This presentation will focus on the reading practices of rural working-class males, living and working in the rural woodlands of Sweden. In the cultural and educational policy debate, the texts and the reading that people in rural places engage in have continuously been marginalised. This idea of insufficiency has had a negative impact on rural boys’ and men’s self-images as readers. Against this background, we are conducting a three-generational study funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) that aims to make visible the reading practices of rural working-class males across individual lives and between generations, adopting a life history approach (Bertaux & Thompson, 1997; Goodson, 2013) and taking an ecological perspective on reading (Barton & Hamilton, 2012). The data consists of life history interviews with three generations of men in five families living in the same rural woodland region in Sweden. In our presentation, we will show how our approach makes it possible to contribute empirical knowledge of the ways in which rural males' reading practices are intimately connected to social, historical, material and geographic context, and how rural reading practices trickle down from one generation to another. We will specifically address examples from the narratives that illustrate how the specific life mode of the rural woodlands makes it difficult for the males to prioritise reading during certain periods of life. Finally, we will highlight the pedagogical potential that exists in the place-based, rural reading practices that emerge in the men’s narratives.