i'm determined to finish the blazing world in the next few days. tonight, if possible.

also reading a book called memory's daughters: the material culture of remembrance in eighteenth-century america and there are some good bits but a lot of… i'm not sure. the connection between memory and material culture is iffy a lot of the time, since the book says things like "the H shape is one of the mnemonic glyphs"—

so if a house is built in an H shape it's a metaphor for the female mind, somehow.

it's the product of an english professor, in short.

finished the blazing world now i can finally return it to the library.

i also finished memory's daughters and started into the crimean war which standard orlando figes disclaimers apply but there aren't many books about this and i think a more russian history background benefits the subject matter.

i feel like i've fallen behind on reading but i finished two books last week

i just haven't done my nice morning chapter for a bit, which is okay, the books do not care.

i have been thinking a bit lately about booktok (something that only know about via osmosis) and the identity of "reader"

obviously i can read and enjoy reading, probably more than most people, but i've never really thought of myself as a "reader" or a "book person" as such— partly because i hate to give myself identities, partly because i don't participate in the book fandom? which seems like work.

it's the same way i will say i like taylor swift's music but i'm not "a swiftie"

but are books a fandom? have they been fandomified? or were they always such?

anyway another thing i'm constantly thinking about is how the politics of bodies/appearances have changed in the wake of ozempic.

So Was Body Positivity ‘All a Big Lie’?

things i am also also constantly thinking about: my cat

I think books are a fandom insofar as if you're part of a diffuse group of online people who treat books like a fandom. Does that make sense?

the people who are making a point of reading the hot titles on Booktok or Booktube or Bookstagram and who are the target market for "bookish goods" and buy a lot of them

There is probably also a parallel litfic fandom (I'd say the "books are a fandom" people are the people who are primarily into, like, ACOTAR or Fourth Wing or Colleen Hoover or some combination of those, although there are probably a few other less prominent titles that are also indicative of a specific group of reading interests. Red White and Royal Blue?)

(But the litfic fandom, which I am probably on the fringes of, is into who wins the Booker, who wins the Pulitzer. They are not so much into extensive color-coded annotations of what they're reading, or mugs that say things like SMUT SLUT or ENEMIES TO LOVERS.)

I'm trying to formulate something about male fantasy fans who are kind of parallel to the CoHo or romantasy readers and how they don't seem to treat books as much like a fandom. There's merch, but a lot less of it. A lot of it is "the coins from that fantasy world" or "that sword from that book." But I wonder how many of those guys have

a zillion D&D minis and dice sets. (Like, reading/books is less what they accessorize and merch out, but they may have some other hobby where they're still susceptible to it.)

yes, I think I follow and agree with you. fandom is at least partly a community approach.