Why do you write book reviews?
I’ve run a bookstagram account for about a year now.
What for, you may ask?
Why would someone take so much time to write about books?
This account was started out of a lingering sense of frustration. How was it that I could read multiple books, yet not remember a thing about them a few months down the road?
“Maybe it’s a good idea to write down what you read about”, I thought.
Here’s where I discovered bookstagram, a bunch of people who write and talk endlessly about books.
It was an eye-opening experience.
What is bookstagram and why does it matter?
For the uninitiated, bookstagram is a specific sub-community of Instagram that focuses on sharing thoughts, comments and #aesthetic photos of books.
Instagram usually focuses on short captions, letting the photo do most of the talking.
Now here’s where bookstagram defies conventional Instagram stereotypes. Captions are either long and informative, or brief and to-the-point.
Why write book reviews on Instagram - a platform not known for long, in-depth consumption of written content? Do people even read book reviews anymore, let alone a book?
I would love to think so.
And here’s why writing book reviews in public has transformed my relationship with reading.
We now live in a content deluge
How many books are there out there in the world today?
A conservative 2010 estimate by Google puts this number at 129 million books. This number would have definitely exponentially increased in the last 10 years.
Let’s put these numbers into context:
The average person lives 79 years, which means in order to read every book in the world right now, not even counting the new ones that will be released, you'd have to read about 1,721,519 books a year.
That means that every single day you'd have to read 4,716 books to have any chance of reading every single book in the world right now.
This conservative estimate doesn’t even include the rise of self-published books. Or other forms of content like long-form articles, podcasts, images, videos etc.
There’s too much content to get through.
Attempting to get through this much content is like riding a treadmill that goes nowhere.
You get nothing done and its exhausting.
I disagree with people who brag about reading a certain number of books in a year.
Google “How to read XX books in a year” and you’ll see lots of speed reading hacks, tips and tricks to get through more content in a day.
But even if you deploy every known reading hack, it’s still impossible to get through the sheer number of books we have out there in the world today.
So what do we do instead?
How about a slower, more deliberate way of information consumption?
Here’s where writing about what you read in the form of book reviews come in.
Writing book reviews is active learning
One of my favourite writers Anne-Laure Le Cunff wrote about the generation effect - the notion that we remember things better when we actively engage with the material and create our own version of it.
Writing book reviews is my way of deliberately engaging with material. You think and share your learnings in public.
Have you thought you understood a concept until you tried writing about it? Forcing your brain to turn intangible, squiggly lines of thought into forceful, tangible words on a page is a tremendous effort.
Publishing your thoughts on books in public reinforces this learning process
This pressure multiplies exponentially when you subject yourself to the pressure of writing in public.
Writing in public is scary.
But it can also feel like rocket fuel.
Forcing yourself to publicly articulate your thoughts forces you to make a credible effort of understanding what you’re trying to say.
You may find out how much you don’t know about a topic or how much more you have to learn about it.
What’s the best way of writing a book review?
I’m honestly still learning this part. And there's no strict rules of how a book review should be written.
But from what I’ve seen from my better performing book reviews or reviews I love reading more of, they have these three elements:
Personal: Book reviews aren’t just about regurgitating the plot or synopsis of the book. They include some form of personal reflection and connection to other stories. Do you have a personal story connected to what the author was trying to say? This part is hard work as it involves tapping into your inner voice and mining your emotions for related material. One of my most memorable essays was written after reflecting on my mother’s passing from cancer last year.
Relational: Could you connect the points or story to other parts of your life? Perhaps try relating the broader themes of the book to other books or events that you know of. What about the book made you see the world in a different light?
Critical: Did you disagree with anything you read? Sometimes I treat reading as an ongoing conversation with an author. Some parts you agree with them wholeheartedly and other times you don’t. Why do you disagree? Are there other perspectives to balance out the author’s viewpoints? How is the author’s work affected by their own personal biases? Are they aware of these biases? Note that one can respectfully disagree with the author’s point of view without flaming or condemning.
Books are a miracle in itself.
Within the pages of each book possibly lies an author’s best ideas, perhaps even their life’s work, refined over years.
Books do years of thinking, right there at your fingertips.
Writing book reviews is my way of treating an author’s work with the critical & personal respect that it deserves.
Instead of treating reading books like mushroom power- ups to be collected, how about slowing down your pace of reading? Take the time to ponder and reflect about what you read.
Maybe even write about it.
Writing and sharing your learnings in public about a book helps crystalise your understanding. It may even get people talking about a book’s contents - which exposes you to a triple-win; getting your ideas out in the world, the network effect of attracting more like-minded people and reinforcing your own thinking.
Isn’t that a fantastic proposition?