“But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, “I should sit here and I should be entertained.” And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.”
all books are good books. you are not a “lesser reader” if you only read manga or comic books or a “better reader” for reading academic heavy texts.
reading is reading no matter what it is, be it a graphic novel, a romance, a classic, an audiobook, a picture book, a cookbook, fanfiction, fucking whatever, read what makes you happy
reading is supposed to be fun and don’t let elitism sap any joy out of it
Never feel guilty for reading fan fic at 3am. Everything is fanfic in the end. From fanfic you were made, to fanfic you shall return.
Read that which has been panned by literary snobs. Read novels churned out by the dozen by authors with a dozen pseudonyms.
Read your US and People. Flip through Popular Science just for the gadgets section. Read articles about the perfect chocolate chip cookie.
Read books outside your comfort zone. Don’t finish them if you don’t want. It’s the book’s fault, not yours.
Read in your comfort zone. Read a YA and romance and science if and fantasy.
Skip over the boring bits. Read it because you heard about it from Oprah or because everyone else is reading it.
Giggle yourself silly at something so poorly written and full of author wish fulfillment that you just can’t stop reading it.
Don’t listen to the keepers of taste and culture. Their reward comes every time they pat themselves on the back for their superior taste.
Don’t listen to the academics that bemoan the downfall of society and learning. They have been doing that since Socrates’ time.
Don’t listen to the tv presenters who insist you are not cultured if you haven’t read from this list of books.
Audio books count as reading. Ebooks count as reading. Fanfic of questionable quality counts as reading. Rereading books for the third time counts as reading. Reading to your child counts as reading. Reading from the back of the cereal box (and doing the puzzle) counts as reading.
TL;DR: read what you want. Don’t be ashamed. Never let someone try to make you feel bad for how or what you read and enjoy. Tell them that I, your Friendly Neighborhood Librarian have absolved you from your guilt and have given you special blessings. Go forth and read, my child.
JUST READ IT!!
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A book without women is often said to be about humanity but a book with women in the foreground is a woman’s book.
I know Tumblr will probably hate me for saying this, but not reading books written by male authors purely because they’re male is sexist as fuck.
I never take this into account. I do read a lot of books by white male authors, but that’s not planned or anything; I just read the books that sound good to me. The author’s gender or ethnicity doesn’t really factor into my wanting of reading the book.
Exactly. I judge a book purely by its content.
No, you don’t. You operate within the same system as the rest of us, which is the one that packs the shelves with books by men, codes those books as being better when written by men, skews best books list to favor male writers, and disproportionately gives top writing awards and commercial success to white male writers. Female writers’ success is often restricted to YA or romance, both genres considered to be inferior to literary fiction, where male writers dominate. Female and minority writers are told their experience is not universal and will only be appreciated by other women and minorities, while men are considered the default experience and told everyone can appreciate their writing. All of that means you don’t judge a book solely by its content. You judge it through the same prism as the rest of us, and it’s a prism that happens to bring men into focus and blur out women and minorities.
Upholding a system that puts men above women is sexist. Choosing to opt out of that system is not.
^^^Amen to the above.
I do think things have improved and continue to do so. And I wouldn’t say to stop reading books by straight white men altogether.
But it’s important to realize that sometimes high quality books by women, LGBT+ and minorities are not being published by major publishers – but self published or by small presses. This means it’s harder to find them. They’re often not on bookstore shelves. The few exceptions tend to be really brilliant writers (C.J. Cherryh and Naomi Novik come to mind – Novik’s Uprooted may well be the best fantasy novel of the year). Note I’m biased towards SF/F because that’s what I read and what I write.
So, the answer is to branch out. By all means buy bestsellers, but also keep your eye open for books that don’t have Tor or Del Rey on the spine and which you might have to order from Amazon. Read review blogs, poke around on Goodreads, look for small press/indie books in the also boughts for the mainstream books you like.
Refusing to read books by men is prejudiced.
Only reading books by men is sexist.
Thinking all the good books are written by men is, well, lazy and not looking hard enough.
Think of it like stargazing during the day. You can’t do it because the brightness of the sun drowns out every other star in the galaxy, even though there are many stars that are thousands or millions of times brighter than the sun in absolute magnitude.
Choosing not to read white men for a time is like eclipsing the sun – it allows the other stars to be seen.
When J.K. Rowling released A Casual Vacancy, it was roundly mocked and critically savaged, with many indicating that it was evidence that she couldn’t write outside of young adult fiction. Meanwhile another book by Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo’s Calling, got very good reviews and a pretty sizable cult following.
Turned out Galbraith was Rowling.
That in a nutshell is why avoiding white male authors from time to time can be necessary.
Or, if you feel that’s too negative, you could also set yourself a challenge to read X books by women or minorities in a year, or to have X percent of the books you read be by women or minorities.
In other words, if you do feel sexist if you “give up” white male authors, there are other approaches which can help.
I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately about how fandom can
be better to its writers. They’re all
wonderful posts, with lots of good things to say about the importance of not
just leaving Kudos, but also comments.
And this might seem self-serving, but I’m going to say it
anyway. Right now, most of fandom is
located on Tumblr, and I think these posts are leaving out a very important
step that’s just as simple as hitting the Kudos button.
Reblogs.
I cannot tell you how many people who commented on Mise said
that the reason they read it was because they saw it appear so many times on
their dash. And I can’t tell you how
excited it makes me to see it appear on my dash because someone else is talking
about it. Honestly, sometimes I think I
get more thrill out of being on someone’s rec list or seeing someone else
promote my story than I do from getting that Kudos email.
(I do love that Kudos email, though, don’t get me wrong.)
I feel like this used to happen more often. Even a year ago – I’d see the reblogs of “New
Chapter” posts for stories I followed before I’d see the original post. And it was great, because I’d see the excited
squee of other readers and that would in turn get me excited to read, and then I’d jump in even more excited than I
would have been otherwise. These days…
yeah, not so much. I can’t tell you the
last time I saw a reblog of a story I followed.
Or a story I didn’t follow, honestly.
I’m not sure what changed.
Here’s the thing: just like with artists… if you “like” that
art post, only the artist will know. But if you reblog it, then you’re giving
someone else a chance to like it too.
Want to support your favorite fandom writers? Want to make sure they get all the love and
attention they deserve? Then reblog their story announcements. Share
their stories on Tumblr or Twitter. (AO3 even has a handy little button that lets you do it super easy.) It takes all of a minute to do – less, in some cases.
You don’t have to be a fic rec blog to tell your flist you like a fic, and that they should read it too.
I don’t know about other writers, but I track both janto321 (my ao3 name) and merindab (my blog name) so if you tag either of them I’ll most likely see it. And it makes me damned happy to do so.
And always, always, thank you for reading.
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You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.
Reading has always been the primary way I make sense of the world around me; books are my first stop when I want to learn about a new hobby, culture, person or world. When I read a memoir, the author’s story lives inside me, making me feel I know them better than I do many of my close friends.
