lou's library

I know, I know, a bit of a dramatic title. But hear me out on this one. Ever since books and reading blew up on social media during the pandemic, the same ten books have been dished out to me by the algorithm every time I open Instagram, Pinterest or Youtube (the same would probably be true of Tiktok if I used it). Please don’t get me wrong, I love that reading seems to have become cool again and that so many young people are interested in it. A lot of bookish content creators are incredibly creative with their output and are doing amazing work to get even more people into reading. To me, that can only ever be a good thing.

I also want to emphasise that I do not believe there to be good or bad literature, or genres that you should feel silly or even ashamed to be reading. I enjoy lots of genres and do not ever want to be made to feel bad for reading romantasy or any other genre some like to argue hardly count as literature. To me, it does not matter much what you are reading so long as you are reading and enjoying it.

That being said, it does get a little boring and frustrating to see The Song of Achilles being recommended for what must surely be the millionth time. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this book! In fact, it is one of my all time favourites and Madeline Miller is a hero to me. But I do find the lack of diversity of books that are popular on social media concerning. It seems to me that the same few dozen of books have been making the rounds for years now, hyping them up ever further, with little new to be discovered. But think about how many books are published daily. How many authors left undiscovered because we are all focusing on each other’s reading and thereby not reading anything even slightly out of the ordinary anymore.

I do think this phenomenon is perpetuated even more by lots of book stores now having BookTok sections on their shelves, which dedicate space solely for those books popular on social media. The Secret History, any book by Colleen Hoover or Emily Henry, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. I can picture these books on those shelves so well because I have seen their covers countless times. And they are bestsellers because lots of readers enjoy them, and there is nothing wrong with that. I also understand that booksellers have limited space available on their shelves and therefore must prioritise the books they know will sell well.

I just think that, if we all read the same books and hardly branch out anymore, new ideas will not find their ways onto our shelves and into our minds, and that is limiting and quite sad. And if bookstores also focus on the books you know from online, then even going there for new finds will become more difficult. Finding a book you have never heard of before will turn into a treasure hunt not everyone will bother to go on.

Sure, you can argue there is nothing wrong with reading what everyone else is reading. It can even be fun to be able to join into the common discourse on the latest Tiktok success. I have been there and done that. But I’m not saying you should never read another book that is being recommended to you on Bookstagram. But I don’t like the thought of algorithms dictating what bookish content becomes popular and therefore also deciding which books we are all reading. So much of that is arbitrary and makes it more difficult for new authors to break through.

All these ramblings stem from me having grown increasingly bored with the bookish content that has been served to me online in recent months. I have also watched this Youtube video by According to Alina, which has insprired this blog post and I recommend you watch if you want to hear more about this topic.

Again, I want to make it clear that I do not believe you should feel bad if A Little Life, People We Meet On Vacation or Where The Crawdads Sing are on your reading list. But perhaps next time you are at the library or a book shop, pick up a book you have never heard of and just give it a go. And then, if you liked it, recommend it to a friend or shout about it online. This way, we can all start to diversify our reading again and make sure we keep discovering all the literary gems out there that deserve our attention, even if the algorithms might think otherwise.

Please do let me know your thoughts on this topic, I would love to hear what you are thinking ❤