i wanna talk about my books

 so let's try this out. 

i was always a GirlWhoReads(tm). starting around middle school, throughout high school during my ~v edgy and emo phase~, and then in college and after. i for sure spent a lot of time reading when i would substitute teach. 

something about the combination and teaching really yanks out all of your free time tho, seriously. 

19 year old me

i stopped reading for fun for a long time. it felt like years? like actually, i don't think i read a book between 2015-2022? maybe one for work but definitely not for fun. I blame social media. 

anyway, thanks to tiktok, i, similar to many of us, stumbled upon MANY accounts all talking about the books they've read. my neighbor bestie K also was an avid reader and would take frequent trips to the library and for her birthday, I wanted recommendations for books to buy her. I asked my Suegra (who also readsd for fun) and she gave like 3 good recs of popular/moving books at the time. I bought K like 5? and when I gifted her them, one of them was a book she already read. instead of returning the book, i read it. what could it hurt?

the book itself turned out to be only okay. but picking up the first book I've read for fun since 2015 was a big deal. 6 years without reading kind of sucked. a hobby i really enjoyed and relied on suddenly disappeared from my life and I didn't even really notice. It was very slowly replaced by short-form video entertainment via Instagram and eventually tiktok and doomscrolling. 

anyway, in the last 34 months (2 years and 10 months) I've now read 295 books. that's awesome! I hope to get to 300 by the time my "readiversary" comes up in March. 

I just wanna place where I can type out my thoughts and feelings and favorite quotes on some corner of the internet even if it's just for me. blogging was once so easy and came as a second nature for me, and somewhere along the way I lost that regularity and I've always missed it. trying and trying again to find that groove and failing all along the way. hopefully since reading has become a hobby i haven't quit, that maintaining this space as a way to talk about the books I've read will also be easy. 

xo-dani