read physical books, you know, here and there. So I'm just not willing to get rid of them until I read them. I I just can't.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

That's fair though. So I mean, I think that we can't really fully appreciate where we are now because you know, I know I'm way more digital now than I was when I hit the road. Yeah, but we need to understand where we came from. So going back to your house, your sticks and bricks before you hit the road, and many of our listeners are actually like part-time RVers, so they may relate really well to this. In my house, I was always a homeschooler. We had probably close to 3,000 books before we hit the road. We had shelves all throughout the living room, a couple shelves in the bedroom. I I am a dedicated book dragon by nature. When people would say, Oh, what do you have? And I'm like, Oh, I went to every library book sale on the planet, and I knew all the librarians. I'd have some sneak peeks into the library book sale. My daughter volunteered there back then. You know, it was a great way to do it, but giving up those books was really hard for me. Like it was probably one of the hardest things I gave up on the road. What about you? What was your life like with books before you hit the road? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

So I am also a homeschool mom or was. I still like to stay at homeschool, but my kids go to virtual charter school now. They're actually in a public school, but they never go to school. They're at home virtually. But anyways, in my homeschool, my real homeschool days, I would take the the kids to the library every week for story time. And we would always spend an extra hour there, and my kids would come home with a total books, and I come home with a few that I could read for the week. So I did used to read a lot of paper books, and I still, you know, it's a it's a little bit of nostalgia when I get my hands on a book and I really get into it now, and I'm I'm reading a physical and you can smell it and everything. That that was hard. That was hard to kind of switch. And you know, you just you learn, you learn to to like new things. And and even back then at the house, I was a little bit of a digital reader because when digital reading began, I learned really fast. I never without my book, and I just love it. Otherwise, I'm sticking the paper book and my foot I mean, my purse, and it's getting all messed up, and maybe I forgot to put it in there or something. But yeah, definitely a uh challenging transition.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah. So we're gonna talk about some of the big methods of how to find books on the road. I have a whole list over here, and we're gonna just see where Delore has lots of information or a little bit of information. She doesn't know what's coming. That's kind of the magic of this is actually having those authentic conversations about life on the road and that sort of thing. This is like kind of like the conversation we'd have at coffee, you know, one morning if we were sitting there at Starbucks. So, you know, I like to start with something called a little free library. And I don't know if you use those, but there's actually an app where you can go find them all over the country. And it's basically just a little wooden box, two shelves high. And so it's there's a searchable map, and you can now go find books all over the country. And a lot of people think they're just for kids, but they're not. Like there's all sorts of books you can find in a little free library. And I've even found one at campgrounds. So have you ever done a little free free library for starters?

SPEAKER_02 8:55

I have not done one of those. I've seen them and stereotype. I was like, oh, they're just kids' books or whatever. So I never actually looked in, but yeah, I've seen those.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah. So I mean, they can be outside laundromats, they can be at a park, they can be at the beach. They're crazy. You know, it's just fun to find those. And I actually found a signed book, and I don't know if it was the real person that signed it or not, but in one of those, which was also very fun. What's nice about that though is, you know, the fact that you can, you know, gift those away later. And we'll get there in a few minutes. Okay, so let's go digital a little bit. Library cards. We kind of talked about those. So I actually carry Libby cards. Do you are well, they're not really Libby cards, they're digital library cards that you can sign up for an app called Libby. And Libby, you can, it's like going to a library. Do you use Libby at all?

SPEAKER_02 9:48

Oh, yes. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Okay, so tell me a little bit about your Libby account.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

So I have, I don't know how many currently, two or three library cards on there right now. I don't know if you know, but you can go to other libraries, whatever town you're in, go to the county library and get a library card as a non-resident. You have to pay for them. Um when I was in Huntington Beach, South Carolina, that's the first time I knew I could do it. And it was only five dollars. I paid five dollars for the year for a library card. And I'll yes, please. Um, and then I've been other places and they wanted like 130. Um, but that was that was only one time and that was rare. Typically, um, I pay about$25 and$22 for the year. Um, and I've learned that different libraries allow you to borrow a different number of books and put a different amount of books on hold. So I love that. I love having different library cards. And when one expires, I'm like, oh, I gotta go find a new library. The other thing it does is different libraries have different books and a different number of the same titles. So by having lots of library cards on your Libby app, if one library doesn't have it, you can look at a different library.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yep. So my Libby account comes from San Bernardino County, California, my my original one, and that's actually where we launched from. And I've been able to keep that because I'm a Marine Corps wife, and I actually have uh my mom lives there and I'm on her paperwork for her car. And so from a legal standpoint, I can legally have a library card there and they're amazing about it. But it's also the largest county in the United States, so I love that I get all sorts of them. Now they do charge for the Libby card if you are not a resident of that state. And I would pay for that one just because that one is so easy to use. I also have one for Las Vegas, um, which when we were there a couple years ago, they gave it to me for free, and they actually let me renew that one right online all the time. And so that one's a good one to have. Um, and they have a ton of kids' books. I have, you know, a 14 and a 16-year-old that love like uh like manga books and stuff like that. And they have a large selection in Vegas with those online as well, which I've never found anywhere else other than like memberships to like bookstores. They do carry us in a lot of ways, but the other thing they do is they do audiobooks. We are digital on a lot of travel days. Audiobooks will say, like, okay, this week we're gonna listen to, you know, if we're travel weekend is five hours long, we'll pick a book within that timeline and we'll listen to that whole book throughout the weekend. And it doesn't even have to be your genre, you know, because audiobooks do take longer to listen to. But what we love about it is just the family entertainment and the conversations that happen for the road school side of this. A lot of times we'll pick stuff that's local to the area we're going to and we'll learn about it on the way there. What about you? Do you guys use any type of audiobooks as a family?

SPEAKER_02 12:46

I well I would love to, but my kids are not totally on board. We have. I've actually done both, and we've gotten books and done read-alouts, and we all sit in the living room and we um our electronic devices. My kids, like I said, are in online virtual school, so they have to have a tablet. So they have Libby on their on their tablets, and my husband has it on his phone, and so we can do a read-along together and we can all follow along as somebody's reading each chapter.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Oh, I hadn't even considered that. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Yeah, it's awesome. I had so much fun. I only got the kids to read like two or three books, and you know, it's one of those commitment things where you really have to schedule it and make sure it happens, and we've talked about doing it again, and then you know, there's a million other things going on, and it just is on the bottom of the list, sadly, but it was a lot of fun, and the kids actually enjoyed it more than they said they did, you know. I knew they did, and we just set a time like every evening to read together for like well, I did one chapter, but you know, some books have really long chapters, so you know, either a a set amount of time we we really do need to get back to that. Um and then on the flip side, my husband and I actually have figured out that we like to listen to the same books sometimes. So he will get the book on his device, and then I will get the book on my device, and we'll put our headphones on and we'll press play at the same time, and our speed is set to the same. And so, you know, I I listen, I audiobooks are my thing. It's the only way I can get so many in. I listen to books while I'm working. And so if I want to listen to something with him, that's usually what we do. Or like when we go out for a walk, we might be listening to our book. And so people are like, Oh my god, they're not talking, they're wearing headphones, and we're like, Well, actually, we're doing something together, we're listening to the same story, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Yeah, well, and that just proves that people don't realize what they don't realize a lot of times too, even when we're together, we're doing things that are very much the same sometimes. So that's a really neat perspective on that.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Yeah, and I have asthma, so if you ever see me out walking and I don't talk to you while I'm walking, that's why because I can't talk. So we started listening to audiobooks, so it wasn't like a one-way conversation. You know, my husband would be talking to me and I'd be like, you know, breathing heavy. Now we can just listen to our books and go for a walk together, and it's a lot more it's just better. We're doing something together. We're walking and we're getting our our book in at the same time. And then we press stop at the same time, and we're like, okay, yep, we're at, you know, five hours, 43 minutes, and 28 seconds. And he might be at 33 seconds, but we're right there together.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

And we'll what's even more fun about that, I would think, is that you know, you can have a conversation about what you just listened to. That just sparks a whole nother, you know, whatever, or you know, I can't believe that happened, you know, that moment. That's always fun too. But so I think doing it together is it, I mean, that's a great challenge for couples that maybe are looking for new ways to connect. You know, not that it's therapy, but it's a great way for just to keep a different part of that conversation. Because I think the more you travel together, the more you fall into kind of certain routines where he'll do something and you'll do something. That's a great connection point, really. Genuinely, that is. Yeah, we do that by going to bookstores. Um I'm gonna hit Goodwill and thrift stores because we actually found one in Sarasota this year that is a dedicated Goodwill bookshop.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

Oh neat.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

It was very cool, and it wasn't overpriced. And on Sundays, kids' books were 50% off. And my daughter, who is 19, still loves to read princess books, so she's stocked up on her fair share of them and she'll give them away as she finishes them. So, but the other time of year to do that is to like post-graduation. Spring cleaning is often time a great time to get books, and I say goodwill, but any thrift shop can have great book selections. Uh deseret bookstores or thrift shops, which are usually out west, are great places to get books as well. I feel like there's just larger book selections in those places. And then the library. We've been to a bunch of events where the library sets up like a friends of the library book sale outside during their event. Is there anywhere that you have a particular book place that you've been like, oh, this is just the greatest selection ever?

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Actually, I was waiting for you to get to this, and I was like, I can't believe she's not mentioning this, as we're all R Vers. But have you ever gone to the R V, like the community center in the R V park that you're staying at? Yeah. That's like some, some places are like uh thrift store on steroids. Like some places I walk in and I'm like, I can't even imagine, I I can't even believe how many books they have here, like shelves upon shelves upon shelves. And they're free because they're for the RV community. And so you don't even have to pay for them, and that's why I have a stack of 10. Because I took I think half of them are from my mom. She passed them she passed them to me, but I have a few from the campground. And when I started on the road, that was my favorite because it felt like a thrift shop to me, but I only had to walk up to the community center, so I didn't actually have to leave. I didn't have to spend any money. And you know, m a lot of people on the road are are retired or they they manage their time well because we all have to being on the road. And there's so many readers, and they're going and buying the new books that come out that I want to read, and then they fly through them and then they put them up there in the office. And it's so that's part of the reason I haven't read my stack because I keep finding, you know, up to date, like, yeah, all these ones that people are talking about. And the the great thing about it is whenever I go up there to grab a book, I take one of my books and put it on the shelf. So I take one off, but I put one on at the same time. So that's like my thrift store.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah, no, for sure. And there's a couple other places you can find those, but you know, some some campgrounds are better than others, you know, and you never know what you're gonna find. Sometimes you find I I remember we were at one and my husband was delighted, and I was like, but it was a whole thing of westerns. I am not a western reader, but he loved it because they had a ton of Louis Lemour books. That is totally his jam, and he doesn't love to read, but if he reads, it's gonna be paper because he's dyslexic and he needs to literally be able to follow along a little bit differently than I do. But I can burn through books like their candy, but the westerns are not my jam. But this whole place had like a whole shelf full of Western writers, which was wonderful for him. Some other ones that maybe you've seen is have you ever seen a book exchange in a truck stop?

SPEAKER_03 19:33

No, I haven't.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Yeah, so I mean, that's sometimes fun. You know, some of the bigger ones where the lounges are, there's sometimes there's ones at truck stops. Pilot Flying J tend to be the ones where you're gonna find those the most. You can find new books at some of those as well. Um so if you're looking for something to read and you don't have a good signal, and that's the reason to have a paper book a lot of times on the road for me, is if you're, you know, doing that.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

You can download, you do download your Libby books, right? I do, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

So tell us how we do that.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Yeah. So when you go into Libby and you borrow a book, there's a little button that says download, and it'll download your book straight to your device. And this works for actual reading books that you're gonna visually read and audiobooks. So you download them and then like I use that a lot. I have to fly my kids back and forth to North Carolina because they have braces. And so I always have a book downloaded on my device, audio or actual reading, and I can use it in airplane mode. So you do not have to have cell service for a Libby, and I use Hoopla too. You've heard of Hoopla, I know.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

I have not used Hoopla. Tell me about it.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

My gosh, Hoopla. I actually prefer Hoopla over Libby.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Why?

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Because there's there's a few, well, okay, let me backtrack. There's there's one big con that I wish they would fix, but I've got a way around it.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Um okay, so hoopla, if you're listening today, there's something that Dolores needs to tell you to fix, so pay attention.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Yeah. So um hoopla for me has a lot more of the books that I'm looking for. And I read all the Freedom McFadden and Mary Kubica and all the big raised books that everybody's reading. But when I can't find a book on Libby, even with my three library cards, Hoopla usually always has it. So Hoopla has a bigger selection. Oh, there's two cons I'll have to tell you about, and that's why. That's why I prefer Hoopla. It's my go-to. They have a lot more of the newer books. Libby doesn't always have enough copies of the newer book.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Which I will never, ever, ever understand because it's a digital copy. Yeah, but that's a different conversation.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Yes. Um so there's times where I go on Libby and the wait is like 45 or 60 days, and then I go to Hoopla and it's available. So is Hoopla a paid membership? No, it's free, just like Libby. Yeah. Wow. And all you need is so you need an email. Address and you can only put one library card with that email address. Here's the first card. So it just like Libby, when you put a library card on Hoopla, it tells you this library allows you to rent three books at a time. I have one right now through Hoopla, three books for the month. So Hoopla is a little bit different. It gives you a certain for the month. But I have one library right now that allows me to take six books per month. And so between Libby and Hoopla, that's usually enough. And they give them to you always for 21 days. Whereas Libby, depending on the library, is 14 or 21. And so the way around that is to get one library card for one email address. And then get another library card for another email address. So you have to log out of Hoopla and then log back in with the email you want to use. But I find that I really my one card that I have allows me to get six books, and between the two I never have to log out. So you just need to put them in experiment and find a card that allows you to have enough rentals. But I love Hoopla. The other con about Hoopla is you know, when you're reading a book in Libby and you get out of Libby to go do whatever else you're doing, and you come back to Libby, you're on the same page. With Hoopla, sometimes it doesn't save your page really good. So you have to remember to hit the bookmark before you get out of it. And then you'll always be at your page. So it's not terrible, but it takes a little bit to remember to do that. And then when you get back on, you're like, oh my god, I wasn't there. But even with those two cons, I still like hoopla better than Libby.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

So let's go into e-readers because audiobooks and stuff like that are, you know, one of the things we've hit on. But one of the things I have is I have a Kindle membership. I didn't always have a Kindle membership. I started on a bunch of reader lists where you could get free books on certain days where you could download those for your Kindle. And I found tons of great stuff that way, cookbooks and how-to books, and some of them were great, and some of them were meh, but some of them were new writers, and I found some new people that I really enjoy listing or reading because of that. So I actually probably last year I finally broke down and and added that Kindle membership to my Amazon, well, our Amazon account, Frank's Amazon account. It was a great ad though, because then I can get all of the extra stuff there that I maybe can't get on Kindle with, you know, Libby, but it sounds like I might need Hoopla.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Yeah, you need Hoopla for free. And I also have the Amazon Kindle app. Um, and I I like turn that one on and off. I pay for it for a month, I read a few books. There was one book. Um, so one of the things that I'm kind of getting off track, but there's a point. So I have two friends that I've been friends with for like 35 years. We were high school friends and we're still friends. We talk every day. And there's one one of those friends reads like I do, like all the she probably reads more than I do. But we said we should read the same book because that would be fun, you know, like a little just our own little book club, which I have a book club for you in a minute, too. There was one book she said we should read Love Mop, and I couldn't find it anywhere. And I finally found it in the Amazon Kindle app. So I went ahead and bought the Amazon Kindle membership for that month. I read a few books during that month and then I turned it back off. And then there's been a couple other times that I'm like, it's on there, I'm gonna have to buy it again. So I buy it again, then I turn it off.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Because usually easily that can pay for one book in itself.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

You know, so I mean, like I don't think it's a bad I don't think it's a bad investment if you're a reader, especially if you read two or three books a month. You know, but what I do with it is when we we still go to Barnes and Noble, I have Lego fanatics in my house. If there's not a Lego store, we're going to Barnes and Noble to go look for Legos and books always, but there's always an ulterior motive of Legos. But what I'll do is I'll walk through and I'll snap pictures of the books I want to read, and then I'll go to the Kindle app and I'll read them there. And most times they're there within a certain time frame, and then I have the picture to reference them, which is just one way that I don't have to carry a ton of extra books. We actually hit the road with two full like containers of books when we hit the road.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

I did too. I did two.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

And I think that you know, we've pared down a lot over the years. We've been through this is our third camper. This one specifically had a lot less storage space for things like that. My last camper had they were super deep shelves because it was made for an older TV because it was a 2008. And so it had like room for two or three layers of books, and so I filled that bad boy up. This one does not have that ability. You know, we had to really decide what was coming, what was going. We did put some of the like kids' books that we were no longer reading in storage that we kept. That's another thing though, is knowing what to keep and what to get rid of and what to bless somebody with. I think there's like some freedom in that too. And as your kids grow up, you know, you get different books. I mean, you just do.

SPEAKER_03 27:05

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

So let's talk curriculum and kids' books, because I mean I know you're not buying curriculum now, but did you ever have to buy curriculum while you were traveling?

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yep. And I only bought from one store. Really? So yeah, when I first started homeschooling, I researched a lot, and there was where I lived, there was some like discount homeschool shops that you could go in, and there was teacher shops, and I did buy like I would buy the kids flashcards from there, and I'd when they were real little, I could go find activity books. Ollie's, if you have an Ollie's name, Ollie's is amazing for flashcards and like activity workbooks and stuff like that. Coloring books, they have so many coloring books, so many and books for us to read too. They have a huge selection of books usually.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

And they're usually such an affordable price. In fact, it was just recently that we Tasha and I actually recently went into an Ollie's. We'd never bet neither one of us had ever been in one. But it was very fascinating to see that it was from all genres, and there were some weird ones. Like, yes, but another good one is um, gosh, what are they? Not books a million, although that's a good store too. There's one in Conroe, Texas, where you can take your used books in or buy new. And, you know, there's a lot of bookstores like that that are out there that have a little bit of both. And I think that's kind of the best of both worlds in some ways, you know, but use curriculum co-ops. I know campgrounds, a lot of times in the wintertime, we'll have like a swap table, much like the campground like bookshelf, only it's more dedicated to like road schooling families. Facebook group swaps. I know that sometimes we'll mail each other stuff if there's something that, you know, is something that we know would love to be passed around in the road school community. And then kids go through books so fast. And so we're constantly on the lookout for, but you know, going back to Goodwill, I mean, that's a great place to go get a handful of, you know, older scholastic style book books and then pass them on at the next next campground. And I think that that's one of the things that's overlooked a lot of times is kids' books being in campgrounds. And I think it's very much appreciated by families as they come through an area, if there's one dedicated space, even if it's just a shelf full of them of books that are there. I know um Stephanie Simpson does Osborne books, and a lot of times as she phased out of her kids' books, she would drop them off at dedicated campgrounds across the country on purpose instead of swapping them just so that there were people that could do that.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Yeah, I think it's a great way to connect. But the the homeschool supercenter, so it's called homeschoolsupercenter.com, and that was where I found the best selection and the best price for homeschooling. You know, curriculum can get rather expensive, and when you have I had four kids and I was homeschooling at the same time, so that that was a that was a yearly expense that I had to plan on. Um, but homeschool supercenter, you could buy whole curriculum packs for the grade. So I would buy four packs, so one for each of my kids' grades, and they have secular selections, and we are a secular family, so that is hard to find. And you know, when you go to all these other shops that are around, most of the time they have religion-based curriculum.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

That's true.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

It's hard to find secular in those places. The homeschool super center was one of the first places that I could find secular curriculum, which is what I was after, but they also do have all of the other most popular, and I've been out of it for a while, so I can't remember all the names, but they do have all the religion-based um curriculum as well, but you can buy it as a whole set, and they have different levels of sets. So you can go on there and you can, you know, do it to your budget. And I liked to buy the curriculum because I had kids in fourth and fifth grade and seventh grade, and I was like, I want to make sure that I know that they're getting what they need to get. So I would buy the full set, and it came with textbooks, just like they would have in school, and we would go through the textbook. That's what we did. Um, and it had workbooks to go with the textbooks, so we could read the textbook and then do the work with it. And then there were smaller packs where maybe you only need the workbooks, or maybe you only need the textbooks, and then you're gonna go find your own other stuff to mesh with it. So you could spend less money, get a few books for the grade, like the core things that you know you want them to have, and then you can go to the other stores and add on.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

See, and we we used a program called Konos, which was a religious-based program, but you could make it work however you wanted it to, but it was a unit-based study. But what was neat about it, it used it kind of collaborated a little bit of what John Holt taught in unschooling and what Charlotte Mason taught about living books. So it took those living books and you were reading all the time. So when we were near a library, it was great. But when I took it on the road, because I took all my Konos books with me, like, oh, this is the best thing ever. I love Konos, and I'm gonna take it. But it's so library heavy. And back in 2013, all of these things were not available. So we were stuck with like things like library book sales and stuff like that. So I think that's why an episode like this is so very important for people to realize, yeah, it's digital and it's so much easier today than it used to be. But there are ways to do it. And whether you're part-time on the road, full-time on the road, it doesn't really matter. Spotify also now has audiobooks. Yeah, there's a growing catalog there. Have you done any of those? I have not.

SPEAKER_02 32:33

No, I haven't either. I've looked, and I will say the first time I looked, I had a free Spotify membership. And I think depending on your Spotify membership, gives you different amounts of time, minutes per month or whatever that you can have. Um, and I looked and I couldn't find, I think I checked that when I couldn't find that other book and it wasn't there either. But now I have a family Spotify because everybody sites over Spotify. So now I could probably get more books, so I should probably check that. But they do, and have you heard of Chirp?

SPEAKER_01 33:05

No.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Tell me about Chirp. Chirp. Um Chirp is an app where you can get books. It is digital, and you do have to pay for them. And it is Chirp, C-H-I-R-P. Um and you go on there and you just create an account. The account is free, and then every day they send you deals and you can buy books for like a dollar some days. Now they're not new ones I have found, and they're they're typically old ones or older, they're just not new, but they're only a dollar. You know, you like an older genre or something like that, maybe there's a book there for you. And then they have newer ones too. So if you can't find a book, like I have chirp as a backup. So if I can't find a book on all my other things, then I will go on and buy a book from Chirp and it'll be digital, but they're typically cheaper than Barnes Noble. So most of the books I see are around twelve, thirteen dollars.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

Well, and I think that, you know, if you're budgeting an affordable option, you know, if you're setting yourself a limit every month, I mean, I think it can be a very affordable option as opposed to going and buying books at Barnes Noble on a regular basis if you're doing it that way. So here's a good question for you. Do podcasts count?

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Yes. I don't know. I was originally gonna say yes, but is it a podcast that's reading a book? Or I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Well, so I think that podcasts can count. I think that listening to stories online, some of my favorite podcasts are story-based podcasts, and they're like, you know, things where you're you're tuning into an episode to hear the rest of the story for the whole season. And so it's not necessarily like this where we're talking about something specific, but it's more like they wrote a story and there's voice actors or there's something involved in it. There's some history ones, like there's some national park history ones that we listen to regularly, that I would absolutely agree that they are educationally based.

SPEAKER_03 34:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

And they're podcasts. So I mean, you know, mystery history, I think those are fun. You know, mysteries can be actually educational because you know, you're you're actively learning when you're listening. And I think that that's something people don't think about. My oldest daughter is dyslexic for years. She loved listening to audiobooks. And I actually had a library person say to me, you know, you should just let her listen to library books, because you know, and that was back when you had to borrow the books on tape, right? Or the CDs. But, you know, that was actually the way she read for many years. And so I think podcasts are actually a viable solution for that, and they're so easy to access now. Like, you know, whether you're on Apple, Spotify, you know, I mean, iHeartRadio. I mean, this podcast is on all of those platforms and then some. And so there's so many platforms out there that you can listen to. Um, and if you're looking for something specific, you can even search for most of them now, like how to and all of that stuff. All right, so I think I know your answer on the first one. Physical book or ebook? If you had to pick one.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

I'm gonna say physical just because of where I'm at right now in my life. And audiobook might even trump the ebook right now because I I work really long hours. I typically work eight to ten hours a day, six days a week. Um, and audiobooks is really the only way that I can get that number of books in in a month and I can listen while I'm working. So audio is like my real go-to right now. Um, but I still make it a point to read two or three like actual physically reading. Most of the time, 98% of the time, that's an ebook. Um, but then every once in a while, like if we're gonna be going to the beach, ebooks are terrible on the beach. You can't see them because of the glare. So if we're gonna be going to the beach a whole bunch, I will go specifically search out a physical book so I can take it to the beach and read a book on the beach and not have to listen to it. So, you know, there's there's like the right time and place for each.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

What about a genre that surprises people when you say you read it?

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Um, maybe Fifty Shades of Grey. I wasn't gonna mention it before, but that was actually the first book that me and my husband read together. Oh, that's cool though. Yeah, and it kind of like, you know, spiced everything up a little bit. Yeah, no joke. Yeah. And that's not something I would normally read either.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

So and I'm I'm totally a fantasy reader, and people are always surprised by that, which I don't understand why they're surprised by it. But so that's what I dragged to my kids when they're little is you know, dragons and so and it is so it's never a surprise now when Judah wants to play Dungeons and Dragons because it's probably all my fault. Did you ever read a book that you're like, I just want to throw this thing out the window?

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Absolutely. I'm DNF lots of books, yeah, for sure. Uh can't think of any offhand, but yes. If you're if you're on Goodreads, do you use Goodreads?

SPEAKER_01 37:53

I do use Goodreads.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Yeah, so I have a DNF shelf on Goodreads, um, for sure. Let me see if I can.

SPEAKER_01 38:00

So for somebody that's listening in that doesn't know what DNF is, do you want to tell them?

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Yeah, DNF is just did not finish. Throw it to the curb, like you can't get through it. It's terrible. I don't even know what they were doing. No. Boring.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

What about a book that you have that you'd save in a fire?

SPEAKER_02 38:18

I would say probably any of the Mary Kubeka books. She probably is my favorite author right now. Rita is close to that, but I think I like Mary a little better.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Okay, so tell me about book clubs. You said you were gonna go there, so let's go there.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Yeah. So I have a friend that I used to work with before I went on the road, and she is an equal reader to me. Reads, we always have, we used to share books at work and stuff. Um, and she started a Facebook book club where it's all virtual. And it is that's fairly new, so just expectation-wise, it's new. Um, but there's like 23 of us in there. It is a public book club, so anybody can join it. And I think that it would be better if, you know, the more people we had in there, the more active readers. Everybody has busy schedules and can't always, you know, comment and be part of things. But we're actually gonna do a monthly virtual book club meeting through Google Meet or Zoom or something. So we can all read the same book. Super fun. And last month we read two books actually, because she was like coming out hot. And we were supposed to have um a meeting and we haven't had it yet. Book Club is my alibi is what it's called. I'll send you the link. And then she always posts, like she gives us four books to vote on, so we all get to vote on the ones we want to read. So this month, The It Girl by Ruth Ware, she's another of my favorite authors, authors. Um, Love Mom, I've already read that one, so I didn't vote on that. The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell, also a really good author. Um, I read that one too. And then The Drowning Woman by Robin Harding. I've never heard of, I've never read any of Robin Harding books. But anyway, we vote on the books that we want to read, and she'll pick one or two, and then we'll read them, and then we'll have a meeting once a month to discuss and have fun and talk about books.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

That's fun. And so what about spoilers? Are spoilers allowed or no one's allowed to talk about it until like the meeting?

SPEAKER_02 40:20

There's not really any set rules on that. So I guess if you want to be the one to go in there and put a spoiler in the comments, you might not be as well liked, but there's not really any rules against it. It'd be great discussion.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Yep, that would be fun. So hopefully, if you're out there listening and you're looking for a book club, we'll have that in the show notes as well. So you can go join that group. It is a Facebook group and it's a free group just for now, at least, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

But yeah, I think it'll probably stay free, but you know, just the place that we can go have fun. And I was really excited when she came up with the idea because I've looked for virtual book clubs before and they're really hard to find.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Um, you know, there's I think for me, a virtual book club, the hardest part about the virtual book club is that meeting, especially as an RVer, because we're often in different time zones. And so sometimes when somebody meets that's in a house, it's not it doesn't work for our schedule, especially if we're like on the West Coast and they're on the East Coast, because then my book club is now at like you know three o'clock in the afternoon. And so sometimes that's the middle of my workday. And so I think that that becomes one of those challenges for us, but it's a great opportunity, and you know, I think that a club that's like that, you know, if you can even jump in and out, even just in comment sections talking about different things you're reading, that keeps you connected in that way. So, you know, I I think that Facebook groups have their own purpose in that for that, you know, yeah side of things.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

And you don't have to come to the to the meeting, you know. If you can't make it, you know, of course, the more the merrier. We want everybody there. But if you can't make it, nobody's gonna hunt you down. And then, you know, after the meeting, we can put whatever we want in the comments and we can talk about it that way. And so it doesn't have to be a face-to-face type of thing to still be a successful, fun book club.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Absolutely. All right, so there's one challenge for everybody out there. You ready for this one? Go find a little free library in the next couple weeks. Drop that back to us at the Learn to RV Facebook page and the podcast Facebook page so we can see the little free library that you found. Tell us where you found it and tell us if you found a decent swap. And then I have some other homework for you. But I also want to say if you're worried about going full-time or part-time in an RV and losing your reading niche, you don't have to. You know, it gets better. You have community, there were swap shelves and bookstores, and there's so many ways to read on the road that if you're a reader, it's so easy to do. And ask questions. A lot of times people are just waiting for those people to ask questions of them. If you're standing near that reading shelf and somebody else is too, say hello. Chances are they're a reader just like you. So download Libby if you have a library card today, bookmark littlefreelibrary.org and add it to your to scout some new stops. Check if Kindle Unlimited is right for you, because it is an affordable option if you are an avid reader. Find the next swap shelf at your next campground. That's a great way to find people. And then take something random. Maybe it's something that you wouldn't think you'd even enjoy. Sometimes those are the best finds I've ever had. Next travel day, plan for an audiobook or a podcast. Make the drive part of your story. So thanks so much for joining us on Learn to RV the podcast. Thank you, Dolora, for being a great guest host. We so appreciate you. Thanks for bringing all your reading knowledge to the table today and sharing all of your information.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

Thank you so much for having me. I had fun.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

So don't forget to like, subscribe, and follow the podcast wherever you listen. And don't forget, check out insurance with Dolora.com. She can help you if you don't have good insurance on the road, help you navigate that path so you're on the campfire.