Welcome to Summerween

July is nearly over. We've already had several days over 100F (38C) in my area and two named storms in the Atlantic. I've been harvesting cherry tomatoes from my small tomato plant. Back to school sales are wrapping up and cute Halloween decor is popping up in all the home goods stores.

Well, some of it is Halloween decor. In between the (far too early) traditional spooky things that give my brain a dopamine hit are a few items where ghosts and skeletons are enjoying the sun with fruity drinks. I even saw a piece with a ghost riding a flamingo. The flamingo wasn't even a skeleton.

This mashup of summer fun and Halloween aesthetic is what is known as Summerween. 

You might have started hearing it on booktok (the book side of TikTok) or booktube (the book side of YouTube) where influencers are recommending horror books with a summer vibe. You might have seen art of ghosts hanging out on the beach or a watermelon carved to look like a jack-o-lantern on Instagram.  

Basically, it's a social media thing for people who want it to be Halloween. In the US, this time period seems to start shortly before or right after Independence Day (July 4th) and eventually transitions into regular Halloween. I particularly like the people who have a ton of skeleton decorations and pose them for non-Halloween related holidays and seasons.

You, dear reader, might be wondering how this new invasion of a holiday in the wrong season started. I mean, Christmas in July has been around for as long I can remember and is the halfway point for Halloween. People aren't celebrating Halloween around Easter, they're celebrating in the middle of summer. 

Well, the history of Summerween (or "lore" for those of you with children under the age of 18) is very recent. It started as an episode of the animated Disney show Gravity Falls. That's right, an animated Disney show is why we have Summerween.  

The 12th episode of the 1st season of Gravity Falls, titled "Summerween", exists because the show creators wanted to create a Halloween episode, but had to get creative when the show takes place over the course of one summer.. The town in Oregon, where the show takes place, has a ton of weird and spooky things happening all the time. The locals accept this (for the most part) and (per the show's explication) love Halloween so much, that they decided to have a second one in the Summer. This "Summerween" includes trick or treating, carving watermelons, and a cursed creature that will eat you if you displease it and can't get into the spirit of Summerween. 

This cursed creature, the Summerween Trickster, is loosely based off of No Face from the Miyazaki movie Spirited Away. The two main characters accidently upset it for various reasons and they end up needing to bring it 500 pieces of candy by the time the jack-o'-melons (get it?) in town go out or he'll eat them. The episode is really funny and I recommend the show in general. It's one of the few Disney animated shows that actually gets to the end of it's overarching story. But as a stand alone episode, it also works.

This is the origin of Summerween. 

Do I think Summerween will continue to be a thing? I have no idea. My theory on why this concept has recently gained traction (the show is over ten years old as of writing this post) is a mix of nostalgia (the kids who watch Gravity Falls now have grown up money), the increasing popularity of the horror genre, and the fact that it's too hot outside and people are over it. Most of the Summerween influencers are bookish young women and often include music from Hocus Pocus or Practical Magic while doing their influencer videos. 

I'm not knocking the demographic. I appreciate their passion. 

However, I am unlikely to participate in the consumer side of Summerween. I think the designs are cute (though there's a lot of AI being used) and I'm enjoying the movie and book recommendations. I don't foresee myself buying any of these unnecessary items (though I would accept them as gifts), though I might create my own art for the mashup season. It is also a fair point that I do leave out my regular Halloween decorations year round.

And that is Summerween. 

You might not have heard of it at all prior to this blog post or you might have seen ghosts and skeletons doing cute, yet random summer things on dishtowels. Maybe you already knew all of this and scrolled through the above to see if I had any media suggestions (for movies check out Midsommar or the original Wickerman from the 70s; for books I enjoyed "Meddling Kids" and there's witches running around in "Witchcraft for Wayward Girls").

Would you like to celebrate Summerween? Do you enjoy a spooky summer mashup? Let me know in the comments. 

Until next week. 

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off), please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me. 

Welcome to Book Social Media

2025 has barely started and already part of my country is on fire while another part -the part I’m in - is buried under a foot of snow. In my personal life, things have been crazier than ever - mostly good. I was also sick much of last week with a bad cold (thankfully it wasn’t COVID, I tested negative) and finding time to relax has been tough.

I’d say I need a vacation, but I just got back from my winter break (my work closes the last week of the year since so many people take off and not much can get done). So, no vacations for a while. How do I deal with the negativity in the world right now without being able to run off?

Reading.

Since roughly 2022, I have set aside time to read from a book (or two) everyday. I chose to mostly read physical books with the occasional digital or audiobook thrown in because then I have a physical item on my nightstand taunting me to not forget about it. I have a bad habit of forgetting about digital and audiobooks I’ve downloaded. I also am trying to keep up with my ability to actually read words (I struggled with reading for a long time) and analyze text. I also enjoy learning new things in nonfiction books.

To track my books, I joined GoodReads during the pandemic. In addition to helping me keep up with reading, it also provides me with a steady stream of free books in the form of their giveaways. Even though I keep winning these free books, I continue to occasionally hit up my local used/independent bookstore and Barnes and Noble. So now I have a huge TBR (to be read) pile next to my bed and lining one of my bookshelves. The other bookshelves showcase the books I’ve conquered finished. Some of the books I finish end up going to my sibling or mother (and my dad while he was still with us), some end up in one of the local little libraries (usually the advanced reader copies I wasn’t thrilled with), and some are traded in at my local used bookstore (in order to buy more books).

After completing a book, I like to go through what other readers have said. What they liked or didn’t like about the book and what they also recommend reading.

This is how I first stumbled upon the remains of BookTube.

BookTube is the part of YouTube dedicated to, what else, books! Mostly comprised of readers (there are some writers and publishers mixed in) and their reading lists. Prior to watching BookTube and joining GoodReads, I wasn’t super interested in connecting with other readers (writers yes, reader shrug). I felt that my reading was more of a private activity and would only provide reviews and recommendations on books my writer friends had written (and I had read).

I still think of my reading as a private activity and I don’t feel like my reading choices say all that much about me. Sure I have preferences - romance is okay in small doses, cozy mysteries are always a delight - but the books I read and am interested in are all over the place. 

However, I have noticed that some people on social have made reading their entire personality.

Now, I’m sure most of the reading “aesthetic” floating around online comes from a genuine love of books and stories. There is no denying that, especially when some of the BookTubers are spreading information about book bans. The funny skits are entertaining and I enjoy getting good book recommendations.

What I’m not enjoying is the gamification, criticism, and superiority complexes the overall book community is currently tearing itself over.

Enter stage left BookTok.

BookTok is BookTube with shorter video times and a younger audience. One might say it’s cesspool of the battle of the generations with Gen Z leading the charge on TikTok and the older generations still preferring the longer videos of YouTube. BookTok is a natural evolution in the current ongoing social media shifts. It’s easy to go viral and take things wildly out of context with the limited amount of time per video - like Twitter before it became X or Vine. 

Pared with GoodReads and an unexpected pandemic keeping everyone home for over a year, BookTok has made “reading cool again”. There are tons of videos providing reviews, recommendations, analysis, book hauls, and character studies.

Wait…book hauls?

Yeah, I guess some BookTokers and BookTubers are getting famous for how many books they have gotten their hands on (usually bought) and how excited they are to read them. Similar to clothing hauls from thrift stores or cheap online retailers like Temu (ugh!), book hauls are somewhat seen as a status symbol for having extra cash and intelligence for how many books a person owns. I’m a little fuzzy on how many books these influencers actually read, but they are buying tens to hundreds of books at one time to show their audiences.

At least the authors get paid (as long as they aren’t used or second hand).

GoodReads has made it possible for readers to easily share with each other their read count. Every year, GoodReads allows readers to set a goal for how many books they hope to read. At my most ambitious, I went for 50 books in one year. This year I opted for 30 because my goal of 40 for last year was tough and I have a few really big reads (between 500-1000 pages) I want to try this year. The people putting over 50 books are impressive. I’m baffled by the people who want to read more than 100. Clearly they read a lot faster than me (I’m a notoriously slow reader).

This massive amount of reading is reflected in the posting schedule for BookTok.

To keep the algorithm happy, YouTubers and TikTok creators have to constantly be producing content. This massive workload is one of the many reasons I never want to be an online content creator (my online stuff is for me and I am uninterested in going viral). This has also led to people accusing BookTok creators of not actually reading the books they are reviewing and promoting or that these influencers are only picking “easy” books to read.

I don’t know what makes a book “easy”, but the biggest targets of these critiques are influencers promoting romance, fantasy, the combined genre of romansy (the words romance and fantasy squished together), historical fiction with an emphasis on romance, and cozies. As a reader of cozy mystery, I take umbridge to this. However, I also can’t help noticing that these genres (and combined genre) are geared towards young women.

Oh boy, do we have a new can of worms to open.

Now, I admit that I’m not a fan of a lot of the most criticized authors. Sarah J. Maas and Colleen Hoover book descriptions make me cringe. But I will not yuck someone else’s yum. They clearly have fans for a reason. Even if I think they aren’t great (and at times deeply disturbing), that doesn’t mean I should knock down someone who enjoys these stories. After all, I have my schlock that I like to read and would never consider “high art” (eyes my Uglies, Pretties, and Specials books from my teen years that have been getting some heat lately).

I won’t even knock the people going out of their way for “spicy” books. I will question the choice to make some of the cover art look like the book is appropriate for people under the age of 16, but I won’t knock the people reading these books. They help satisfy an escape fantasy for the readers. I do not enjoy sex or “spice” in my books - the use of the word spice instead of sex is due to censorship on YouTube and TikTok to create an advertiser friendly environment (someday soon, I hope linguist scholars come out with a series of studies about language shifts around this type of censorship and the effects on language overall). I tend to skip over those scenes if they pop up. Other people are into it. 

And that’s okay.

The amount of hate outside of valid criticism is obnoxious. I admit I enjoy listening to valid criticism with a good analysis of text, but I don’t enjoy listening to people saying that a book is simply “trash” because it’s not their preferred genre. 

No one is a superior reader because they only read the “classic”; those books are  mostly written by dead white guys anyway so the classification is relative. And no one is a “fake reader” because they only read “spice”. People are allowed to like what they like. People are allowed to provide criticism without name calling or judgement. 

Stop telling young women and teenage girls that the stuff they like is “bad”. Their taste is still growing and changing. For all you know, the next Austen or Brontë or Plath or Morrison is mixed in with Maas and Hoover.

I’m not even going to get in to it with some of the other big controversies going around. The book tracker Fantasy is having some interesting bugs with its AI interface and the woman who said that there were too many words on book pages are not topics I have enough information on to form an informed opinion. Also, GoodReads seems to have started a new badge system for when people read popular books in certain categories, further adding to the gamification of reading, which is a thing I guess.

It’s no one’s business what I am reading. If someone wants to share or vlog about their favorite books or current reads, more power to them. Healthy and valid criticism is fine. Unrelenting hate is not. Reading shouldn’t be treated as status symbol - though there are decent arguments as to why it inherently is - and “spicy” books aren’t necessarily bad (see the Bible for details).

I am a reader and by virtue of you reading this blog, so are you. Enjoy the “classics”, learn something new, be political, or try a new genre. You never know what gems you might find.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you like hearing from me. 

Until next week.

Welcome to an Unexpected Accomplishment in 2022

Over the past few years - at least since I joined GoodReads - I’ve included a blog post about my reading habits over the course of the previous year. Typically, I included a review of a few of the books and a bunch of recommendations. I would try to read one book or more than the previous year.

2022 started similar. I set a goal to read one more book than 2021 on January 1st, 2022. I was so excited, that I picked up my first book of the year (well downloaded it - it was a digital book) and started reading. The book was on self publishing by a friend in one of my writer’s groups (Hank Quense’s Self Publish a Book in 10 Steps). He had asked a few of us to read the recently released book and provide feedback - which I did.

I quickly finished the first book and dove right into the second, followed closely by a third and forth. Occasionally, I would be reading 2-3 books at a time (I do this to give myself a “break” from books I find emotionally draining or difficult to read).

Now I am not a fast reader. The stack of books in my “to read” pile continues to grow and outpace my reading ability. I envy the TikTok posters and YouTubers who can post a new book review a week. 

I just can’t do that.

What I did end up doing through 2022, was read from one book (print, digital, graph, comic, poetry, and short story collection) every day. Sometimes I was only able to read a page or two. A couple of days I could breeze through an entire poetry collection in one sitting (it helped that I was on a plane and had nothing better to do).

I didn’t even do this on purpose at first. I only noticed at some point in April that I had read every day in 2022. I thought to myself that it was an unusual thing for me to do. Which lead me to wanting to see how long I could keep up reading every single day. By September, I was determined to keep up the pace to December 31st.

New Years Eve came. I didn’t go out, staying home with my cat and finishing my annual reread of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. As I closed the 41st book of 2022, I felt a huge wave of accomplishment. I’d read every single day in 2022.

This was big for me. I was never a big reader as a kid - it was a difficult activity for me to do. I think I actually read more as an adult than I did as a child. Maybe it’s because I’m reading for my own pleasure than for some boring assignment for school. However, 2022 was the first year that I had actively dedicate so much time to reading.

Though I may have occasionally stayed up reading a little too late, I think this unexpected accomplishment was really good for me. I learned a lot, enjoyed some new adventures, and bonded with friends over what we were currently reading. The ritual (usually right before bed) was calming and may have given me some interesting dreams.

Overall, I recommend fitting in 10-15 minutes a day to read a little. It doesn’t matter what kind of book you’re reading (you saw my eclectic list) or if it’s in print or a digital download. What matters is that you enjoy yourself.

I am currently still taking the time to read a little each day, though I don’t know if I’ll do another year of reading each day. I don’t want to commit and put pressure on myself that could add stress. Instead I want this to become a part of my nightly routine to help me get ready for bed. I could always use better quality sleep.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.