5 Articles I Never Wrote for Book Riot
I’ve been writing for Book Riot since 2015, which means I’m rapidly approaching ten years of writing about books. During that time, I’ve written a post every week or two pretty consistently — until I was hired full-time in 2021, and I started writing much more. I’ve also run my own book blog for more than ten years and have made BookTube videos for years, both for my own channel and for Book Riot. I even dabbled in BookTok for a bit. You might wonder: after roughly a thousand essays, reviews, videos, and podcasts, don’t you run out of ideas of what to write about?
I’m pleased — if a little horrified — to report that my answer is “absolutely not.” In fact, in addition to my own articles, I also assign topics to contributors every month. I keep a running list of things I want to write about and that I’d like to see other writers tackle. Narrowing it down to just the things I want to write about, I currently am at about 400 topics that I have yet to tackle.
I don’t know why, but my brain is wired to endlessly come up with ideas of how to talk about books. I never get bored of it. Every day, I have to stop in the middle of what I’m doing (having a shower, walking the dogs, editing a post) to note down a post idea.
So, I thought I’d guide you through a brief tour of five ideas off my list I never got around to writing, and likely never will. Starting with…
The Gay Romance Moby Dick Should Have Been
This is one of the oldest ideas I never wrote about. I listened to the audiobook of Moby Dick in 2014, after burning a giant set of CDs that I checked out from the library. I’m pretty sure I missed a disc while burning it, though, so I’m not sure I can actually say I read it in its entirety. I was immediately struck by the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg — including the “only one bed” trope! I was disappointed that this thread was pretty quickly dropped, because it was such an interesting dynamic, especially viewed through a queer lens (which I am wont to do). I never felt qualified to actually write this post, though, because I didn’t totally read the book, and I am not committed enough to go back and reread it.
“At Least They’re Reading”?
Whenever anyone criticizes a book or genre as trash, someone pipes up to say, “At least they’re reading,” as if reading is a noble act. I don’t believe in policing people’s reading choices, but I push back at the idea that reading is fundamentally a social good — like any other media, it depends on what you’re reading. I think it makes sense when applied to kids, but I’m not sold on the idea that we should be paternalistically encouraging adults to read. It’s entertainment, not volunteer work. Honestly, I probably haven’t written this because I never came up with a good title for it.
Let Your TBR Go Fallow: A Case for Breaks Between Books
In addition to posts I never found a good title for, sometimes I come up with titles I like that I can’t actually expand into a post. I like the sound of letting your reading go fallow, but the truth is that I never deliberately take breaks between books and probably never will.
Autocomplete When You’re a Book Nerd
My notes for this topic just point out that when I type in “net” in the address bar, it autocompletes to “Netgalley,” not “Netflix”. Can’t say there’s enough meat there for a full post, though.
I Woke Up at 4 A.M. To Read Every Day for a Week
I love watching videos where people do “stunt TBRs”: think “I let Instagram pick my TBR for a week”. At the time of writing, I was working east coast hours on the west coast, so I already woke up at about 5 A.M. If I wanted to try reading in the morning every day for a week, it would mean waking up at 4 A.M. I still think it’s a fun idea to see how stunt TBRs translate to text, but I was never going to wake up at 4 A.M. for a week just to write a post.
Those are just a few of my hundreds of post ideas. As I browsed through, I realized I still expect to write some of them…even though they’ve been wallowing in a Google Doc for ten years. Hope springs eternal!
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