Roof Beam Reader

Today’s prompt

Day 4 How do you stay connected to the community? Examples: social media, regular commenting, participation in blog events, etc. Tell us your faves! We all know that the book blogging community is BIG, and it’s growing every day. It’s really easy to feel overwhelmed or totally lost. We want to know how you feel connected. Is it a specific tribe you run with? Events that keep you grounded? Twitter? Instagram? Comments? Again, the sky’s the limit when it comes to the ways to “plug in” to this big ole network of book lovers, and we are dying to know methods.

How do I stay connected

I would like to answer this in a couple of ways. First, how do I stay connected technologically (literally) speaking? Well, you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and Tumblr.  As far as the community choices I make; well, yes, I suppose I do have a regular “group” that I chat with, keep in touch with, and participate in events with.

In the last year, and for the next year, my participation is minimal due to professional and academic obligations (I teach college English full-time and am writing my doctoral dissertation for the PhD in American Literature). The book blogging community is still important to me, though. I’ve been highly engaged this week, for example, because BBAW holds a special place in my heart.  I’ve been blogging for ten years, and a self-identified “book blogger” for seven, and it’s not something I’m eager to give up entirely.

Why do I stay connected

For some, book blogging is a fun hobby: it is a way to connect with other like-minded people who have similar interests.  Book blogging can be a means of expression, or it can be a reading journal, or it can be a professional platform which is intended to lead to bigger and better things. 

All of these elements of Book Blogging are valid and important, and they are absolutely part of the purpose for me, too; but purpose is not meaning.

So, what does Book Blogging mean to me?  Well, this is where I put my serious face on.  This is where I become sentimental. This is where I thank the casual readers for stopping by and let them know that I understand if they decide to click on to the next blog, now. 

Book Blogging has meant, for me, two things:

Rebirth.

Most people who I know now or whom I have met recently assume that reading has always been an important (or even the most important) part of my life. After all, I currently hold two degrees in English (B.A. – English; M.A. English, emphasis in American Lit.) and I’m working on my third (Ph.D.) right now! But, actually, it was not until my second year of college that I really became a reader. In fact, I started college as a Biology Pre-Med major, with every intention of going on to Medical School and becoming a physician (oh, if only I had a Time-Turner!). 

Sure, I read books when I was a kid.  I read Goosebumps when I was young (I used to wait eagerly for the Scholastic catalogs to come out so that I could get my hands on the next ones!). In junior high, I read The Giver, My Brother Sam is Dead, and And Then There Were None. In high school, I remember reading Of Mice and Men, Kaffir Boy and Macbeth. I enjoyed reading – I liked pretty much every book I tried (with the exception of The Great Gatsby, which I learned to love much later), but I never saw reading as a pursuit or hobby that could actually “be something.”   

After my first year of college, I had some medical complications which quickly and permanently resolved me against the pursuit of an M.D. I was in search of another major. I tried History. I tried Geology. I tried Spanish. I found myself, in the middle of my junior year, still without a permanent, satisfying major: What the heck am I supposed to be doing with my life!? And then I tried English.  College-level English. The in-depth, close-reading, study and analysis of literature. Hello, World!

Once I figured out that my place, my destiny, was to be with literature, always, it wasn’t long before I discovered the world of book blogging. I had already been keeping an online journal for my personal thoughts and creative writing. But I was reading so many books for classes (and promptly forgetting what they were all about just a semester later) that I realized I needed to store this information somewhere, for future reference.

My first blog became a second. My second became a third. The third blog, finally, was specifically a book blog – and that blog became Roof Beam Reader. Now, seven years later, I have a distinct “Book Blogger” presence and personality.  It is so different from what I ever expected of myself but, somehow, it is everything I always wanted it to be. 

Identity. 

For all my life, I have been gay and, for most of my life, I was very overweight.  Although I did not “come out” until college, I suffered from a young age the burden of hiding who I truly was. I also had the added difficulty of growing up “the fat kid,” who was teased, bullied, and picked-on from time-to-time (though my experiences were not nearly as horrendous as I have witnessed of others). In college, I managed to get in shape and to become friends with an extraordinary group of people; but, though I became more comfortable and satisfied with my physical experience – it was still what the world couldn’t see that was haunting me. 

There was (and, to some degree, there still is) a fear of not being accepted or of being simply “tolerated.” And, scariest of all, there is always a fear of being truly persecuted because of who I am. For the most part, I have been fortunate enough to have friends and family who are incredibly caring and accepting (although, they’re so beyond “accepting” that accepting doesn’t seem to fit). Still, there have been and always will be people who just can’t seem to look past this one part of me to see the whole of me, or to even be willing to try. I remember one day, in college, coming home from class to see the word “FAG” written in black permanent marker on my apartment door. I couldn’t imagine what I might have done to upset someone that much, and it was a very long time before I realized that I wasn’t the one responsible for how they felt and for what they did.

For me, although I have had a semi-charmed life, compared to what many have experienced, I have learned enough about life and about human nature to know that we all need a safe space. Roof Beam Reader, just a book blog, is, nonetheless my book blog. It has been my space to say, think, and feel what I want, without fear of rejection or disapproval. It is also my space to welcome others – all others – and to guarantee that, when they are here, they, too, have a safe space to share, to communicate, to learn, and to laugh.       

So, this is what Book Blogging means to me.  It means owning who I am and welcoming others to be a part of my journey. It means giving others, those who are like me or not, a safe space to talk about the one thing we all have in common: a love of books and reading! It means meeting people from all over the world, growing vicariously through their experiences and hoping to share with them some of my own.

Book Blogging, in effect, means more to me than I could ever express, and I sincerely thank each and every one of you who have made a place for me in this world. Happy BBAW!

How exciting! Book Blogger Appreciation Week is back! And it’s being hosted by The Estella Society! Will wonders never cease?

Although I’ve taken a general hiatus from book blogging (except for monthly updates on reading, writing, etc.), this was an event not to be missed. As a long-time blogger (7 years? gosh), I felt this was an appropriate week for a bit of a comeback and reintroduction.

The first prompt asks us to “introduce [ourselves] by [sharing] five books that represent you as a person or your interests/lifestyle.”

If that’s not an impossible challenge, I don’t know what is. FIVE books? At least the folks at BBAW have admitted that this is a tough task. We’ll give them credit for that!  Anyhow, I think I’ll try to choose three books that represent me the person/reader, and another two that represent my interests/lifestyle. If I’m going to make a list, I might as well create sub-lists, too!

3 Books That Represent Me the Person/Me the Reader

If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut, in general, is my writer soul-mate. I adore his voice and his wit. I respond overwhelmingly to his dark humor and his cautionary humanism. I chose this particularly title as representative for his corpus (and my love and appreciation for it) because it is filled with wisdom and wonder. Vonnegut, despite his cynicism, offers young people and other readers some positivity, and asks them to be a little bit more, do a bit more, be better, every day.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. I can’t think of a book that has affected me more than this one. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, and when the film adaptation finally came out, my best friends and I (despite being far outside the target audience demographic at that point) rushed to see it during opening weekend. The main character, Charlie, just always felt like me-in-print. And the friendships in that book reminded me so much of my own.

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Yes, of course this seems cliché at this point. When I was younger(-ish), I was not much of a reader. There were some few books I had really enjoyed (Agatha Christie, Lois Lowry, Goosebumps), but I was not “a reader.” Then my librarian neighbor recommended this new series to me, and my whole life changed. That sounds like hyperbole, but it is not. My entire life’s trajectory changed. This non-reader is now a College English Instructor completing his PhD in American Literature. If I hadn’t fallen in love with Potter, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with reading.

2 Books That Represent My Interests

Eminent Outlaws: Gay Writers Who Changed America by Christopher Bram. This is an excellent survey of gay American writers in the late-twentieth century. Bram, who also wrote the wonderful  book, Gods and Monsters, does a great job explaining how important these gay writers were, how they influenced society, culture and politics, and how they communicated with one another. I was well into my own doctoral work (studying earlier American gay writing) when I read this book, but it became a source of inspiration to me.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf. This book ticks a lot of boxes for the “getting to know me/my interests” category. First, it’s a classic. Although I’m an eclectic reader who enjoys a whole host of genres, my reading and blogging reflects a definite favoritism toward classic literature. I’m also the Classic Literature Expert for About.com, so there’s that. The book is written by a woman, and a brilliant one at that; and I make a concerted effort to read women and minority writers. I’m also simply a huge fan of Virginia Woolf, although that wasn’t always the case. Finally, the story itself explores gender and sexuality in interesting and complicated ways. These are two topics I’m fascinated by, so much so that they’ve become my life’s work.

So, that’s as much about me as I can share in 5 books. Did I manage? And, oh, hey! While you’re here: check out my Book Lover’s Giveaway for #BBAW! (You’ve gotta be participating in BBAW & following my blog in order to win – but why wouldn’t you be doing those things anyway?)