This post is inspired by one Laura posted over at Boats Against the Current about real life bookish friends. In her post, Laura talks about how most of her bookish friends are people she's met online, especially through book blogging. It got me to thinking about how lucky I am to have so many booknerds in my life.
I have many bookish friends, though we don’t always have the same taste in books.
I come from a family that reads, and growing up my dad always had a western in his hands and Mom always had a romance novel. Now they both seem to gravitate towards mysteries/thrillers, which is nice because they share books. My brother is a voracious reader and some of our sci-fi/fantasy interests overlap, but he’s much more into sci-fi and I think thrillers/horror while I go more toward sci-fi/fantasy and romance. My sister-in-law is also a reader, though honestly I have no idea what she likes to read. Hmm...
I have a weirdly large number of friends from high school who got their MLS degree and are now librarians, if that gives you an idea of how many bookish people I surround myself with, haha. I remember once in middle school, there was a “rule” about no reading at the table because lunchtime is for socializing. Friend A told Friend B “Hey! No reading at the table!” and Friend B said “But Elley is reading…” The response was “Yeah, well, she gets a special pass, she’s never not reading.” So you can pretty much picture high school me right there. We also tried to start a literary club, and all I really remember about it is that we each picked a weird alliterative color name; Friend A was Prissy Purpy, another friend was Gwen Green, and I think I was Lana Lellow. ...And I am still a giant nerd to this very day.
I am lucky enough to have two BFFs who are readers, though one of them looks down her nose rather at my current love of romance novels. She recommends amazing books, though, and they tend to be ones that really make me think. We seem to talk mostly about fantasy, and she was bugging me to read A Song of Ice and Fire looooong before the show ever came out on HBO. She also introduced me to Margaret Atwood ...I really should listen to her more.
My other BFF lives an hour and a half drive away but has really similar reading tastes, so we talk a LOT, but it’s mostly online over Facebook messenger and the like. You may recognize her from her monthly guest posts on my blog, Peekaboo's Corner. Someday she'll figure out how we can do a long distance podcast, and then we'll REALLY set the bookish world on fire. Oh wait, fire and paper is bad...
My husband is also a reader, though not as voracious a reader as I am. He reads mostly Dragonlance books and the Wheel of Time series, and while I tried to get into them I thought they were boooooriiiiing. Still, sometimes I read a book that I know he’ll love, like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and then I will throw it at his head (sometimes literally) and yell “READ THIS RIGHT NOW!” Sometimes he does, and then we can talk about books together, which is pretty much the perfect romance, haha.
Since I started book blogging and actually USING my Twitter account (for mostly book stuff) I feel like I'm connecting with the bookish community as a whole, and I feel like I'm starting to forge little fledgling friendships with a few others online. It's hard because the online community, while great at connecting people from all over the globe, can feel a little impersonal sometimes. I just started participating in the #otspsecretsister project this round, which is sort of a like a giant bookish Secret Santa project that runs for 6 months, and I feel like I'm getting closer to that bookish group as well.
How about you? Do you have many bookish friends? Are they online or IRL or a mix of both?
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It’s awesome that you have bookish friends in real life. My family doesn’t read, and neither do my friends. I had one bookish friend in high school. I’m still Facebook friends with her, but she won’t speak to me anymore because her religious beliefs have become very extreme. She won’t interact with non-Christians unless she has to.
ReplyDeleteAj @ Read All The Things!
Ugh, that sucks about your sort-of friend. And can I just say, as a Christian, that isn't very Christ-like behavior...
DeleteA world in which people just flat out don't read is just mind-blowing to me. I see stuff about people who say they don't read, but literally everyone in my family and circle of friends at least reads a few books a year, and the majority of them are voracious readers. I just had lunch with a guy friend the other day and it's the first time we hung out just the two of us. I don't always do the best in one-on-one interactions (especially with guys, for whatever reason) but we mostly talked about books for 2 hours, so it was fun. :) I guess thank goodness for the internet so those of you in bookish-friend-deserts can connect with like-minded booknerds! ;)
That's so amazing that you know so many bookish people in real life! It must be great to have so many people to discuss books with, although it can be tricky if people have different tastes to you.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean though about the online community sometimes seeming bit impersonal. Twitter does seem like the place to be to properly talk to people, although I've never been that good with Twitter...I do try though!
Great post! :)
It can be hard to because people can have multiple usernames (and different avatars/user photos) across multiple platforms, so it can be hard to track interactions with one person. I try to use ElleyOtter wherever I can to be consistent, LOL. I am starting to recognize some names/faces as we interact more and more often. (I'll be honest, your pic with the aqua hair is what I recognize more than your name... if it just said "Laura Cookson" I'd be like "who?" but if it just had the little teal-haired userpic I'd be like "Oh the Boats girl! I like her!" LOLOLOLOL)
DeleteI have a mix of blogosphere friends - some read what I read, others don't, but I just like reading their thoughts. I was really excited to discover some of the women I work with are readers. I have a little library in my bottom drawer, have done kindle lends with some, and even got three of them to sign up for a library card. It's been nice having IRL readers in my life again.
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome!! In the department I used to work in (which included all of 5 women at the time...) we had a small table in the center of our cubicles and we'd do a sort of "little free library" where people would bring in the books they were ready to set free into the wild, so it was a sort of take-a-book/leave-a-book deal going on. That was really neat. :) The group I work with now includes all sorts, and there are two other big Harry Potter nerds, a woman who reads historical romances, a guy who reads a lot of sci-fi/fantasy, and a woman who likes audiobooks about true crime. And yes, I do totally pry into peoples' reading preferences, LOL. What's nice about people who read genres outside your own preferred ones is that sometimes they'll be so passionate about a book, I'll give it a try even though it's not my preferred genre and SUDDENLY I LIKE COZY MYSTERIES, WHO KNOW? That's also how I discovered classic sci-fi (Philip K. Dick mostly, I'll be honest) and space opera!
DeleteOoh welcome to secret sister! I've been doing it for four or five rounds and I love it. That's great you have people in your real life that like to read. A lot of my friends enjoy reading but they don't read NEARLY as much as I do, so we don't tend to read the same things. LOL However, my sister really loves to read and we're in a library book club together so that's nice.
ReplyDelete-Lauren
www.shootingstarsmag.net
I always mean to join one of the book clubs at my local library, but the only one that meets in the evenings and not on a Tuesday night is the Mystery Book Club. (I'm not really into mysteries, and Tuesday night is my Dungeons & Dragons night, so of course I can't miss that.)
DeleteI'm LOVING secret sister so far, though I think next time I need to sign up for the $25+ tier... I am apparently bad at reigning myself in when I get excited about gift giving, especially when it's related to books. Though I can count anything I make myself as a $0 item, right? ...Even if I spent $50 on materials for it? *shifty eyes*
As a librarian, I am basically surrounded by bookish folks of varying levels, but you are the one I a) care about the most, b) share the most taste with and c) have the most fun discussing books with.
ReplyDeleteYour comment made me smile SO BIG. Like, THE BIGGEST. <3 <3 <3 <3 You're my bestest book buddy too, Peekaboo! Also, I think we need another snarky book cover time. ALSO, fancasting The Hating Game since it's going to be a movie. ALSO, fancasting The Bridgertons books.
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