Book Blogging, Sharing Writing, and Other Scary Things

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a couple months now... thought I'd finally post it.
 
Summer just whizzed by, and all of a sudden it's almost October [it's November!! ] and I've gone three weeks without writing a blog post (sorry!) In case you missed it, I spent most of August doing reviews for Women in Translation Month, and I also did a review of Anahareo's incredible autobiography Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl, which includes pictures of my family's annual trip to Riding Mountain National Park.

Since then, I've started my final year of university, got yet another job, opened a new bank account, read and thought way too much about media and the way it manipulates our brains, biked a bunch of places, hung out with friends, and somewhere in there the scariest thing of all, writing.

I also have not been blogging, obviously. I have been thinking a lot about what I should blog about, though.

I've wanted to talk about book reviewing, in response to this post, and the bizarre concept that there are book bloggers who review every book they read?? I often feel like a fake book blogger, that I kind of stumbled into book reviewing after goofing off as a teenager for a number of years. I don't really know how this thing is really supposed to work. The type of book blogger world that you review every book you read is so distant and strange to me. I think so differently about the books I review, if I did that with every book I read it would ruin my reading experience and make me want to read even less than I do. (I have been stuck on Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit by Nahoko Ueashi for about two weeks now. Although I did read Tash Hearts Tolstoy somewhere in there, and that was pretty cute.)

I also have very specific reasons for publishing reviews on my blog - usually because I think it's a book that people may not have heard of and I want to make them aware of something new, not reinforce or go against ideas they have about a book they already read. Something I don't get is when there are a million reviews of the same book and people think they still need to put their voice out there. I know it's the nature of the beast that is a book blog, that you get more views if you post about more popular books, but it's a stupid system that lets a lot of really good books fall through the cracks.

The other thing I've been thinking about is sharing work. I finished the rewrite of the draft I finished last November this summer, and sent it off to a few people, with the knowledge that some of these people wouldn't have time to read it, and wouldn't necessarily critique it because that's not the kind of readers they are. Did I do that purposefully? Yes, probably. (Okay, definitely.) Sharing work is scary. I get so panicky every time I hit send on a document. It is weird how writing can involve both being entirely solitary and opening your thoughts and ideas up to the whole world. There are these "one line Wednesday" things on Twitter where you share a line of your Work in Progress on Twitter, and even that terrifies me. I don't know how people are constantly sharing their work on Twitter and elsewhere. I know it's my own fault that it scares me so much, that I really just need to practice.

And that's another thing - why is writing so hard? Why haven't I figured out how to do this? I've been doing this for over fifteen years. You would think I would know things by now. I mean, I've figured some stuff out, like telling myself to just write 500 words is a good way to trick myself into getting started and end up writing a lot more than that. But I still agonize over that actually starting part, I don't have a regular writing routine, and I still don't really know how to share my work with people and invite real critique.

I mean, this is the point where I should say, hey, want to read a terrible second draft about friendship, family and scary transitions? But I don't even want to do that, because it's too scary. There are too many things that could happen after that. I'll just keep my MS to myself, thanks, rereading it every so often as a nice reminder that I can spit words semi-coherently on a page. But then there's also the deep desire in me to share this with another human, to have someone read what I wrote and get it, get what I'm trying to say and in that connect our human experiences on earth.

And now I'm going to share this, I guess? In the hopes that someone might comment and assure me that I'm not the only one who thinks these things? 

Down With Goodreads Challenges (Re: Do We Read Too Quickly?)

A few weeks ago (actually, about a month now... oops) Emily wrote a post asking, Do We Read Too Quickly? In her post, she talks about how she often becomes caught up in finishing books so that she can add more books to her Goodreads challenge or whatever that it becomes more about finishing books than actually the reading them. One of the questions she asks is, "Are we so goal-oriented and productivity-obsessed with READING a book [that it] becomes more about FINISHING a book?" I don't think there's anything wrong with pushing through books to the end even if they're not enjoyable because that can be a unique experience, but I think there is something weird about how productivity and numbers-obsessed we often are when it comes to reading.

One of the things I've noticed in the online book community is that if you don't read a LOT of books, you often feel like you're falling behind. There are people constantly talking about books, and often the most popular people are the ones who are talking about the most books (how do they read so many books!??) Then there's the Goodreads challenge - you set a number of books you want to read each year, and that becomes THE reading goal for the year - the number of books you read. I'm sure it's been like this for a long time, but why did we decide that the number of books we read each year is the most important thing?

I have definitely been guilty of falling into the trap of wanting higher numbers. Even in years when I read lots of really fascinating, mind-stretching books, at the end of the year when I go to do my year-end wrap up post I feel disappointed in myself when I read significantly less books than the year before (even if it's still well over 50). And then I'm like, I read so many great books this year! Why do I care so much that I read 15 less books than last year?

I'd like to propose that we focus less on productivity in the number of books read, and be more intentional in the books we do read. Focusing on numbers often leads to wanting to read the fastest and most easily digestible books so you can get your numbers up, at least in my experience. But what about those 800 page books that take months to get through but are often absolutely fascinating and change your view of the world? (Some of mine have been Five Days at Memorial, Riel: A Life of Revolution and Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of New Hollywood.) Or what about those books that maybe aren't 800 pages, but take just as long to get through because they take so much emotional and mental energy, but in the end have a lasting impact on how you live your life or perceive others different from you? Or what about people who just can't read fast or read five books in one weekend?

I'd love to see the online book community focused less on numbers, and more on basically everything else. What do you think of goals for reading a certain number of books in a year? How else do you think society's focus on productivity and numbers as indicators of success impacts our reading habits?

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Speaking of reading challenges (kind of), remember my 2017 reading goals? One of my goals was "Do a reading challenge on the blog! Which one? Who knows, not me!" Well, I found the challenge I want to do this year! It is called Women in Translation Month - started by blogger Meytal Radzinski to help promote books written by women in other languages that have been translated into English. WIT Month takes place in August, so I'll try to read some women in translation before then so I can have a bunch of reviews up that month. I am SO EXCITED about this challenge - Meytal shares a lot of my passions, for more international literature in the Western world, and for Western readers to get outside of our own anglophone-centered media bubbles. Reading books in translation is a great way to do that (and one of my other goals was to read 3 books in translation, so two birds with one stone! Yay!) Meytal also has a great list already on her blog and Goodreads. Let me know in the comments if you're planning to join me!!

(also I am working on a ~cool secret project~ which I will launch when I'm done exams, so stay tuned! ;) )