Buying Books
First off, just because I’m no longer reading doesn’t mean I am not going to stop acquiring books (lolsob). Despite the fact that the perennial problem of buying books faster than I can read them is exacerbated a hundredfold, I’ve told myself it’s okay— good, in fact—to keep purchasing a couple books here and there as I am able in support of some of my favorite independent bookstores that are no doubt having a tough time right now. Outside of buying books, I’ve also continued to borrow ebooks from my library as usual, though we shall overlook the fact that I’ve been letting all of them automatically return themselves after sitting in my ereader unread for the 21-day borrow period.
Organizing Books
Obviously, the more books I buy, the more space I need to find to be able to keep them. That combined with the need to transform my desk space to be able to work from home long-term has meant I’ve had to get serious about reorganizing. I am still far from finding a perfect system—I’ve mostly just stuffed my shelves to the brim, shoving books in at all sorts of angles to get them all to fit—but I’ve at least succeeded in clearing away the stray books piled randomly on every surface in my work area. I’d call that a step in the right direction! I have, however, managed to find a little more success organizing my books in the digital space. I’m personally not a Goodreads user, but I catalog my books and track my reading in multiple spreadsheets, on LibraryThing, and, most recently, on the new site The StoryGraph (it’s still in beta, but it’s super cool and you should check it out, especially if you’re into data and charts!). And I’ve decided to take on the major project of overhauling my organizational systems on these platforms. Because while I’m not reading my books, I can still have fun sorting through and rediscovering them.
Watching Adaptations
One of the last books I managed to read early this year was Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. Reading the book and then immediately marathoning the Hulu series adaptation was what kept me busy that first week or so of staying home. After that, I quickly turned to my most trusty comfort watches, which include such obvious choices as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Clueless, and the 2005 Pride & Prejudice movie starring Keira Knightley. While new content continues to be somewhat more difficult to get through for me right now, I’ve also managed to make my way through more recent adaptations like Watchmen, My Brilliant Friend, and NOS4A2. And, of course, I’ve got a humongous list of other movie and television adaptations to get to eventually that will certainly keep me occupied for a while.
Listening to Bookish Podcasts
Usually I’m someone who has podcasts playing every possible moment I can, but that has decreased significantly these past months. Even so, I’ve got a select number of podcasts that I do continue to keep up with, a good fraction of which are, of course, bookish in some way. Here are a few of my current favorites: Needless to say, all the wonderful Book Riot podcasts are also part of my regular listening, despite the fact that they just cause my TBR to grow to unmanageable heights.
Listening to Bookish Music
As mentioned above, my podcast listening has been down during the pandemic, but my music listening has been at its highest of the last few years. It’s been providing me the perfect balance of distraction without requiring as much attention, and belting along to familiar tunes in the car has been excellent stress relief. My rediscovery of music started out thanks to my Lord of the Rings rewatch and getting swept up by the film score again for the first time in years. I’ve had many an evening where all I can muster is to turn on “May It Be” (the song that plays over the end credits of Fellowship) and sit with my emotions while Enya’s voice wraps me in an ethereal cloud. Highly recommend. On a very different note, when it comes to current music, I listen to mostly J-pop. My most recent favorite that I have not been able to stop listening to is YOASOBI, a duo that formed just last year and is already taking Japan by storm. Each song by the duo, comprised of composer Ayase and vocalist ikura, is adapted from a short story from monogatary.com, a website where users can write and share stories based on daily prompts. This concept drew me in, and as soon as I heard their first song “Yoru ni Kakeru,” I was completely hooked. (CW: “Yoru ni Kakeru” contains inferences to suicide) If you’re interested in finding more literary music, check out these albums inspired by literature and these popular songs that reference classic books.
Other Bookish Activities
There are tons of other bookish activities that I haven’t gotten around to yet myself but definitely aspire to do at some point. Here are links to various other posts around the site that highlight a few!
Experimenting with recipes from a new-to-me cookbook or for literary-inspired foods. Bookish puzzles! If only I remembered how, I’d totally be down for some of these excellent knitting and crocheting projects.
Happy (not) reading!!
