For as long as I can remember books have been my haven. The one place where I could escape my home life.
They’re were I discovered what a family should look like.
Where heroines could over come ANYTHING.
Where it didn’t matter what they looked like. If they were skinny or fat. Had straight hair or curly. Or what the color of their skin looked like.
It’s where I was able to mourn my infertility.
When blogging and shelfari came around I found a community. A community of readers who loved the same things I did. I finally found where I belonged.
I took pride in my site Heather’s Books, that became The Book Reading Gals. There was a new post everyday. We had fun things we hosted, we spotlighted series, and did Sunday Snippets.
I don’t know when it happened, but I began to lose my joy in reading and talking about books. I still read, only this time I kept my opinions to myself. I stopped reviewing almost entirely.
Because I honestly felt like what I thought didn’t matter because I didn’t like the popular books. I wasn’t falling all over the authors that everyone else was. And because I wasn’t my opinion didn’t matter.
Then the conversations started about how we needed to not read the books that were written during a different time. Because they were problomatic. We started judging these authors and books with a modern lens. We judged these authors and their books by today’s standards. Completely forgetting that the world they were writing in was completely different.
We ignored the amazing contributions the made to the industry.
And I couldn’t get behind that. So I stopped. I stopped talking about books. I stopped engaging online. I would skim. But I very rarely engaged in book talk.
Then 2020 happened.
There was so much anger.
Negativity.
Yes there was some good. A lot of it.
And there were I’m sure some really good books that came out last year. I didn’t read them though. I think I read maybe 10 new books. And those were by authors on my keeper shelves.
I take that back. I did discover 2 new authors and I read their entire back list.
But every other book I read was a reread of comfort.
And slowly I found my joy in reading again. My raison d’ etre.
I’ve remembered that I don’t read to please other people. I’ve remembered why I loved to talk about these books. Because they resonated with me. I connected with them in some way.
So while I may not read the hot new author, or jump on the latest bandwagon, I will start sharing about the books I’m reading.
As we go into 2021 I hope that we can all find our joy in reading, or whatever it is that makes us happy.
