What will Goodreads mean...

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What does it mean to keep a reading blog when you're also on Goodreads? I'm still convinced that these notes to my self are extremely helpful, and I am also aware that some at-home viewers may benefit from seeing my beyond-the-classroom reading habits and thoughts.

They may function in complementary ways. For instance, I'm sitting here with a pile of 10 books that I've read, and they aren't all worth a big review. Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, for example, was a fine read but I don't really need to blog it, since it's out there all over the place.

Newer things, though, I almost feel I should blog, but then again not all of them seem worth the effort. Making this commitment to track my reading with a blog has been most valuable, and I've really held to it for a long time now. At the same time that I want to see what my friends are reading, I also know that Goodreads will dilute my focus on children's/young adult books in favor of adult books because, let's face it, most of my friends are adults (chronologically).

A quote from one of my summer reads, again about solitude:

"I often feel exhausted, but it is not my work that tires (work is a rest); it is the effort of pushing away the lives and needs of others before I can come to the work with any freshness and zest." --May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude, p. 13

Sarton is a rebel; she dares to speak what others would label "selfish." She names a dynamic that is real, but that people (and especially women) so rarely name, the effort that is needed to create space for solitude. That effort can be tangible or metaphorical, but it is effort either way.

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