Tandem Talks: It's A Habit: Reading Routines with Do No Harm Author Jack Jordan

Jen - Hello and welcome to the Tandem Collective Talks podcast.

Lex - Tandem Collective celebrates books, film, TV, podcasts and more with our global community.

Lucy - We’re Jen, Jaide, Lucy and Lex, members and friends of Team Tandem. You might already know us from Instagram or TikTok, but if not, it's great to meet you and welcome.

Jen - We're here to chat to you about what's new in the world of books, publishing and film, interview some of your favorite authors and hear your thoughts on what you're reading and watching at the moment. 

Jaide - You can find us at @tandemcollectiveuk on Instagram and also @tandemcollectiveglobal

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Lex - Hello everyone and welcome to the Tandem Collective Talk podcast. Today you've got myself Lex and we've also got Lucy and Jen here too, and we're going to be talking about reading routines. So thinking about the time of place that we read, where we read. And I'm sure there's going to be lots of controversial opinions based on whether we do or don't take our dust jackets off, what we use as bookmarks and whether we can read books at the same time or not.

This episode will also feature an interview with the wonderful Jack Jordan, who was the author of medical thriller Do No Harm, which I can highly recommend, especially if you're fans of that kind of like Gray's Anatomy vibe. But for now, got Lucy and Jen with me, and we're going to do a semi quickfire. How do you feel about this reading routine?

Lucy - Hi, everyone. Its Lucy here? I hope you're enjoying the podcast so far. If you'd like to support us further, it's super important to rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on your preferred player. We'd love to hear what you think on which episodes are your favorite. So Hit is up at podcast@thetandemcollective.com to chat. Now, back to the episode you came for. 

Lex - So guys, tell me about the place that you read. Where are you reading? Predominantly.

Lucy - It's somewhere comfortable. So generally speaking, the couch or in bed before I go to sleep. However, I am also real fan of reading in the garden on a Sunday if I can snap some outdoor time. What I have got better at the last couple of years I think is just snatches of time to read anywhere. So I always will have a book on me.Like if I'm at a hair appointment or if I'm in a doctor's waiting room or just always making sure I have my book on me. So the place can really vary from time to time. But generally speaking, I like to try and suss out a comfy spot. 

Jen - I will read absolutely anywhere. I quite frequently will have a book and be walking around the house with it open whilst reading. So it doesn't matter to me where I’m reading, if there’s a book, I will read it.

Lex - I think all good answers and completely right. I'm exactly the same.When I've got a good book and it's great, I know it sounds cliche, but I do physically struggle to put it down.

Like I'll be making dinner, turning the chicken over with one hand and then the other hand, I'll be flicking through the next page of the book. And Luce, I completely get what you mean about, like, snatches of time? Granted, yes, we work with books so we have to fit in a lot more. Like a lot more consumption of books than your average Joe.

But I am at the breakfast table. I am on the couch, I am on whilst Phil’s watching the football. I am in bed any spare moment particularly actually. And I've been catching myself doing this a lot recently, which is if I'm scrolling on my phone, there's a voice in my head that goes, ‘You could be reading your book right now.’

Yeah. And I go, Oh my God, you're so right. And then I rush back to my book. I think that also helps when you’ve got a good book to read. Okay, great. Next question is talk to me about sound and specifically like background noise. Can you read whilst the TV's on? Is that fine? Can you read whilst you're out and about?

Noisy hairdressers, salons? What's the craic? 

Jen - I prefer sound. So I'm one of those weird people that can't really cope with the quiet. I tend to listen to about 18 hours of music a day, so if it's completely quiet, I feel like I can't focus enough. I would rather have some kind of low background noise, whether that's music, kids screeching at each other, whatever.

Lucy - I prefer minimal noise. Generally, I do like quite a quiet reading zone. However, it is a really good book and I'm completely immersed in it. I can read anywhere. I was actually out with my family yesterday and there was a lady reading her book at the next table to us and the cafe was really noisy like that kind of buzzing coffee shop sound.

And my husband said to me, ‘Can you, can you read with this level of background noise on’

And the answer is yes, but it has to be a really good book.

Lex - Interesting, okay, so I think this one is tricky for me because I feel like over the past few years I have recognized I'm hypersensitive to sound particularly in and around the house. So if I'm in the lounge and the kitchen is the other end of the house, but I can hear two people I know having a conversation in the kitchen, I can't focus on what I'm doing because I can hear what they're doing. I can hear them having a conversation, I can hear their words, which sounds like I'm suddenly a tyrant for sound and I need perfect quiet. I definitely don't. But if I'm going to listen to music, it has to be ambient. Like, it has to be a, like, lo fi beat of nothing.

Yeah. Can you tell that I learned the phrase lo fi beach this year? Like, I'm not cool enough at all to know that phrase, but I also really love showing my nerdiness here. I really love like I don't even know how you describe it. People have created ambient soundscapes for places and they just upload hours of it onto YouTube.

So if you typed in reading in a library into YouTube, you could find a video that's like 6 hours long and it's just sounds that you might hear in the side of a library like indistinct whispering and some pages turning. Maybe there's rain on the window or something like that. That is my crack. I love that. I'm also partial to white noise, like if I'm trying to get in my zone, got a white noise app my phone, I've got a white noise machine in the bedroom.

I just got to do that. But like Luce, to your point could I read in a cafe that was hustling and busy and lots of people around? I think I could if I didn't know them, like if it wasn't like my friends on a couple of tables over or I don't know if, if I didn't know the waitresses, yes, I could do it.

But if I knew them I would potentially always be on edge to listen to them or prepared to talk to them or something.

I know it doesn't make sense.

Lucy - Yeah and if it was your friends, your friends would be like,well Lex is being antisocial.

Lex - Yeah, all of those like brunch dates that I go on, I actually just take my book and I ignore everyone. Okay, let's move away from me being crazy and into the next question. So time of day, I know we've just talked about like snatches of time or we can read anywhere, any time, but is there a point of your day where you would say you get the most reading done.

Lucy - It's the hour before I go to sleep. That is kind of like my designated reading. And what I love is that it's also part of my wind down routine. So, you know, I'll do things like have a bath or shower, make up off, brush my teeth, all of that, and then kind of get into bed and read for an hour, sometimes longer.

But yeah, again, what I have started doing is blocking out my lunch breaks so that I can get some reading in over lunch time as well because I know, yeah, the snatches of time I'd just like get that this so precious when you're busy and just grabbing an opportunity to read whenever you can. But I like a good uninterrupted chunk of time as well. So I think blocking out over lunch as well as before bedtime, for me too. 

Jen - So I would say at the weekend I get loads of reading and I would just quite happily lie on the sofa and read for ages but during the week, so I am a classic kind of anxious insomniac. So I think I probably get most of my reading done in a week in the middle of the night. So I wake up tons of times a night and quite often I wake up and will have like a jolt of anxiety, not be able to settle myself. So I have a bit for my bed and just read for kind of 20 minutes or so and then go back to sleep for a bit and then I might be awake again in another couple of hours. So that's my kind of midweek reading. 

Lex - I mean, that's really interesting considering the kind of books that you read.Like you're a hardcore crime horror girl, so to be waking up in the middle of the night and then to use your words, settling yourself back down with a nice horror book is interesting choice.

Jen - And usually my anxiety is about something completely mundane and domestic. Like, I'll wake up and be anxious over, I’ve not done the Sainsburys shop and then I'll calm myself down by reading about somebody getting murdered.

Lex -  It's escapism in a different way, isn't it? It's like it's putting, you know, your tax bill, your groceries, your kids, your, you know, your own life drama on one side and going, Thank God I'm not this character in this book for one minute. 

Jen - I may have forgotten to book after school club again, but at least we're not murdered.

Lex - Yeah. There you go. That should be your Monday morning motivation. At least I'm not getting murdered. Luce, I think I'm with you on this one. My kind of big chunk of reading happens just before bed, because I think regardless of what we do of an evening, my partner and I have both got our own evening routines. He has his kind of like the cigarette of the day. He lets the dog out, he makes his sandwiches for the next day. My wind down is that I need to wash my face to do some little stretches or a little bit of yoga. And then I get into bed and I read for probably half an hour. And the amount of times that Phil's come to bed and found me with my book, pressed into my face or just like thrown onto the floor pages askew.

And I have to try and refind the page that I was reading the next day.

Lucy - Has he ever taken pictures of you? I have incriminating pictures of me falling asleep reading. 

Lex - I don't think he has ever taken pictures of me, which is surprising because I do that a lot to him. Like he'll fall asleep in the middle of an XBox game. And of course I've got photographic proof of that. But yeah, he's quite good in the sense of that. Okay, this one I think is quite controversial and its, drinks or snacks, if you're settling down to read your book for a little bit, are you a drinks or a snacks kind of person?

Jen - I'm not a snacks kind of person. I will usually have a big coffee next to me, but that is it. No food near my books. What about you Luce?

Lucy - I agree, I am a cup of tea girl so I will normally have a cup of tea next to me. If I'm doing my kind of bedtime reading, I might have herbal or decaf. But yet, generally speaking, not really. It's not even…. I mean, that's a very good point you make, Jen, about not wanting to, you know, contaminate the books with any food because I mean, it would normally be some kind of chocolate biscuit item that I would have. But it's not even that. It's the fact that I don't want to have both hands occupied because I need to read a book. 

Lex - So I love that we've got answers from different ends of the spectrum there. Jen's like, ‘No, the book needs to stay clean’ and Lucy is saying ‘No but I don’t have enough hands for the amount of snacks that I want. I think on the whole I am a no snacks but a multiple drinks kind of person. But you will always find me with multiple drinks at an arm's length. But the one rule break on that one is if I am reading in bed just before I go to sleep, I will like my last kind of snack of the night is always like a bowl of fruit, and that sounds very healthy, but I'm not going to tell you how much biscoff sauce I pour all over it, and I will quite often end my day with my book and a bowl of like biscoff fruit.

I'm always having got like some kind of cold, fizzy drink and then quite often an iced coffee as well, like double parking on the beverage front most of the time.

Lucy - Cool beverages though out of interest rather than tea or coffee.

Lex - Yeah. I mean, the only tea that I will ever drink is mint tea. And that is a last thing before bed kind of person. Or if it's winter, if it, if we're talking about winter, then my answers to quite a lot of these questions might be different, but for anybody listening, we are having a nice blue skies in the UK at the moment.

So I'm a cold drinks kind of girl. Next one. And again, I feel like this is a controversial one. How do you guys feel about annotating and do you have annotating within your own reading routines? So by annotating, I mean highlighting, tabbing, the underlining, scribbling in the margin and anything like that.

Lucy - I do annotate when I read kind of for pleasure, but I would do that more through tabbing. I think I'm a bit of a control freak in that I don't like to, If I don't have to write on a book, then I won't. So a lot of my books I read for work purposes, yeah they're kind of scrawled all over.

Or like, you know, back when I was a student because I did an English literature degree, I would write all over the book, but there is that yeah, there is part of me that really likes keeping them pristine and neat. So I'll, I'll tab and I’ll bookmark certain pages and things or, you know, put Post-its in. But yeah, I don't really I don't really annotate often.

Jen - I don't know who I am expecting to come and tell me off, but if I wrote on a book, I would be pretty sure somebody was on their way to tell me off. I could not do it, so I will tab a physical book. I quite often annotate digitally so if I'm reading on my iPad I'll kind of scribble on the pages there or highlight or mark there, but it would feel like sacrilege to write on an actual book. What about you Lex?

Lex -  I, I think I'm a hybrid of both and I've got one foot in the annotating land and one on like safe sane quarters. If it is a paperback and if it is nonfiction and if it is work or self-help or psychology based, I'm quite happy to write in that.

I'll write in it. That's fine, because I am seeing it less of a book and more of a tool to like further something. So it might be knowledge or a skill or a mindset. And so I'll quite often write in that. You will never catch me writing in a hardback, regardless of what kind of book it is. You will never catch me writing in it, but Luce, to your point, I am a pro tabber. 

Like I have the baby tabs, I've got mini post-its and I've got standard sized post-its. And then if you are a tabber and you have not ventured into this remit yet, I raise you transparent post-its. Oh, I've only recently discovered these and it is essentially what it says on the tin. It is a nice matte, transparent post-it that I can write on but still understand the book underneath.

Because I think that's my main problem, is that if I'm going and sticking tabs of Post-its on pages and suddenly I can't read what I'm referring to, so transparent post-its are my new discovery and I think are helping me in my journey to annotations. But hashtag the art of annotating on Instagram is insane and some of these pages that people upload are works of art, which we explore a little bit more in our episode of this season's podcast called The Art of Annotating.

So do go and check that out if this has peaked your interest. But Luce, to something that you mentioned about keeping books pristine. And Jen, I know you buy a lot of special editions of certain books that are quite like sexy and beautiful. My next question is something that I would have never, ever considered doing until I saw somebody else talking about it on the Internet.

And it is about reading hardbacks, but removing the dust jacket whilst you are reading it. It never crossed my mind. I never thought about it. But now that it's been pointed out to me, it feels like a sensible thing to do. But go, what are we saying?

Jen - So for me it's a matter of practicality. If I'm reading a really chunky hardback and I need to be able to open the book properly, say fully fold it open, quite often, I'll take the dust jacket off just because if you open the pages fully, it would sometimes come out with that anyway.

But if it's a smaller hardback, I'll just leave it on. Quite often I will take off for Bookstagram pictures if it's a particularly beautiful spine or cover or whatever, but mostly kind of leave it on.

Lucy - Yeah, I don't really understand. Removing the dust jacket would be. I feel like that is part of the hardback experience. If you're reading a hardback and it's got a dust jacket cover, I've always, always leave it on. Yeah, I can't I can't imagine removing it unless it was for specific photography purposes, like you say.

And I know exactly what you mean because sometimes it can even irritate me slightly if you're opening it and then it starts to fall off anyway. But still. Yeah. Just, just leave out. I feel like that is the way that that book is meant to be. So I don't want to disrupt that in any way, if that makes sense.

Jen - Although it does really annoy me if you're reading a library book and it's got like those plastic like crimped edges, but you can't take it off because it's been taped into the book.

Lucy - Oh God, I haven’t read a book with a library plastic cover on for years. 

Lex - Feel like that memory is like a relic that we've all experienced at some point in our lives and we all know exactly what that kind of plastic feels like. And it gives me the shivers. So as a rule, I don't remove dust jackets. I understand the benefit to doing so because I am quite hard on my books, like unwillingly and unintentionally.

But I will start to notice like the corners of dust jackets, get a bit fluffy and you can start to see the white underneath. But I understand that that's my fault that I'm not taking enough care of my books. I completely understand that. But leading onto my next question, I will quite often use the flap of the dust jacket as my bookmark, like fold out, fold it back into where you are in the book.

So my next question is bookmarks versus dog ears versus any other item that you might be using to save your place in the book? How are you guys doing it?

Lucy - I am very anti dog-earing pages. I would rather lose my place and then have to refind it again rather than folding down the page and fold bookmarks. I am awful, I have lost count of the number of bookmarks I have been bought as birthday or Christmas presents over the years. I love a good bookmark. I actually got a lovely one this year.

It's leather and has a quote from To Kill a Mockingbird on. I do. I love a little themed bookmark or I mean, yeah, hasn't happened for a long time because like I say, I have an abundant collection of bookmarks, but little cards like for me from places you've been so like restaurants or, you know, kind of sentimental places, I would often use those as a as a book mark.

I usually have something like that lying around in my purse anyway. So I've kind of always got a go to bookmarks replacement if I haven't got an actual bookmark to hand, but yep no dog bearing books. I am firmly in the no camp.

Lex - So very strict, very strict from Lucy Jones. 

Jen - She's very strict on that. So if you're listening, you can't see this. But Luce and Lex can see that I'm actually sat in front of a pegboard covered in bookmarks. So like Luce, I am not about dog ears, hate it, stresses me out. However, I'm also not really strict on using a bookmark. See, quite often I will lose my phone and be wandering around the house wondering where my phone is and it's inside a book.

I'll just use anything that's to hand. If I've fallen asleep while reading quite often I just put it on the pillow next to me, but kind of flatten it open. But then if I woke up and it's creased the spine, I'll be furious at myself. So I try not to do that, but it's definitely never dog-earing the pages.

Lex - Okay, so I'm not sure I expected to be in this position today, but confession time. Welcome to Lex's confessional. I was raised by a dog earer and my mum is a massive reader. She obviously raised me to be a massive reader. But the cardinal sin that she has passed on to me is that we dog ear our books. Now since working with books, I appreciate them a bit more as an art form and how much time and effort has gone into making this book beautiful.

So where I can Luce, I definitely fall into your category of like sentimental items. If people had given me a book for my birthday, then I would use that birthday card as the bookmark, and then that card would stay in that book on the bookshelf as like a memory in time. That makes total sense to me, however, because as we all have mentioned that we do we grab snatches of time here and there.

I very rarely actually close the book, so it's quite often just like open on the table or again, sorry listeners, you can't see this, but I am about to hold the book that I'm reading up right now and Luce and Jen will be able to see what's holding it open. In fact, what you can actually see is there's a pen and a dog ear.

Jen - Lex, you are lucky we love you. You are lucky. 

Lex -  I mean, that being said, I think I'm only dog earing these pages very lightly, which is a mark of respect to me. Like I clearly like this book because I've only like bending the corners.  I'm trying to put myself out of being like a book defacer here. But if it makes you feel any better, I was sad when this book arrived because it's got like a slight peel on the front cover, which I did not do. It arrived like this and I was devastated but I fully deserved it because I did not support a local indie bookstore when I bought it. Anyway, so we've got strict No Dog Ears, we've got a genetic dog earer and we've got bookmarks aplenty.

But the final question and something that is highly encouraged all over Bookstagram and that I feel the pressure on daily. Can you read books at the same time? 

Jen - I kind of do, but I think if I do, it’s not a very good sign for the book. So quite often I have a fiction and nonfiction on the go. That's fine. If I've got two fiction on the go, it means I don't really like the first fiction book. I'm distracting myself with another book. 

Lex - What's that phrase about? Like cheating on your partner? Like you wouldn't have fallen in love with the second one if you really loved the first one. It’s books, isn't it? 

Jen - This is exactly it. So I'm kind of polyamorous for books.

Lex - I like that. That's great. That should be your but your Instagram bio. @littleredlibrary polyamorous for books. Oh, yeah. 

Jen - Polyamorous for people and books. 

Lex - Okay, Luce what you're saying. Are you polyamorous or are you monogamous?

Luce - I am monogamous. So with the caveat that, like Jen says, I will do a fiction nonfiction at the same time, but yeah generally speaking, wouldn't do anything other. What my English teacher from, I mean, way back in secondary school introduced me to was that she would often reads like a poetry anthology alongside her like fiction novel that she was reading.

And she really kind of taught me that the poetry you can dip in and out of, which I really like. So yeah, poetry collections or like a short story anthology, I'll maybe have that on the go the same time as I'm reading a fiction title. But yeah, I mean, I actually actually get like a wave of anxiety if people say to me, they're reading three novels at once.

I'm like, No.

Lex - Now I'm going to call out Char and El of @nobooksgiven, but also treasured Tandem Team members. They are notorious for reading multiple books at the same time, and I marvel at their ability to do that. And I think potentially the reason that I can't do that is because I am so strict with the genre that I read.

You know, I pretty much only read crime thriller fiction. So if I'm reading more than one crime thriller fiction at the same time, the characters cross over and they start murdering people in the other. Kind of like, No, no, no, no, no, I can't keep my suspect lines straight if I'm not focused on the case at hand.

Jen - So I have a question for both of you on this though.

Do either of you read in multiple formats, like do either of you read on an e-reader as well as paper books? 

Lex - I don't read via e-reader by choice. But sometimes through work, it's a necessity if only the PDF is available. But that still doesn't change my core belief that I cannot cross books either. At the moment I am doing a nonfiction read and a fiction read, but because they are so different, I can get away with it.

But I am marriage material. The most monogamous, send me down the aisle, meet at the other end with a good murder thriller and I'll take it. 

Jen - See, I will add another one in for if I'm reading on an e-reader. So I have got multiple reads going on at any point. 

Lex - And what does that tell us about you Jen? 

Lex - Well, listen, I think it's actually been one of my favorite conversations of season two and listeners, dear listeners, we are not leaving you just yet.

We have a very similar conversation with Jack Jordan, the author of Do No Harm, where surgeon Dr. Anna Jones has to make one of the most difficult decisions of her career, but also her life. So listen out for that interview coming up next and let us know what you think.

Well, everybody, I am here with Jack Jordan, author of Do No Harm, which came out on May 26.

Jack, thank you so much for coming to join us this morning.

Jack - Oh, you're so welcome. No, absolute pleasure. Yeah. I’ve been really looking forward to it. 

Lex - Awesome. Awesome. Well, firstly, happy publication for Do No Harm. As you know, we ran the readalong for it in May and everyone absolutely loved it. It went down a storm.

Jack - Oh, yeah. And it was such an amazing experience. I think any author that can jump at the chance to have this experience with Tandem Collective should definitely do it because it's just the creativity of the readers seeing all the posts. I've never seen it to this scale before, and it's just such a dream for authors to have had an idea in their head to see readers not only love the book so much, but then be so creative with like the surgery set ups.

And yeah, it's just been mind blowing, a real experience to cherish.

Lex - Oh Jack, that's really sweet of you to say thank you. If anybody who hasn't read Do No Harm yet. It is the perfect mix of Gray's Anatomy meets roller coaster thriller meets a kind of Sophie's Choice, the worst choice that anybody could ever have to make. But you've probably got a better one line pitch than I do.

Jack - I loved it, but I'll give it a go. So Do No Harm is about heart surgeon Dr. Anna Jones, whose child is abducted by an organized crime ring. And they give her an ultimatum. Either she kills a patient on the operating table or she'll never see her son again. So she's got that moral dilemma whether she abides her oath to do no harm or whether she saves her child, which is her life in lights and everything to her.

So yeah, it's that cruel Sophie's Choice in there. But as a writer, it was really fun to write.

Lex - Of course it was. Of course it was. And listeners, I would absolutely love to hear what your response to the choice in the book would be. Do you save the patient or do you kill the patient? And also, does that change throughout the book? Because I think for me, it definitely did change every different chapter I read.

I was hopping the fence left, right and centre for sure.

What was your, I mean, we don't know what Dr. Jones did, but what did you finish upon? What did you ultimately decide that you would do if you were in her shoes?

Lex - Yes, very good question. I won't give you my answer because it will I don't want to give anything away. I very good question. Okay. Perfect. So that is Do No Harm. And if you would like to hear more about Jack's next book, you're going to have to stick around until the end of this section, because firstly, I've got a little chat with Jack about reading routines.

So Jack, think Lightning Round, but don't rush either. I don't want to panic you. You've got time. No worries. So firstly, when you think about your own reading habits, where are you reading? Are you a sofa guy? Out and about? Are you in bed? Where are we? Where can we picture you?

Jack - So I think it also depends what reading I'm doing. So if I'm reading fo research, I'm that cliche where I write in coffee shops, the absolute writer cliche. But so when I'm reading for research, I want to be in that same zone. So I tend to read research in my where I am writing. Then if it's for pleasure or I'm reading proofs of upcoming books, I like to have that treat at the end of the day when I'm in bed and I also got a nice armchair as well.

So if I want to treat myself in my armchair and do it under a nice spot lamp so I can really focus. But yeah, so coffee shop where they've got the inundated levels of caffeine or bed to send me off to sleep.

Lex - I love that you've got that compartmentalization where, you know, this is a work book. I'm reading it for research, therefore it happens in the day. I like that.

Jack - And also you've got to love long train journeys because you can take a book. So if I'm for instance, I just had a really long train journey and I wanted to write on that. But a stag do of 25 men came on so I couldn't work, but I could read. So you've always got that book there that you can jump into an escape to.

Lex -Yes. Now, that's a great suggestion. I can't reading cause but I love reading on the train. It's the dream. Okay, so next up, sound. It sounds like you might be okay to read with like the hustle and bustle around you. Whereas some people need near silence.

Jack - And that's so ironic because I prefer near silence however I go around with trusty earplugs. You might not see this listeners, but I'm going to show Lex. I go around with these disposable earplugs wherever I go, and I highly recommend everyone to have some on their person at any time. Because if you're on the bus, on the train, on a plane, in a noisy cafe, you can put them in.

And it just dulls that noise. So you can focus. But you're around people. You're still you've still got that element of life around you. So, yes, I like silence, but in busy places. So I'm a contradiction, a walking, talking contradiction.

Lex - Oh, that's such a great shout, though, because it is. I think for me it's the harshness of the sound that makes it hard for me to focus. Whereas if it is dulled down a little bit, if I could turn the outside world down, that sounds idyllic.

Jack - Yeah, you can get a big old bag. I'm not repping them. They're not paying me. Bag of them from Amazon and they last you forever and ever. Yeah. Highly recommend it. It is a good compromise to have a life but be alone with.

Lex - Wow. Okay. That's the tagline for the podcast. Have a life but be alone. Yeah. Okay. Drinks and snacks. We've already mentioned the need for kind of an I.V. line of caffeine throughout the day. But when you're reading for pleasure at home of an evening, are you having a little drink? Are you a snacker? What's the plan?

Jack - Another very good point. I, I do love coffee, but in the evening, I can't have a caffeinated one, so I might treat myself to a decaf coffee. I'm a bit of a snob as well. I love the Azera coffee, so it's kind of instant and fresh. So it's just that instant treat. You get into bed, you've got that decaf coffee or a cup of tea.

But yeah, I think if I'm doing reading work for work, I have the decaf coffee because it reminds me of that working brain. But if it’s for pleasure, I think a comforting cup of tea. And as for snacking, I'm always snacking. If I can snack, I will. And my go to choice is bourbon biscuits. And the trick is to not count how many you're eating because that's cheating. Just eat at your leisure. Or a packet of Hula Hoops. Original Hula Hoops. You just. You can just pop them in, I'd say. Yeah, the handy stuff. The handy stuff. So you can turn the page without having sticky fingers.

Lex - But I also love the kind of classic of your recommendation. It's tea, it's coffee. It's bourbons and hula hoops. If I ain't broke, don't mess with it.

Jack - I'm so British.

Lex - But I also love the recommendation of don't count the biscuits, just eat them because it's cheating otherwise.

Jack - Yeah we can't have guilt when we're in our pleasure time. We've got, we're reading for pleasure. We're eating for pleasure. We can't have guilt. No shame allowed. 

Lex - Yes, Jack, this is brilliant. You're great. Okay, now this one. Some people see this is sacrilege. Some people see it as a must have. And it might differ for you when you think about workbooks to reading for pleasure. But how do you annotate your books or do you annotate your books? Now we're talking tabbing, highlighting. What? What are you, where do you sit on this one?

Jack - I do it a lot for my work books. So when I'm researching I go to the excess. I might show you how excessive it is and you're going to hear Lex’s gasps, everyone.

Lex - Yes, I want to see it, I want to see it. 

Jack - It's I've actually had people when I read in the cafe, I've actually had people go, my God, have you got shares in the company of that tabbing because I go overboard. But there is method to the madness. It's colour coded. But look.

Lex - Okay, all right. Okay, Jack. No, wait. You hold onto that and then I think sorry, guys, you're not going to be able to see this, but I'm going to show these. So Jack doesn't feel quite so alone in the madness. 

Jack - I love it. We are excessive to the end together. I love it.

Lex- Okay, great. So we're big tabbers is what you're saying, but would you ever dare put pen to page and write on the page of your book?

Jack - I have and I think I did it early in my career when I was using workbooks that explained character arcs and plotting and things. I would highlight the page and I think because that was very much my workbook, because I was working from it, I don't think I could do it for a novel. I think I would.I I'm stuttering because I'm scared, but I don't think I could. I think that would be too far for me. But I think if it's a kind of a textbook or something that is just for me and just for my work purpose, I would definitely allow it.

Lex - Great. I'm so glad that you and I are aligned on that one. Next one is a bit of a new one to me, but when you read hardbacks, do you take the dust cover off to read them or do you just leave it on?

Jack - That i s such a good question. And it was on my part a rookie error that I learned this late in the game. I love buying hardbacks and I think they look the best on the bookcases. I think it's so beautiful. But you also, you don't want to ruin the dust jackets, then you've got it forever and it's all a bit mangled and split and things like that.

So I now try to, as a habit, take that off so I can preserve it. So it's beautiful on the shelf. I first did that with The Other Bennet sister because it was so big, I thought trying to hold this hardback in bed without knocking myself on the head is going to be disastrous. I'm going to rip that to shreds.

So yeah, and I've never gone back. There's too many hardbacks I've ruined with sun cream and the dust jackets have never recovered. So yeah I'm definitely team take the slip case off.

Lex - Great and I love that note on sunscreen because I think at the moment in the height of summer you are so right. I am just butchering all of my books with my sticky sun creamy, oily fingers. That's a very good shout.

Jack - I go too far, I buy the paperback if I really want to read it on holiday. So I have a hardback, I can't read it, so I buy the paperback, so it's great for the author. Not so good for the bank balance. .

Lex -  So good for the bank balance now. Okay. Actually, on that question then and this is something I'm incredibly guilty of, is if you end up with more than one copy of the same book, do you still keep them both?

Jack - I do this as a bit of a habit. I think there's a book, book collecting is a different hobby to book reading. I think that I quite like to buy multiples of the same book for my favorites, or if a new cover comes out and I prefer that one, then I think, ‘Oh, I’ve got to have both. So like A Little Life, where the American cover made its way onto the rebranding of the UK cover.

I had to have it. It was that infamous crying face or insert what you think that face is here.  Whereas, what's the book about the most? Probably Noughts and Crosses. So I have the original paperback, the new paperbacks, I've got a Folio Edition of it. Yeah, I do. I'm quite as a habit buy them quite frequently when I love them.

But if they're ones that I forgot I had on my shelf and I bought again, I might gift it to someone in my family that I know would love it.

Lex - Sure, that's such a good answer. And again, I'm so glad that you're on my side with this. So Jen, who is one of our podcast hosts, she only has something like 30 books in her house, which blows my mind every day. But I think my main problem with books is that if I get sent a book, that's a proof and I work on it and I've got tabs in it and I've got all my notes in it, and then somebody sends me the sexy finished copy.

I'm like, Well, I have to keep both. You can't get rid of… this is the finished product, but this is the work. Like I can’t. So yes. I end up with multiple copies of lots of different books on myself with no intention of ever giving them away. 

Jack - See, I love that. And it shows your journey with that book as well. So especially when you're working in one, but then you have the other one to kind of covet. I love him. As for the 30 book limit, I mean, you can't see it listeners, however Lex, can see how many books I have. It's just so, so so overboard. Thank God for IKEA where you can just continue to build the shelves up.

Lex - And also, I think as you are a fully published author, to not have bookshelves. To not have books upon books upon books, it would be questionable. So I feel that you can get away with it. It's allowed. It's fine.

Jack - Yeah, it would be sacrilege.

Lex - Okay. Okay. So speaking of sacrilege, dog ears or bookmarks.

Jack - Okay, now this I do have, I'm very passionate about. I could never ever dog a book. I have a friend who does it and it makes me, I have a physical reaction. I shiver if I even do accidentally I mourn that page. I'm definitely a bookmark kind of guy. Or I sometimes, even if I can't find the bookmark because I'm always misplacing them, I will email myself the page I'm at or I'll take a photo on my phone and then I'll just scroll back.

Lex - That’s so like digital native of you. Of course you are just keeping a digital eye where you are in the book.

Jack - Typical millennial, can't escape.

Lex - Okay. And then last one, last question is, can you read books at the same time? And I feel like because you read for work and because you read for pleasure, maybe you can, but can you read multiple pleasure books at once?

Jack - I can if they differ. Well, so I think I've my most successful at that is reading nonfiction that I like and a fiction that I like because they're so far apart. Or if I'm going to read, I don't tend to read fiction at the same time unless one might be for work. If I'm reading for someone else to give a quote or something like that, again, if they are different genres, if they were the same genre, both contemporary, they're both female led because they're the books I like, I might get a bit confused.

So I think if they've got something that sets them apart, then I can work with it. But as I got older, I’m now just and luckily in my career busier, I find it difficult to find time to have pleasure reading. I used to read lots at the same time. Now I kind of cherish that pleasure book, that one pleasure book I have on the go.

And then I've always got a work book next to me, but I think different times of day as well separate them.

Lex - Lots of compartmentalizing in your routine. I like it. It feels very organized, very structured, very clean. I like that.

Lex - Well that's really helped because I've got a copy, I'm in the middle of a structural edit. So after this, when I go back to my editing, I'm going to go back with that mind of I am organized. I have got this before I cry. You’ve helped me. 

Jack - Before you cry into your coffee cup. Yeah. Okay, well, let's wrap up and then on that note, speaking of your structural edits, what can you tell us about what's coming next from Jack Jordan?

Jack - You’re so good at segueways, I have to say. So, and this is also a Tandem Collective exclusive because I haven't told anyone. But the next book is called The Messenger.

Future Lex - Excuse me, this is Lex from the Future, coming in for a quick corrections corner. When we spoke to Jack here, he revealed his title to be the Messenger. As with most things in publishing, it's ever changing. So the title of Jack's upcoming book is actually called Conviction. So stoked to read. Can't wait to get my hands on it.

That's it from future Lex, as you were.

Jack -  And it's got that moral dilemma again, because I was just I was so fascinated by that choice that a person has to make. I wasn't done. I wanted to explore where I could take it and what other stakes that would be. So The Messenger is about a defense barrister who's done something very, very bad in her past, and then a man called The Messenger comes to her and says that he knows what she did.

And if she doesn't throw the trial for her client and make sure that he goes to prison then her secret will be revealed. So it's again, it's battling with that honor that they take and the oath that they take as professionals. But this one is a little bit darker because he's not protecting someone else. She's protecting something dark she’s done. 

So is she as innocent as she seems? And I get to play with the evil character that she may well be.

Lex - I love that and I love how perfectly that sits next to Anna Jones and Do No Harm.

Jack - Yeah I was just so not done with that moral dilemma and to take it in a different direction and then see, I love that we can compare the women and see how they did it. Is one going to do it better, is one going to do it more successfully, is one going to do it with heart, what's going to happen? So yeah, I wasn't done. And yeah this has been such a thrill ride to write.

Lex - Amazing. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait to read it. So that's The Messenger coming 2023, is that right?

Jack - Yes, it will be summer 2023.

Lex - So as soon as Jack’s stopped crying into his structural edits we will get the book. 

Jack - Once it's polished and my editor has made it shine, then it will absolutely be ready to go.

Lex - Awesome. Well, listen, Jack, we can't wait to celebrate The Messenger with you. I'm so pleased to hear about it. It sounds like the absolute dream.

Jack - And thank you so much for all of your support for Do No Harm. It's been such a amazing ride and I could do it again and again and again. It's every dream for an author to have the experience with you. 

Lex - Well, I mean, I can already tell you that we'll be pitching for the messenger, so. Yeah. All right, Jack, thank you so much for hanging out with me this morning. And I hope you have a wonderful week.

Jack - Thank you so much for having me and happy reading. 

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Lex - Hello all, Lex here again. Just ending this podcast with a little nod to Dalstons Soda. If you've been on one of the Tandem Readalongs, you might have been on the receiving end of a box containing a Dalstons Soda drink to sip whilst you read. And we want to take a moment to say a huge thank you to Dalstons for always being so up for getting involved in our campaigns. For those of you not in the know, Dalston Soda is a drinks brand founded by Duncan O’Brien, focusing on essential oil infused, vegan friendly sodas with no refined sugar, less than 50 calories per can, and flavors that pack a punch. Not only that, Dalston's retail with environmental good at the forefront of their minds. Dalston's is now fully carbon neutral. We encourage you to place an order with them, and if you need a recommendation, it's always going to be the rhubarb soda for me. Happy reading

Lucy - We have mentioned this already, but please do check any of the titles referenced in this episode for their content warnings before you start reading them. Please do take a minute to rate review and subscribe to the podcast on your preferred platform as it really does make such a difference. Discoverability and rankings. If you've got a recommendation for an episode or a book you think one of us should read immediately let us know at podcast@thetandemcollective.com

Jaide - As always we're open to your feedback, so please do hit us up at @tandemcollectiveuk on Instagram or using the hashtag #tandemcollectivetalks. If there's anyone content creator wise, industry superstars or your favorite author that you think we should feature in a podcast, then let us know. Well see you later.

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