My Bookish Thoughts

Aaaaah books… my forever comfort. My favourite topic. The dreamer’s ultimate mind transporter, world opener, cultural explainer, empathy creator, perspective understander, imagination fertiliser. While non readers are living in a more literal land of social media, tv, and real life, you’ll find me blissfully mind wandering the streets of a fictional land like Valaris, imagination marvelling at the array of dragons at Basgaith and generally getting too emotionally involved in a character’s business. Its not all romantic and blissful, sometimes I’m laughing, a lot of times I’m stressed because I’ve just found out the killer and they’re about to have a go at the main character, occasionally I get really angry at the injustice that is very much not happening to me, sometimes my toes are curling at the spicier scenes, sometimes I’m balling my eyes out and falling in love and feeling aaaaall the emotions. Actually the more a story rips me apart, the better usually!

Does anyone else take on characteristics or feelings from fictional people that they love? I seem to read books with a lot of strong female characters and find myself embodying their sass, borrowing some of their power like a F U to the society that actually did nothing personally wrong to me.

Apart from all of the feelings, I believe the below to be true and while I’m open to others opinions and any opportunity to discuss anything remotely book related, our wavelengths will match if you agree that:

1. Romance and chick lit is literature.
2. Audiobooks count as reading
3. Booktok (bookish content on Tiktok like reviews) is fun
4. Viral / super popular books are loved for a reason, at one point Shakespeare was the story du jour
5. Morally grey is a totally fine character trait in a book, horrifying if I came across it in real life though
6. We need more bookish merchandise in the world, I’d rather be repping my favourite book / author than a brand I don’t care about
7. All books in a series should look good together on a shelf
8. Bashing something just because it isn’t for you is rude
9. Reviewing books is a kin to reviewing each episode of Love Island. Ie I gossip more than I review
10. Cassian is the hottest book boyfriend. There. I said it. I decided. Bat boys for life!

I’ve been a big reader since I was able but since Booktok / more Facebook book groups came on the scene a couple of years ago my totally harmless hobby has really become an obsession as I’ve had the best reading years of my life. I’ve also totally found my people and am quite happy to admit said obsession.

There’s a lot of literary enthusiasts who’ve perhaps been in to more serious literature who don’t love what social media has done to reading and thinks Tiktok is turning publishing in to fast fashion. Honestly there probably are some publishing houses churning out trend led books, farming them out to influencers and hoping for a return but if they aren’t actually good then it isn’t going to get them to Maas, Yaros or Hoover fame (love them or hate them.) I personally love ANY encouragement for people to get in to reading. There is something for everyone, just like not everything is for everyone. I just can’t see it as a bad thing. In a world where literacy in developed countries is actually declining, why on earth would we discourage reading of any kind, no matter how low brow?

There isn’t really a genre I don’t enjoy in some way.

Genres like fantasy can be a bit intimidating, feel a bit geeky or whatever but let me tell you – once you get in to it, you’ll be measuring a bat boys wingspan and conjuring power in your mind before you know it. Give in to it, the hype is totally worth it. Trendwise romatasy (romance plus fantasy) is really having a moment and I couldn’t be happier. If you’ve also grown up on Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Divergent and enjoyed Twilight romantasy really slots in nicely. In saying that, after a few in a row (like a series) I always need a palette cleanser. I’m also very much a mood reader so it always depends on how I’m feeling. Right now I’m not sure what I’m in the mood for, I think something a bit different. I’ve gone for Babel (which was another huge Tiktok viral book a while ago) but I actually don’t know what its about. So far a wee boy in China has been sort of adopted and taken on a boat to Oxford. The writing feels nice, comfortable and I’m interested.

Its safe to say I read and listen to books for entertainment. I totally appreciate new ideas and amazing writing styles and character development but I’m more about the feeling I come away with than the nitty gritties. A gossip more than a scholar you could say although I totally admire and love speaking to the more scholarly of us too.

Do you like discussing books? I love talking about good books and as I say, gossiping about parts like I gossip about Love Island but I don’t always remember the finer details so although I’ve planned to go (but never been) to a few book clubs, I’ve sometimes been a bit intimidated by the questions, like I should have taken notes about the book or something. I’m sure if I actually participated in a book club it would be friendly and the questions more like conversation starters and while I love that others are so in to a book they annotate and have those pretty sticky bits to mark sections for me takes a wee bit of the enjoyment out of the book.

So I want to start a book club or book events that are more a celebration of the book and the themes in it with activities, fun décor, maybe food, homemade merchandise. And then helping others host their own with their friends or their existing book club or whoever they wanted to share with.

For example – with the book ‘You Again’ by Kate Goldbeck (which I’ve just finished reading so its fresh in my mind.) It would have a New York vibe with Brodski’s style deli sandwiches, the obvious activity would be improv comedy but my introvert self could never so for in house lets make our own chef’s apron, we could set the mood with the deli sign and comedy club logo and something from the s*x shop, then have a few topic pointers to start us off but nothing pressurised.  Or if we had ‘Legends and Lattes’ we could have the most delicious coffees and pastries, get the fire on and decorate our own mugs while discussing why we’re totally in love with an ex warrior ogre opening a coffee shop and falling in love with a dragon. You know?

Let me know if any of this resonates with you, what you think of my book celebrations and crafts idea and whether you’d come / want to host your own!