An Ode To Reading Communities

All growing up I loved to read. The adults in my life liked to read occasionally and my sister never liked to read back then. I don’t remember any of my friends really loving to read either. I always felt alone in it — enduring comments about how my nose was always in a book as a kid and then, as I got older, trying to read less in middle school and high school so that I could have the same interests as my friends. I craved community and socialization but it always seemed my love for reading wasn’t shared in my circles. So I started reading less than I used to — fitting it in when my social life was quiet.

It was always such a solitary activity for me and, while I didn’t mind that, my life changed as a very community-driven person when I found Goodreads in 2008. Reading became a community activity while still allowing me to have the solitary aspects of it I craved. I found Goodreads and then I found the groups feature of Goodreads and my life CHANGED. I found myself in communities that appreciated and were all about reading….which really saved me a time or two.

I started a group within my first month or so on Goodreads, during my last year of college, for College Students on Goodreads. It was INCREDIBLE to be talking books with people WHO GOT ME. My love for reading, after being pretty minimal in high school and college, came back with a full force.

I found book recommendations but I also found really good friends (some I still keep in touch with) and a place where I found comfort when I graduated college in December 2008 in the middle of an awful recession.

But Goodreads led me to the world of book blogging in 2010 — a place where I really could combine my love for reading and my desire for community. I have never felt so much like myself until I started this blog.

I was in such a life transition, having just graduated college 1.5 years before and feeling like I just didn’t fit where I was anymore, and this blog became the place that felt like home to me. I was more myself, unabashedly, on this blog and in this community I found both with the readers of my blog and other book bloggers.

I really came to find out who I really was too. All the things I tried to shove down and pretend I wasn’t into because it wasn’t appreciated in my friend group — I really leaned into and loved them fully with my whole being and found other people who enjoyed and appreciated the same things or at least accepted that I did.

But not only that — this community became everything here. You all saw me through getting laid off, getting married, working through my grief of losing my mom years before, having Riley and dealing with postpartum depression and then working through my identity as a new mom as well all the joyful moments of life in between. While this place was everything to me when it came to books, it truly was a community in every sense of the word in all other facets of my life and honestly probably saved me more than once.

Then I turned my book-based community from online to in real life when I started a book club — a time when I had just cold turkey decided to leave my friend group and I was STRUGGLING socially. Book club was everything I needed at the time. And then I started another book club with new friends I had made (through Meetup) and joined another book club another friend was starting.

And then I had Riley…. and we moved to a town where I knew nobody. And what did I do? YOU GUESSED IT. I started a book club that came as an offshoot of our local mom’s Facebook group. It was one of the things that helped me from crushing loneliness that year as a mom of a 1 year old in a new town.

From books to motherhood to all other aspects of life, this community (like all the others in my life before it) became a place that felt like home and that I couldn’t have managed without. I live for the book talk and just the feeling of being part of something. It was so good for me to have a place to meet with other moms in the midst of motherhood and have books as the common ground. 

One thing I really found right now at this time in my life that I loved finding other moms who read — it’s nice to be in community with moms who were juggling a million things AND still made time for reading when they could — no matter if they only read one book a month or 12.

And because I am clearly obsessed with cultivating communities — I started another one: a Facebook group for moms who read! Right now it’s still in the beginning stages of the group but I plan to start a book club with it and I hope it becomes another place for busy moms who love to read, make time to do so, want to share and receive book recommendations and who also are encouraging the love of reading in their kids life. Especially during this time when our communities are necessarily meeting as much in person.

P.S. COME JOIN THE MOMS WHO READ FACEBOOK GROUP

I think that’s the one thing I really love about books — they give you a starting point. You can bond over a book you’ve read and then the door is just opened to other conversations because of the nature of books and how they are personal to us and the things we bring to them. And that can be so, so life-giving and life SAVING sometimes in my case.

I will forever be grateful that I stumbled upon Goodreads in 2008 because it was the gateway to putting me in reading communities that have been life-changing for me. And here I am — 10 years later on this blog — still being part of them. I know I’ve been a little less present here but this community is still so important to me and I hope to continue to cultivate it.

What book-based communities are you involved in? How have reading or book-based communities changed your life?