2020 has been a dumspter fire since the clock struck midnight. First everything that happened with RWA and then COVID and the protests…and then we decided to move from Denver to Houston.
Over the last year I’ve been losing my passion for talking about books, not the reading of them, just the talking about them. For lots of reasons, but some of the main reasons being that I felt like my opinion as a reader honestly didn’t matter. If I didn’t love or rave about certain authors or books then my voice didn’t matter.
And I’m not the only one.
I fell in love with social media because for the first time in my life I had people who read the same genre I did and we could talk about it and in a way that we’d never been able to before.
But over the last year, I’ve stopped talking about the books I was reading and loving, and the books that just didn’t do it for me.
In doing this I lost a part of me, an important part of. I lost the joy of reading. That joy that came from opening up an new book and reconnecting with old friends, or discovering new friends.
So this summer I set about rediscovering my love of reading, and talking about books. I started small. In person. Not online. Not on twitter. And I rediscovered my love of reading, and sharing the books I was reading.
When one of the counselors at school and I were talking and she mentioned that she only reads books in Spanish and we talked about our favorite sorta romance writer Isabelle Allende, I told her about a book I was just starting that I’d been hearing good things about, You had me Hola, it was the first time in a very long time I recommended a new to me author after only reading 5 pages.
So as I go into the 10th year of The Book Reading Gals, as the Book Reading Gals officially launched in September of 2010, and my 13th year blogging about books, before it was The Book Reading Gals it was just Heather’s Books, I’m not going to care what other people think about the books I’m reading or not reading, and I’m once again going to read and talk about books because that is me and I miss me.
All of that being said, what did I spend my summer reading? Mostly the books on my bookshelves as I was packing them. I read 4 of Lauren Dane’s series, 25 of Nora Roberts books, I think it may have been more as I read a ton of her stand alones and at least 6 of her series, and a few of her J.D. Robb books as well. I also read a brand new to me author with and insane backlist recommended by one of those people I talked to about books. Elin Peer. I’ll be talking about her tomorrow.
Hello! I’m glad to hear you feel ready to talk about books you are reading again! 🙂 I’ve been having a hard time lately with finding any I like enough to finish so I look forward to seeing what you are reading!