On reading again

 For a long time I was a very Serious Book Blogger.  I took reading and book blogging incredibly seriously.  I had a blogging notebook with lists and calendars and ideas of different features and author interview questions.  I'd obsess over keeping up to date with recent releases and being On It with how often I posted and what I posted.  I've had Fluttering Butterflies since 4 months after my Eldest was born and he'll be 18 this year.  So that was a lot of time to have a very time-consuming hobby and a lot of times, especially towards the end of regular posting it was Not Very Fun.  

But of course I didn't post regularly for 18 years.  My dad died 6 years ago and the loss of him threw my entire world off-kilter.  Even before then, when he was diagnosed with dementia and was put into a specialist dementia hospital, things were Not Great and I didn't handle it very well.  So I put a little pause on reading and on book blogging and my social media presence.  I've since gotten back into reading and I think I'm on the fence about writing on this blog again.  You can see from the 'recent' blog posts on here that I've been on that fence for a couple of years now.  I can never decide whether I want to pack it all in or not.  So I keep trying. And every year or so, I write one of these posts.  I don't think anyone is reading anymore and that's okay.  I just like writing.  

And I am reading again.  It's the beginning of June and I've read 36 books.  And for me, especially how reading has gone in the past 5-6 years, that's pretty amazing.  I'm in a weird reading phase though - I can't seem to read e-books, or library books, I can't listen to audio books.  I can only read physical copies of books and my preference is for secondhand books that I've bought from charity shops.  I don't know how this happened but I'm still in the middle of this phase and cannot break it until its run its course.  

What I'm reading has also changed.  Of the 36 books I've read, 22 have been fiction books aimed at adults.  Only 8 have been YA and the rest have been poetry or non-fiction. I like not being restricted by genre or age category.  I felt as a YA book blogger that I always constantly needed to read YA and I love that that pressure to do so has fallen away.  Same with keeping up with the latest releases.  Buying only from charity shops means that I'm always behind.  No Hot Takes from me! and that's just the way I like it. 

I'm enjoying it again.  I post on my work's internal communication about the books I've read in the previous month and it feels almost like I'm connecting with some about books.  I'm still part of two local book groups that are lovely and supportive.  It feels like I've come full circle and I'm back to where I was - part of a bookish community, it just looks a bit different these days.  I'm glad for it.