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Favorite Five Places to Chat About Books
Today I’m going to be talking about talking about books! Sometimes it’s hard out there for book lovers to find other book lovers in the wild to talk about the books we love. Because if there’s one thing book lovers love more than reading books, it’s talking about them. I spend the majority of my book chatting time online. My husband’s always asking me ‘what are you doing online? who are you messaging?’ and my answer is, 95% of the time, ‘talking about books’. π
I’ve spent SO MUCH TIME over the last five years talking books with folks on reddit. It’s fair to say that my TBR pile has grown exponentially thanks to the folks in this forum. I’ve also met a lot of great people and made some friends, and even gotten to know some authors! I think it’s also fair to say that joining this forum had a huge impact on my life and I’m so very glad for it.
Before I started blogging, I didn’t spend quite as much time in the bookish realms of twitter, even though I had quite a few bookish friends on there and followed some authors. Now I spend the majority of my time on twitter talking about books. I’ve also gotten lots of book recommendations from books there, too! For example, I probably wouldn’t have picked up Jeannette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun if it hadn’t been for another author in my twitter feed raving about it. Seeing people have such passionate reactions to books always makes me interested.
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Book Clubs
Book clubs are a relatively new thing for me in the past few years. I’m lucky enough that I have a lot of friends in real life that are also readers, and I know that’s not the case for everyone, so I never really felt like I was missing out talking about books with people. Still, I decided to start my own book club centered around tea parties because, well, I wanted an excuse to throw tea parties on a regular basis. Book clubs are also great if you don’t have people in your life to chat with, there are lots of bookstores and organizations that run clubs.
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Work
Okay so this one is pretty specific to my own situation. I work in a very small office but most of us are fairly nerdy into a variety of things like video games, comics, fantasy books, SFF tv shows and movies, board games, RPG, anime, etc. Two of my coworkers have read The Dresden Files so last year when I was reading all of those books we had a lot of fun conversations. One of my coworkers has read American Gods (and other Gaiman) and just this week we were talking about the tv show vs the books. Even though a lot of things about my work get on my nerves, my coworkers are all pretty awesome to geek out with.
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Home
My husband reads but not NEARLY as much as I do. He probably reads somewhere between eight and twelve books a year. Still, he’s always been interested in the things I read and will often ask me about books. He doesn’t mind spoilers and, in fact, asks me to tell him entire story lines sometimes, and then he’ll ask me about my thoughts on the books too. He’s always very genuinely interested, even when I start boring myself but going on and on forever. I think one night I talked to him about Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles for two hours lol.
Besides all of these fun places, I also spend a lot of time talking about books through blogging and other people’s blogs! I thought that was pretty obvious though so I didn’t put it on my list, hah. Feel free to stop by here and leave a comment on one of my posts or hit me up on twitter at any time because, well, I love talking about books! π
I really only use Twitter or Instagram to talk about books but I always talk about them at home. My husband is much like yours. Even my kids know I love books.
That’s nice that you can talk about them with your husband! I don’t use Instagram as much but when I do I am also usually talking about books there lol
I am horrible with staying active on Instagram ππ
I just don’t always have time to take nice book photos
Yes exactly my problem too lol
This is a great post, Lisa! And I had no idea about Reddit for talking books! Thanks for the tip!
Thanks, and you’re welcome! π
I’m so jealous that you can talk about books at work.
I’m very lucky that I have such awesome coworkers. π
We are lucky there are so many places online to talk about booksπ
Yes, indeed! π
Wow, who is your husband!? – Can you loan him out for book discussions please. My husband would fall asleep immediately if I tried to talk to him about books – he reads very little. Well, not strictly true, he reads a LOT – but it’s all news or non-fiction – whereas I’m all about the escape. Ahh well. That’s probably why I love blogging – because I find similar minded people,who like a lot of the same books and I can fangirl and flail about ridiculously – and nobody minds or thinks it’s ridiculous at all.
Reddit – no idea where to start or what to do which is a shame but I do use Twitter.
Lynn π
Hah. My husband is big into nerd stuff but doesn’t read a ton himself because he has adult ADD so he only really can pay attention to so much and usually does audiobooks at that. But he loves storytelling! He’s big into DnD and such. It’s always good to connect with other fans of things, whether that’s in the ream world or the realms of the internet. π
I was super confused by reddit at first and it took me a while of lurking around before I figured it out. Now it’s easy peasy. If you ever want some pointers, just let me know. π
Thank god for my discover of Twitter and blogging in the last year, because there’s only so much I can flail at my roommate while she nods her head (she’s amazing for not fleeing the room everytime!). I’ve also recently discovered one of the coaches at my gym is a big SFF reader, so we’ve been able to gush at each other about Murderbot and The Emperor’s Blades and other books.
Yeah, as lucky as I am to have a lot of friends irl who are fans of books, it’s always awesome to have other outlets. I can’t fangirl enough imo lol!
My coworkers don’t really read but there are a lot of comic geeks here so we gush over all the super hero movies and its a lot of fun π I’m glad you have so many awesome places to talk about books β€
That sounds fun too though! That’s also what we talk about more so than books but book talk does happen. Lol