Should our bookshelves be a reflection of ourselves? If so, should they be a reflection of ourselves throughout our lives, or should they be emended as time goes by and we change and grow into different people than we were one, two, five, ten years ago?
Read this today, and made me think of my own reading. I'm of the opinion that everything stays with us in different ways, and even the unremarkable stuff transforms us because we learn about our tastes and never want to read something so mediocre again. A lot of the books I read as a kid transformed me, it affected my stylistic choices as a writer, my love of a personal, intimate narrative voice, humor, and keeping the readers engaged. Meanwhile, a lot of YA books, I don't bother to track down or remember it, especially the stuff I read during the pandemic. They're all similar, they have the ironic purpose of making the really good stuff just pop out, making you remember the principles of good storytelling.
Sorry to have missed this comment until today—I loved reading your thoughts, that I share. "Even the unremarkable stuff transforms us," what a beautiful way to put it and to think about this. Thank you so much!
I read your post yesterday and I really enjoyed it! Similar to you when I made my storygraph account and did the data import I felt I couldn't keep all of these ya fantasy books I read as a teen because I have lost all connection to them and so I ended up removing almost all of them... I only kept the record of the ones that occupied a significant part of my life(namely the Grishaverse books). The interesting part is that I have no need to remove these titles from my goodreads account, I can allow it to stand as a time capsule, but the chance of the blank slate that storygraph offered made me want to seriously reconsider what should stay as a representative of my current taste. Today I stumbled upon Ursula K. Le Guin's poem 'Leaves' and it made me think of this post again, and urged me to reread it! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148293/leaves-5bd9e153d78b2
It's so weird but I feel the exact same way with goodreads standing as a chronology or "time capsule" as you well put it, but with the new reading trackers like storygraph and literalclub I want to make them representative of my current state. Thank you for your lovely comment and thank you so, so much for sharing the poem, which I'd never come across. It's beautiful.
Read this today, and made me think of my own reading. I'm of the opinion that everything stays with us in different ways, and even the unremarkable stuff transforms us because we learn about our tastes and never want to read something so mediocre again. A lot of the books I read as a kid transformed me, it affected my stylistic choices as a writer, my love of a personal, intimate narrative voice, humor, and keeping the readers engaged. Meanwhile, a lot of YA books, I don't bother to track down or remember it, especially the stuff I read during the pandemic. They're all similar, they have the ironic purpose of making the really good stuff just pop out, making you remember the principles of good storytelling.
Sorry to have missed this comment until today—I loved reading your thoughts, that I share. "Even the unremarkable stuff transforms us," what a beautiful way to put it and to think about this. Thank you so much!
I read your post yesterday and I really enjoyed it! Similar to you when I made my storygraph account and did the data import I felt I couldn't keep all of these ya fantasy books I read as a teen because I have lost all connection to them and so I ended up removing almost all of them... I only kept the record of the ones that occupied a significant part of my life(namely the Grishaverse books). The interesting part is that I have no need to remove these titles from my goodreads account, I can allow it to stand as a time capsule, but the chance of the blank slate that storygraph offered made me want to seriously reconsider what should stay as a representative of my current taste. Today I stumbled upon Ursula K. Le Guin's poem 'Leaves' and it made me think of this post again, and urged me to reread it! https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148293/leaves-5bd9e153d78b2
It's so weird but I feel the exact same way with goodreads standing as a chronology or "time capsule" as you well put it, but with the new reading trackers like storygraph and literalclub I want to make them representative of my current state. Thank you for your lovely comment and thank you so, so much for sharing the poem, which I'd never come across. It's beautiful.