A different kind of reading challenge
Mar. 24th, 2025 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
polyproticamory
I'm not immune to the human brain's desire to see a line go up, or a number get bigger. I've set Goodreads challenges in past years. I like seeing when my number of books I've read increases month to month (or, if I'm taking a class, week to week).
But I'm also not ashamed to admit that sometimes, when I read a lot of books, I have no clue wtf I just read. And the moment I put a book down, all memory of having read it just *poofs* goes away.
Technically, I read the book. But if you ask me to tell you anything about it or whether the book has added something to my worldview, all I would be able to give you is a bullshit answer.
At the beginning of this calendar year, I tried to do something different: Instead of just randomly and arbitrarily choosing books to fulfill my yearly desire to complete a reading challenge, I was going to read the books that my friends recommended to me. I set up a little Google Form, sent it around, and got a few responses. In addition to just asking my friends what book they would want me to read, I also asked: Hey, do you want to ever meet and chat about these books at some point? Virtual or in-person, synchronous or asynchronous.
Because yes, I want to read more books. But more importantly I want to read books from people I know and love. And I want to know and love them through conversation about a book that maybe they don't get to talk about that often in the rest of their lives.
And, unspoken in all this, is the understanding that I'm not doing this for visibility. Aside from this little post about the project, I haven't posted to Goodreads (we're not on good terms with Goodreads anyway), nor talked publicly about this specific reading habit I'm trying to cultivate in order to get attention.
The books my friends recommend to me aren't the only books I'm reading. (I'm participating in the Trans Rights Readathon, and that is definitely a challenge for public visibility.) But I'm paying extra special attention to them because they came highly recommended to me by people I know and trust. And I'm finding that I'm much more open, much more receptive, to the text when I have that individual connection to someone else who loves this book. It's like creating a mini fandom: I'm doing the work of making meaning in a story with someone else.
I might have more to say about this reading challenge as the year goes on. So far, I've actually already read through the first few recommendations I got from the first time I sent the form around; it's time for round 2, it seems.
But I'm also not ashamed to admit that sometimes, when I read a lot of books, I have no clue wtf I just read. And the moment I put a book down, all memory of having read it just *poofs* goes away.
Technically, I read the book. But if you ask me to tell you anything about it or whether the book has added something to my worldview, all I would be able to give you is a bullshit answer.
At the beginning of this calendar year, I tried to do something different: Instead of just randomly and arbitrarily choosing books to fulfill my yearly desire to complete a reading challenge, I was going to read the books that my friends recommended to me. I set up a little Google Form, sent it around, and got a few responses. In addition to just asking my friends what book they would want me to read, I also asked: Hey, do you want to ever meet and chat about these books at some point? Virtual or in-person, synchronous or asynchronous.
Because yes, I want to read more books. But more importantly I want to read books from people I know and love. And I want to know and love them through conversation about a book that maybe they don't get to talk about that often in the rest of their lives.
And, unspoken in all this, is the understanding that I'm not doing this for visibility. Aside from this little post about the project, I haven't posted to Goodreads (we're not on good terms with Goodreads anyway), nor talked publicly about this specific reading habit I'm trying to cultivate in order to get attention.
The books my friends recommend to me aren't the only books I'm reading. (I'm participating in the Trans Rights Readathon, and that is definitely a challenge for public visibility.) But I'm paying extra special attention to them because they came highly recommended to me by people I know and trust. And I'm finding that I'm much more open, much more receptive, to the text when I have that individual connection to someone else who loves this book. It's like creating a mini fandom: I'm doing the work of making meaning in a story with someone else.
I might have more to say about this reading challenge as the year goes on. So far, I've actually already read through the first few recommendations I got from the first time I sent the form around; it's time for round 2, it seems.