The Pleasure of Vicarious Reading …

I promise I’ll have a book review for you very soon – honest!  Until then, I thought I’d natter about something that occurred to me the other day.  This was after I’d commented on Jane’s best of 2014 post which she styled as A Box of Books for 2014, and her reply to me.

I said, “Your box is delightful – a super concept, and chock-full of wonderful reading – the only one I’ve read is Jonathan Strange, but I’ve enjoyed reading your reviews of all the others and am sure I’ll read some of them in the future.”

Jane replied, “That’s one of the joys of blogging – I’ve enjoyed lots of your reviews of books I might like but may not have time to read in a single lifetime.”

Jane and I don’t often read the same books. She is one of many bloggers who review books that I will probably never read myself, but I do get a lot of pleasure from reading her reviews.  This is also the case for many of the blogs in my blogroll on the sidebar, (plus many others in my bookmarks and reader).

This vicarious pleasure helps me to get to know authors before I read them, learn a lot about what they wrote (very good for quizzes!) and, perhaps most importantly helps me to decide whether I may want to read the books in question. This naturally extends to all those blogs whose authors read more of the same books as me, (again, lots on the sidebar).

Getting to know another blogger’s personality from the books they read and how they write about them is a wonderful thing. And then you can explore their own blogrolls and discover even more wonderful blogs full of interesting people writing interesting things about interesting books and authors.

Exploring the book-blogosphere can be rather like discovering an ‘Unknown Unknown’ in a bookshop (see here).

I realise that I’m digressing from an initial point of vicariously exploring and enjoying books I know I won’t read through other bloggers’ writing about them, into a celebration of book-bloggers in general, but what the heck – I think we all need a pat on the back sometimes.

So – Thank you to all the bloggers who provide me with hours of wonderful reading about their own worlds of books and who inspire and educate my own reading. 

Here’s to a great year of reading – both books and blogs!

0 thoughts on “The Pleasure of Vicarious Reading …

  1. bookgeeking says:

    I think this is a great post. I love reading books reviews of other book lovers, even if I have read the book myself, I like to know what other people think of my favourite books. 🙂

  2. Sam (Tiny Library) says:

    This is a great post. I follow closely the blogs of readers who have different tastes to me, as I enjoy reading their thoughts on books, even if they are books I will never get to.

  3. Jenny @ Reading the End says:

    Aw, I love this post. Very many of the blogs I follow also read books I won’t ever read, but I still love seeing what they thought. And it does make me feel very very knowledgeable about the book world, which I like. 😀

  4. drharrietd says:

    One of the high points of my mornings is reading people’s blogs, which I do via Feedly, a great way to keep track of the ones I love. And as you and everyone else has said, it’s such a good way of keeping alert to things you might never have encountered otherwise, as well as just making and keeping up with like minded friends. Hooray for blogs and blogging!

  5. JacquiWine says:

    Great post, Annabel. It’s always interesting to see what other bloggers are reading and to chat about the books we each love, even if our reading tastes vary.

  6. tehkelsey says:

    Great post! I agree– part of the fun of reading book blogs is just hearing other peoples’ thoughts on a book, whether or not I’ll ever get to read it myself.

  7. crimeworm says:

    Hear hear! I’ve never met such a lovely bunch of people as I have in the 8 months I’ve been blogging – and its great to get lots of “book talk”, as I don’t get much at home. Some bloggers are wonderfully talented writers in their own right too. I feel guilty for not labouring as hard as some clearly do over their posts – but that’s because I’m dying to get back to my book!

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