Day #284: Bookstagram, What Have You Turned me Into?

 I wasn't always this voracious of a reader.

It's true. There's been ebb and flow. 

In college (and fresh out,) I didn't read a lot that wasn't assigned. I didn't have a library card my first year out of college. I reread a lot of old favorite books. Not that that's a bad thing.

I started working in libraries in 2003 and had so many books going in and out of my hands so much that I went back to an old habit of reading. A lot. And all the time. In my early years in libraries I ALWAYS had so much more checked out than I could ever read. It took a long time to learn that I didn't have to take EVERYTHING home, that it was okay to leave some things in the library until I was ready for them. It's a lesson I still forget sometimes.

As a children's and school librarian, outside reading was part of the job. I was regularly expected to promote books to kids in organized "book talks," plus I had to have suggestions in my head and things I knew about to talk to kids who came into the library. I worked hard at keeping track of what was new. I took books home almost every week and 30+ for summer vacations.

When James was born I was reading this WWI history book that Josh literally had to hide from me (to this day I don't know where it is) because postpartum me would read it and start sobbing but I couldn't put it down. But as mom of a newborn I did read less. It picked back up slowly after James was born and then I started podcasting.

My original podcast was about writing, not books, but the social media accounts I started got me more into the community of readers as well (there is, and should be, a GIGANTIC overlap between readers and writers.) And then, in 2017, I joined Instagram.

I didn't know what to do with my Instagram account at first, used it as sort of a micro-blog. I'd put found poetry up there or talk about what I was reading. I knew I didn't want to use it like another facebook but I wasn't sure what to do with it. And then I discovered the #bookstagram hashtag and it was all over. I had found my spot.

I'm kind of a weirdo Bookstagrammer. I read a lot of backlist stuff (not new releases) and a LOT of children's books. And like any book site, #bookstagram is a big time popularity contest. So I'm rarely on trend. And, seriously, like I need to add things to my to be read list (#TBR.)

Still, I've found some great people and posted some fun stuff and had a great time over there. About the same time I really started keeping up with my goodreads account, having had an old one that I abandoned in around 2009.

But...there is a consequence. When you spend this much time in book land, you find a lot of things you want to read. And the list starts piling up. This year for the first time I'm keeping track of how many books I own that are in my house and unread. And it's a big number. Like I try to keep it under 200 big. So that's a challenge. Because I do read a lot. But not *that* much.

So I'm trying to do an end of the year purge of that, and then I look at my goodreads account and I have 510 things on a digital list of things I want to read. Which doesn't even include the books already in my house! Or picture books or poetry or a few other things I list separately. 

So the upshot is that I went through that digital list this evening and deleted about 100 things off of it that I said I wanted to read but no longer do. And it's still a GIANT list. But better. Which is really all you can do.

I get asked a lot how I have this much time to read so much, so I should probably address that in a separate (that word kills me every time I have to try like 4 times to spell it right) post. Because it is a good question.

Media consumption: I finished the new season of The Crown. Sigh. So now I have to figure out something to fill that gaping hole. Today it was Christmas West Wing episodes, but that won't last. I read the last of the 20 books off my unread shelf I wanted to finish in 2020, a book called Hijacked, self published by a local author and it was actually super interesting...the true story of how he was second officer of a commercial airliner that was hijacked to Cuba in 1980. Before that I read Aunt Sass, which is a book of 3 short stories P. L. Travers (who wrote Mary Poppins) wrote. The first was really good an interesting, the others were BEYOND problematic, I had to get rid of the book. And today I started on a biography of Jell-O, which is brainless and enjoyable.

Today I'm grateful for bedtime, Mario Kart, Josh making dinner, the end of a writing assignment, reading aloud to my kids, and taking walks with Max.