I started this blog just over seven years ago, in 2013, before I started my senior year of college. (Excuse me for a moment while I go hide in a corner and feel old.) In early 2015, while I was working in Italy, I set up my book recs page, and I’ve been adding to it with my favorites of the books I read each year. Recently, I looked through the list and realized that not only is it getting to be a bit unwieldy, but there are also several books I wouldn’t recommend anymore, and the list doesn’t accurately reflect my tastes as a reader and books I would want to share with friends and family. So this week, I removed a bunch of books from the list, and you can go see the new and improved list right over here.
This pruning of my book recs page also made me think a lot about myself as a reader. I have read a lot over the past five years. And I mean a lot. Since I started tracking my reading goals on Goodreads in 2016, I have read 514 books: 62 in 2016, 77 in 2017, 176 in 2018, 109 in 2019, and 90-one so far in 2020. Yikes! But reading so much so fast has changed me as a reader, and I’m certainly not the same person I was at the start of 2016. So I thought this was also a good time to take a step back and think about how my reading tastes have changed and how I evaluate what books I like and what books I love so much I would recommend them to others.
I’ve read a lot of new genres and authors over the last few years. Recently, my reading habits have definitely skewed toward fantasy and science fiction. I’ve especially been enjoying getting into new science fiction stories, because I never used to read sci fi, though I definitely prefer my sci fi to be more space-related than not. I’ve also become pickier about the literary, contemporary, and historical fiction I read. I’ve struggled a lot more to get into those books, and I actually put a historical fiction book down recently, which is really rare for me. In terms of middle grade and young adult, I’ve found that while I adore middle grade fantasy, I’m usually not as captivated by contemporary middle grade stories, though there are some that I do love dearly and are still on the list. I want to read more middle grade science fiction, because what I have read I really like, and also I’m working on a middle grade sci fi project right now. I’ve also found I’m pickier with YA of all genres. I tend to like the fantasy and sci fi books more, but there are some contemporaries I still absolutely love as well.
My big takeaway from looking at all this is that I have become a lot pickier and a lot less forgiving as a reader. I really only find myself recommending books I absolutely love, and if I feel like I need to recommend a book or series with a caveat, I tend not to recommend it. So the books I list on my book recs page now are books that I not only loved when I read them but books that I still love, books that have stayed with me in some way or another and are still meaningful to me.
I’m not going to list here which books I removed from the page. To be clear, these were good books and series, and I really enjoyed them when I read them, so I certainly don’t want to put them down by calling them out. That being said, if you remember something was on the old list and want to talk about why I cut it, I’m happy to chat about that in the comments.
Generally speaking, there were a few reasons I removed the books I did. at this point, I honestly couldn’t tell you what some of the books were about, so while I enjoyed them at the time, they obviously haven’t stuck with me, and I don’t feel like I can honestly recommend them now.
Some of the books and series that I recommended in the past were books and series that I enjoyed even though I recognized they had serious flaws. Sometimes I recommended them because I was interested in the flaws, or because the flaws inspired me as a writer. I have removed these books for a few reasons. Firstly, because as I’ve said above, I’m a lot less forgiving of major flaws than I once was. And secondly, because a book recs page that is just a list of books I would recommend with no explanation of whyI recommend them doesn’t seem like the place for these books. In the future, I might write posts about what intrigued me or inspired me about these books, but they aren’t books I would recommend.
Finally, I removed books that I felt I could not recommend for social justice reasons. Over the past several years, I have become much more aware of diversity, inclusion, and representation in what I’m reading, and I have become much better at critically engaging with the text. This is not to say that all the books on my book recs page are paragons of diversity and representation. Several certainly have problems, and one day I will write a whole post on how you can love something and recommend something while still recognizing and engaging with its flaws (thank you to the folks over at the Tortall Recall podcast for teaching me this important lesson). But there were a few books on my list that I have come to realize have serious enough problems that I am just no longer comfortable recommending them.
Which brings me to the one and only series that I removed from the list and am going to call out by name: Harry Potter. This is also the series which I regret most removing from my book recs page, because it has meant so much to me over the years. I’ve bestruggling with how J.K. Rowling’s transphobic comments all summer affect how I feel about the books. Rowling has always been a writer I admire, and the Harry Potter books have remained incredibly important to me. It broke my heart that someone who wrote such powerful books about accepting difference and love being the strongest kind of magic could believe and say such awful, hateful things. This letter on Tor.com does such a good job expressing my feelings. I am not trans, but I have friends who are, and I have been bullied because I’m different too. I can’t stand by silently mourning how she has forever-tainted the book series that has served as a beloved touchstone for my whole generation, and worse, the harm she is doing to trans people all over the world, because to remain silent is to condone her comments. And her comments have become more and more hateful in the last few months.
I have come to the conclusion that whatever she says, the Harry Potter books are ours now, not hers. I love them. I can’t turn that off. They have still affected how I read and write even today. They are flawed books, certainly, but they still send a strong and lasting message about the power of love and friendship and acceptance. But there’s a difference between me continuing to love the books and me actively recommending the books. Because as Lindsay Ellis said in this video about death of the author, recommending the books gives J.K. Rowling more power and more influence. I do not in any way agree with J.K. Rowling’s views, and I do not want my continued appreciation of the original Harry Potter books to be construed to mean that I do agree with her.
If I were to recommend the Harry Potter books, it would come with a major caveat: borrow them from the library or from a friend, or by them from a used bookstore, because by purchasing these books new, you are supporting an author who has turned out to be a hateful bigot. But part of repising my book recs page, as I said above, has included removing books that I would recommend with caveats. And so it is with a heavy heart that I have taken Harry Potter off the list.
That turned into a bit more of a rant than I originally intended, but as much as I didn’t want to remove Harry Potter from the list, I would also be really uncomfortable doing it silently, without explaining why. As with the other books I took off the list, I still think the original Harry Potter series is really good and worth reading, but it doesn’t belong on my list anymore.
And that’s it. You can go check out my leaner book recs page over here, and if you’re curious why a book you remember being there is gone, I’m happy to chat about it in the comments. I’d also like to know if you’ve read any of the books on the list and what you think of them, and of course I will always take more book recommendations.