The Sunday Shelf: At least we're alone together
on finding a fuller reading life (my reading journal)....
Earlier this year, I picked up an essay collection by one of my favorite authors, the iconic and brilliant Edwidge Danticat. Edwidge Danticat, for me, is one of those authors that I’ll read whatever they write about. I’ll run to the bookstore immediately or pre-order their book as soon as I know about it. That said, I hesitated a bit in picking up her newest book that had been sitting on my shelf since last year. The short of it, the title was to blame. Every time I passed by the book and read the title, We’re Alone, I’d have a voice echo back to me: And no one is coming to save us.
That voice, I think, was reflecting the solitude I was feeling at the moment post-election results. A feeling that only intensified as the new year progressed, and we are beginning to see the drastic and life-altering changes the new administration is creating. The chaos that is ensuing. Due to that, I had stopped posting on social media consistently. Watching tech moguls attend the inauguration and support the current administration added to a brewing uneasiness I have been feeling related to being present on social media as a “creator.” How was I inadvertently helping the platforms by continuing to exist and post on them?
The short of it, I decided I wanted to start preparing to fully be “offline” someday. I joked on Threads that this year, it was going to be me and my reading journal — a journal I started thanks to the TikTok algorithm. On TikTok, some bookish folks were sharing their beautiful reading journal spreads. Spreads that seemed so artistic and aesthetically pleasing. But beyond that, I was more interested in how they were able to track things related to the reading experience that I didn’t think any online tracker could do. More importantly, I really liked the idea of getting to put pen to paper to mark off a book I read and write down a quote or reflections about what I was reading without an external reaction. No one to comment or reply to what I was writing in the journal. April this year will mark ten years since I first opened up Instagram and decided to create a public account to share my reading experience. It feels ironic to me that I find myself slowly moving towards wanting to keep my reading life private after it’s been public intentionally for so long. And yet, I’m balancing the solitude that comes with that, too. I’m reminded that the entire reason I took to social media in the first place was to find someone to talk to about the books I was reading.
