Many of us are plagued by negative memories of sustained silent reading. In some of these memories, we are the students, attempting to read a book that didn't hold our interest or trying to read over the din of our disengaged classmates. In other memories, we are the teachers, suffering through a ten-minute classroom management nightmare, deciding which pupil behaviors to ignore and which to address. Here, Katy Dickerson shares that in her own classroom, when she uses the term sustained silent reading (SSR), she sometimes gets visceral reactions from even her best students. Dickerson believes that most likely they have had similarly scarring experiences with SSR before they reached her American Literature class. This article details her two-year journey to incorporate more independent reading and more choice reading into her classroom. Five rules for making Reading Zone successful are detailed, including strategies for implementation.