Reading with Jimmy and the Reading with Jimmy YouTube channel have grown to 332 videos and over 200 hours of content, bringing the classics to life by showing the text and reading it with comprehensive out-loud analysis. Covering a wide gamut of English, Greek, Russian, American, and French literature, the platforms now enjoy a robust, growing audience engaged in overcoming the declining reading and attention scores in the United States today.
“As reported by the U.S. Department of Education, only 31 percent of fourth graders read at or above proficiency for their grade level,” says Jim Nowakowski (aka. Jimmy). “The numbers only get worse with age. A significant portion of adults read below a sixth-grade level. The cure? Showing the words and reading out loud.”
Nowakowski, a former English teacher turned successful businessman, saw the need for reading to grow over the years. “Being in business for over 30 years, I witnessed firsthand the impact of these declining reading scores, and decided the problem is not being able to read generally, and not knowing how to read classical literature specifically.” Nowakowski taught “underachievers” for ten years before starting his business, and when he taught, he used reading out loud to engage his students.
“You think you don’t know how to read, but that’s just nonsense,” he says. “Reading is hard work, but I make it fun!”
Nowakowski believes there’s a big difference between understanding and appreciation. “You can understand something and not appreciate it, but you can never appreciate anything without understanding it. Appreciation takes time, imagination, and knowledge. It doesn’t happen overnight, but reading out loud is the beginning of it.”
That’s why he created the Reading with Jimmy platforms and has spent the past two years has been filling them up with content—with “language charged with meaning,” as Ezra Pound said.
A Simple Plan
Nowakowski believes it is important to read classic novels, in order to find out how other people lead their lives in order to learn how to lead our own.
Each novel or story he selects is read entirely. Then it is analyzed.
“It’s not just the reading of the piece,” Nowakowski notes. ”It’s the analysis that’s the key.”
He includes in-depth analysis of every classic to help readers appreciate and understand the literature, which he considers essential. He walks them through the story, bringing in real-life examples of relevance. “Sometimes the analysis is longer than the story,” he notes. “The joy of language is that it should be read aloud.”
The authors selected so far are numerous: Dostoevsky, Chaucer, Lewis Carroll, Guy de Maupassant, Hemingway, John Cheever, Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcus Aurelius, and many more.
“These authors bring language to life—including the translators of the foreign classics,” he says. “The beauty of a classic is you can read it over and over again and walk away enriched more than you did before. You don’t do that with today’s literature.”
QuickTakes
Each classic includes a ten-minute “QuickTake”—a short introduction for readers to sample the story before reading the entire work. These QuickTakes are divided into easy-to-understand sections, including the plot overview, what makes the author unique, the themes found in the piece, and why the work matters today.
“You’d be surprised how relevant classical literature is for today’s world,” Nowakowski adds. “Very surprised.”
About Reading with Jimmy
With over 300 videos and more than 200 hours of content, Reading with Jimmy brings the enduring power of classic literature to students, educators, and lifelong learners. From Chaucer to Hemingway, each reading combines thoughtful narration with unique interpretations designed to spark debate and discovery.
About James A. Nowakowski (aka. Jimmy)
James A. Nowakowski has been a business strategist, speaker, and author since 1990. He taught English for 10 years in private and public schools in the Chicago area prior to that. He holds an MA in English from DePaul University and a BA from Lewis University.
TEACH is the largest national education publication in Canada. We support good teachers and teaching and believe in innovation in education.
