June Calloway
The writer behind Dog-Eared
I write Dog-Eared, the Can't Stop Reading blog.
My library card came before my first pair of glasses, which explains a lot. I was seven, the card was orange, and the limit was twelve books at a time. I treated twelve as a target rather than a ceiling and walked home with the stack pressed against my chest so the top one wouldn't slide off. Later I got very good at reading by the hallway light that leaked under my bedroom door, a skill with no adult application whatsoever. My copy of Anne of Green Gables lost its cover somewhere around the fourth reread and I never replaced it.
What I am not: a critic. I don't rate books out of five and I'm not going to tell you which novel of the year you were supposed to love. I'm not an academic either. I never wrote a thesis and I have no interest in explaining what a book is really about. I also won't rank anyone's shelf. Your shelf is your business.
What this blog covers
The reading life more than the books themselves. How people actually build a habit that sticks. Where book culture is drifting, from hold queues at the library to whatever is happening in the annotation corner of the internet. Gift guides for the reader who already owns everything. And the stories behind the shirts we print, since most of them started as somebody's joke about their own reading habits.
What you won't find here
Spoilers. I have a running thing about this and it is not negotiable. Also snobbery. Audiobooks count. Romance counts. Fantasy counts. Rereading the same six books forever counts. Anyone who tells you their format is the real one is selling something, and it isn't books.
How I work
I read the thing before I write about it. When a post mentions a shirt, I have handled the shirt. Numbers get checked against a source I can name, and if I can't name one, the claim comes out. Posts get revisited when they go stale instead of left up to rot.
I use AI tools for the boring middle of the job. Sorting notes, cleaning up a draft that has gone shaggy, catching the sentence I wrote twice. They are useful and unreliable in roughly equal measure, and they are wrong often enough that I read every line myself before it goes out. Nothing publishes under my name that I haven't read.
Three June actually wears
The shirts I reach for on days I'm going somewhere books will come up. Which is most days.
The Book Was Better Tee
The oldest argument in the room, and I have never once lost it. I wore this to an adaptation on opening night and got two knowing nods in the lobby before the trailers.
I Closed My Book To Be Here Tee
Passive aggressive in the friendliest possible way. It says the thing you were already thinking at the family gathering, so you don't have to.
Books & Coffee Tee
No joke in it, no argument, just the two things stacked on the same table every morning since I was nineteen. This is the one I wear when I want to be left alone to read.
Three questions June gets a lot
Do audiobooks count?
Yes. Emphatically, permanently, no asterisk. You took in the whole book. The argument that it doesn't count is usually made by people who want reading to be a difficulty contest, and I am not entering that contest. I listen on walks and read on the couch and the two books blur together in memory exactly the same way. Some of the sharpest readers I know haven't held a physical book in years.
How many books do you read at once?
Four, which is one more than is sensible. There's the one on the nightstand, the audiobook for walking and dishes, something on my phone for waiting rooms, and a slow nonfiction thing I've been at since spring. They rarely compete because each one lives in a different part of the day. The failure mode is starting a fifth, at which point I lose the plot of two of them and have to restart something.
What do I get someone who already owns every book?
Not a book. That's the trap. Somebody who reads constantly has a to-be-read pile that is already a moral burden, and adding to it is not the gift you think it is. Get them something that supports the habit instead. A shirt about the thing they love, a lamp that clips to a headboard, a gift card so they choose, a tote for library runs. My rule is to buy for the reading, not for the reading list.
Latest from June
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A Library Volunteer's Day, From Cart to Checkout
September 7, 2026
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A Reading Slump Needs a Smaller Book
September 6, 2026
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Bookish Outfit Ideas for a Day With Your TBR
September 5, 2026
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The Dog Person's Reading Uniform
September 4, 2026
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The Case for Rereading a Favorite Book
September 3, 2026
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Book Club T-Shirts That Break the Ice
September 2, 2026
