Faithful Reader told me that he doesn’t like my reading posts, at least not as much as my other posts. That’s OK. I don’t either. But it’s for a different type of enjoyment that I write them. I write them so that I remember what I’ve read and also why I’ve kept (or not kept) certain books. It’s about developing my library and about understanding better what makes a good book.
Another beauty of the reading post is that it puts me outside of my comfort zone. I don’t feel adequate to the task of properly reviewing a book. I worry that I sound like an idiot. I worry about being too harsh. I worry about not being harsh enough. It’s an odd situation for a former English major, I know, but my college essays were different. I didn’t write about likes or dislikes or characters or the fundamentals of how a novel works. I wrote about symbolism, motifs, the kinds of things that are easy to write about because they’re either self-evident or complete bullshit. The professors didn’t have to like the essays. As long as the essays were competently written and made some sort of sense, the professors would give them decent grades. That made me comfortable writing them.
I think it’s good to be a little uncomfortable when writing. It’s good to challenge yourself. I hope that if I write enough of these reading posts that I’ll learn to do them right. I also think that the more often you challenge yourself, the easier it is to write when you’re feeling uncomfortable, and that’s something you have to learn if you’re ever going to write for publication.
Not that I plan to write for publication. I don’t know what I plan to do. I only know that I plan to write more blog posts and that some of them will be reading posts. And that’s just the way it is.