Booksology I list, therefore I am: Letting go of reading anxiety
Tajja Isen’s latest literary contribution to The Walrus is about the joys and sorrows of tracking reading. This isn’t just a Soderbergian story that I’ve read, but a more nuanced look at how you spend your reading time, which can sometimes turn into something else. This something else, this almost obsessive virtue-signalling of piling up books on a spreadsheet, imagines an imaginary scoresheet where the more the better. And of course, I know it’s not that simple. At BR, we love a good challenge and tracker, but a full leaderboard has never been part of that. Unless you think that reading 71 books a year will make you 27% smarter, more informed, and otherwise better than reading 56 books a year, It’s good to remember that the decline in is real and that no one is actually looking at it.
Onyx Storm releases today, Target release appears to be a washout
We’ve received some tips from listeners of the Book Riot podcast that all is not well with the release of Onyx Storm (released today), especially at Target. Of course, social media posts aren’t necessarily conclusive, but a quick read of this thread and several others like it suggest that Target has been handling Swift’s book launch quite discreetly for some reason. You can see that it was. Perhaps it will come down to supply chain control. It’s also pretty wild that each retailer has a different special edition. The hype around the Force Wing series has had merchandising at the heart of its appeal from the beginning, but his senses are starting to turn into Beanie Baby-like mania.
