A very chic, 2025-era update to those Get Caught Reading posters that used to adorn everyone’s local library dropped on social media this week: And Just Like That… star (and book imprint-haver) Sarah Jessica Parker shared with Page Six that she’s currently reading two books a day in preparation to judge the Booker Prize.
“It’s intense to be reading (that number of books), the volume is kind of hard to convey, what it’s like to have as many books we are given the opportunity to read in a month…it’s quite something,” Parker said. (Appropriately, she disclosed this information at…the PEN America Literary Gala.)
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While her claim has given rise to some skepticism on social media—God forbid a woman have hobbies! Or access to audiobooks on set!—I’m going to trot out one of my extremely few childhood talents and say that it is most definitely possible to get through a book (or more) in a day.
I’ve been speed-reading since I was a weird, undiagnosed-ADHD only child, to the point that my parents used to quiz me after I raced through the latest Pretty Little Liars installment they’d just bought me at Barnes & Noble to see if I’d retained literally any of it. Although I regularly failed those quizzes and continue to struggle with attention to detail, I still read quickly, especially if I have plenty of time on my hands and genuine interest in the topic. (Parker, for her part, acknowledged to Page Six that, with Season 3 of AJLT in the can, she knew that she “had a different kind of time available to me, to read morning till night.”)
That said: Is it the most pleasant way to read? Definitely not; the last time I actually set the challenge of reading four books in a matter of days (all Sally Rooney novels, to research a piece I was writing), I did manage it—but eventually my head hurt and my mind swam and by the time I was done, I wished desperately to be numbed out in front of reality television.