I’ve been reading a lot over the last few months. Once I mostly settled into my life as a high school teacher, I started wanting to enjoy books again. It’s been a great journey so far; I’ve read traditional and contemporary classics, trashy novels, YA titles–and the world of books keeps leading me onward to discover more.
I’m keeping a book journal–a small notebook where I log what I’ve read, what I think of the book, and how I’d rate it for myself. That’s personal–a place for me to look back and reflect on what I’ve been reading and on what I think about what I’ve been reading and about how well I’ve enjoyed the reading. But I’ve been wanting to go further.
It’s hard to build book community in real life, especially after the number that COVID has done to us all. It was already difficult to get to a book group discussion before it, but now I have to think of all of these other elements surrounding my choices of where to go and be when I’m not in my classroom or being mom. I miss coffee shops and other hangout spaces, but to be truthful, I’ve always been more of a homebody, so while I long for those spaces as POSSIBILITIES, I know that they weren’t so much regular realities as sometime spaces to occupy.
So…book community. Certainly available in online spaces in many varieties, but which platform and what people and how do I choose? Spoiler alert: I choose me.
Welcome. However you’ve found your way here, I’m glad you’ve come. I’ll tell you about the books I’ve read and the books I’m reading and the books to come. If you like, you can tell me what you think about those books or about my thoughts on those books. Will I respond? Maybe. Will I read what you say? Definitely. Will I write when I want to write and what I want to write with (mostly) little thought to what you might want to read or hear? Probably. The site itself may be defunct, but the blog is, as blogs are, My Space.
Currently reading: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
I’ve been reading this book for two months now; I started it in January, and I keep getting sidetracked by other things. As of this typing, I’m halfway through, and I’m seriously considering finishing it today. My Kindle tells me I’ve got about 3 hours of focused reading to do to finish, and I think I can manage that.
So far? The book is beautifully written, with a voice that is simultaneously accusatory, bewildered, innocent, and wise. Our unnamed narrator is bouncing through the world like Candide (and Ellison makes that reference early on), and like Candide he learns about the realities of humanity and the human condition as he falls from one situation into another. Unlike Candide, though, our narrator is black and in the United States, and his experience represents the absurdities of modern black life in this racist country. More when I’m done…
Anita DeRouen 