is your reading performative?

reading for pleasure vs reading for status

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For some of us, reading is as quintessential as breathing. It’s a skill – because yes, reading is a skill – that we developed in childhood, falling in love with our own imagination and mellow fictional words. But this wasn’t the case for everyone. For some people, it took a long time to fall in love with words. Only after the popularization of communities such as Booktube and Booktok did the common citizen begin introducing reading to their daily life, and as much as I love seeing more people talking about books, it came to a point that I must ask: Are we reading for pleasure, or for how it makes us look?

If you open Booktok right now, I bet you can find a million videos saying ‘’If you love this book, you have ___ vibe/aesthetic/main character energy’’. Everything becomes aesthetized. Book influencers have a perfectly curated Instagram, with hundreds of unread books on the shelf, perfectly organized by color or title. It’s all about consuming, about buying an aesthetic, a personality, and not about reading.

Influencers can make us think some things are normal when they are not. If you’re around the book community, I’m sure you’ve seen these insane book hauls influencers do. I’m talking over 50 books! Yes, of course, they do it to get more views, but still, some people buy the ‘’lifestyle’’ and incorporate overconsumption into their lives. What serious reader would buy 50 books at once? I wouldn’t. What’s fun about being a reader is having your shelf reflect your life, I can remember exactly what phase of my life I was in, even what mood I was while looking at my shelf. If someone buys 50+ books at once, will they have that? I don’t think so. It feels so… Unpersonal. That’s what influencer culture does, it makes reading feel like an accessory you can purchase at once rather than an experience you need to build with your own emotions, intellect, and heart.

Goodreads is also at fault for making reading a performative activity. And I say this as a huge fan of apps to track reading! I joined Goodreads very early on, in 2012/2013, and have been using it since then, but with the popularization of the app, some weird things have been happening. Reading has become a competition of who can read more books each year which can even be dangerous for our mental health. This affected me for a long time. I felt like crap because I was sick and couldn’t read as much as I wanted to, or as much as I saw others reading. But what is much? It’s completely unfair to compare your life to the life of someone who’s paid to read books. Booktubers and book influencers read for a living, so of course they are going to read a million books! It’s not reasonable to compare your life with theirs. Quantity is relative. For some people, 10 books per year is a lot, while for others it’s what they manage to read in a month.

Goodreads is not as it used to be. It’s now flooded with ads and review bombing, which is super annoying for the user. But it’s not only that. Goodreads is now considered very problematic. It has issues such as authors of color receiving racist reviews without the app banning them, or protecting said writers; promoting problematic writers and their books such as Where the Crawdads Sing (if you research about it, you’ll see that the author based the book on a real experience, with her husband allegedly being part of a crime); authors harassing reviewers and lying about their race to sell books; and more. The fact that Amazon owns it and uses it to sell books is problematic on its own. Thankfully, now we have other alternatives to Goodreads, such as StoryGraph, Fable, Bookly, and Bookmory.

I’m not a book snob, but if someone reads 200 books a year, are they reading with quality? Are they even reading good books? Are they reading with attention? I’m not sure. The rise of spicy books makes me wonder if people are reading those so they can reach their reading goals with more ease. Or if maybe, these books are connected with the rise of anti-intellectualism. Of course, I know spicy books have always existed, but not like this. Women are so obsessed with it that they’re crossing boundaries, either with sexualizing and harassing real men with families or with getting fixated to the point of only wanting to read books with spicy scenes. I could write an entire essay about that, but I wonder if they are lacking a sex life to the point of needing to fulfill their desires with fiction, or if is just a need to escape.

While some books promote anti-intellectualism, others go in the opposite direction and give you an immediate status as a modern thinker. Books like Normal People, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, The Secret History, or any novel by Murakami. It’s as if your book choices become your entire personality, and each of these authors has a particular aesthetic. Sally Rooney is for melancholic and introspective intellectuals; Ottessa Moshfegh is for girl rebels; Donna Tartt is for brooding, rich people; and Murakami is for mysterious philosophers. And this affects the publishing industry too! Maybe that’s why female rage is trending right now (Ottessa Moshfegh influence), or because a lot of books coming out are philosophical, or depressing. We have to think hard and long about the books we’re obsessed with because it’s what determines what gets published and what it’s not; what books get popularity, and what books flop – if you’re a writer yourself, it’s even more important!

In January, Barnes & Noble announced that is set to open at least 60 new stores this year, and this comes after they opened 54 new ones last year. Their success can be linked with the rise of Booktok because Indie bookstores are also succeeding! With their educational free programs and welcoming safe spaces to all people, as the anti-Amazon sentiment rises, small bookshops are making a comeback. This is great news. It means we’re cultivating more readers, more words being read, and more stories being shared. But it also means overconsumption is trending and the book industry isn’t an exception. If you open any book media, such as Booktube or Booktok, you can see tons of videos saying ‘’Reading and buying books are two different hobbies’’, which is worrying. Ashley Tisdale, an actress known for playing Sharpay in High School Music, was criticized for buying an entire bookshelf only for filming a house tour for Architectural Digest, which I believe to be a common practice for a lot of people, especially celebrities. Books mean status. And having a lot of them in your house makes you look good, like a cultural, well-educated individual, and who doesn’t want that? I’m even noticing new readers, who fill their shelves with incredible speed. But is it true? Are they reading these books? Or is it just for clout? Not all of us can appear in fancy magazines, but we can make our own videos, can we? Maybe the reason why people are buying so many books is because they are hyperfixated with over-consumption, but also because they want to take pictures and film videos of a filled shelf, with tons of books.

That is social media at its best, pressuring us to fit into an aesthetic rather than committing to the goal of being a reader. Slow, immersive reading is hard and takes time and practice. But who has time for that? With the ultra-fast internet trends, there’s a constant demand to finish books quickly, update reading lists, and move on to the next trending title. I must admit that I fell into this trap last year. I kept reading short stories I wasn’t the least interested in just so I could reach my reading goal, and it came to a point in which I became so obsessed with reading that I had to spend months without touching any books whatsoever to let my mind rest. Don’t let social media interfere with your relationship with books, like it did mine.

The rise of celebrity book clubs is also important for us to consider. Dakota Johnson, Reese Witherspoon, Kaia Gerber, Dua Lipa, Natalie Portman… Wonder what all these women have in common? They all have popular book clubs. With celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid being caught by paparazzi with books in their hands, the Lit Girl aesthetic is trending, and good literature is now part of the It Girl assemble. This not only impacts culture, but it also influences what books get adapted to movies – Reese Witherspoon is responsible for a lot of those. This has a huge impact on the publishing industry because, if your favorite star gets caught with a book, you’ll want to buy it. Depending on the fanbase of the celebrity, it can sell millions of copies. Can you imagine if Taylor Swift was caught reading your book? It would instantly become a best-seller! The problem is that a lot of the time, these clubs read the same books, with the same already established authors. Have you ever noticed that? Where’s the diversity?

There’s a case for and against ‘’status-symbol’’ reading. There are a lot of positives because it means more people are reading, which is always a good thing. When literature becomes part of the culture and books rise in popularity, writers have a lot more opportunities, which leads to more diversity in publishing. That doesn’t mean their book will be best-sellers, but to have diverse stories out in the world is already something, right? With more people reading, we can have a better understanding of each other because books cultivate empathy. In a world as polarized as ours, having empathy is so important. The book community can be toxic sometimes – please don’t go to book twitter! – but it can also be welcoming, a place where you can make real friendships.

The negatives are shallow reading, low engagement with stories, and performative reading. When you prioritize aesthetics over substance is as if you’re going against the entire purpose of reading. Reading is not about looking pretty, or aesthetics, but what’s inside the book. Forget about social media and being a cool girl, how does that story make you feel? I’m being a huge hypocrite, I know. The irony that I’m posting this essay on social media while critiquing it is not lost on me, but I believe most essays on Substack go in the opposite direction of the social media trends I’m opposed to. I’m aware that Substack has a huge aspect of the Cool Girl Aesthetic, the aesthetics of the cool writer, but while most social media platforms focus on short-form content, Substack focuses on long-form. You could always make videos, but that is not the purpose of the platform, it was made for writers, for people who want to make you think about things.

Even I, who started reading books as soon as I learned how to read, have fallen victim to this aestheticization of the reader. But it had a positive impact on my life. I began reading Donna Tartt because of the aesthetic – I love Dark Academia! But The Secret History became my favorite book of all time. I love everything about it: the setting, the characters, the writing, the ending. And I’m glad I read it because without it I wouldn’t have read other books similar to it, like Bunny, or Stoner.

In the end, I don’t think this new trend of aesthetic reading is a bad thing per se, it’s just another approach to reading. Overconsuption is bad. Buying books for status is bad. But if you’re reading it, what’s the problem? Each generation engages with books and media differently, and maybe that’s our way of incorporating books into our daily lives, by romanticizing and aestheticizing our lives. But there are ways to have a more meaningful relationship with literature in an era where everything, including books, is content.

Annotating

I’m planning to write a post all about annotating, and how to analyze books, but this is a great way to read more actively. And no, you don’t need to be reading a classic novel to make annotations. When I’m reading classics, my notes are about analyzing the book and what it talks about; but with every other book, it’s about having fun! I love underlining beautiful phrases, words I don’t know, and things I find funny. I love to underline important moments that make me scream and giggle, and to add my own silly emotions to the paper. You don’t need to write down intellectual thoughts! Annotate your reactions, how you felt, your thoughts, etc. Use your creativity! This is a way to engage with the story so you can read with attention and remember with more ease afterward. Have you noticed that most people who read a million books per year end up not remembering most of them? That’s why.

Go in your own rhythm

Just because your friend can read a tome in one day, it doesn’t mean you should. Each person has their own rhythm and that’s perfectly normal. Life is already so goddamn hard, why would you add pressure to one of your hobbies? Read for pleasure, for peace, to be immersed in a fictional world that you care about.

Have a reading journal

Having a reading journal where I keep track of all my series, physical TBR, wishlist, and how many books I’m buying per month was a game-changer. It made me buy books with more purpose, avoid impulse buying, and tackle my physical TBR more frequently. Plus, it’s fun! I love journaling, but even if you don’t, it will be easier for you to visualize how many books are coming in and coming out per month and year.

I don’t want to desinfluence you to stop consuming books with this essay. All I want is to make you think about your habits and why you are choosing your books, or reading at all. But don’t get me wrong, I wish all people on this earth were reading something, even if it’s a spicy silly book. Reading makes us better – better daughters (or sons), better workers, better writers, better people. It improves all aspects of our lives, from creativity to vocabulary. Keep reading, keep improving, keep imagining! I’m so proud of you for being brave – and vulnerable – enough to be comfortable to embark on this journey.

What about you? What book made you a reader? Do you consume Booktok at all? Tell me all about it in the comments! 📖🩷