Earlier this year, I came upon Danni Green on Twitter through this amazing thread she did for 2020, posting the cover of every book she read in 1 single thread.
I loved the simplicity of it but also how easy it was to see her reading in one place over the course of an entire year. I immediately thought, I need to hear more about her and this idea. Turns out, Ms Green is a bookseller, so she put a lot of thought behind this. I asked her to share with you, my library worker audience, how this came to be and what she learned both about how others benefited from the thread and what she learned about herself and her own reading.
It is fascinating and I hope some of you take this up in 2021 too.
You can follow Ms Green on Twitter here. And now, here is her guest post.
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I’m Danni Green, and I read over 100 books a year. It’s also my job to read as I work full-time as a bookseller at a bookstore in Brooklyn, NY. Although booksellers and librarians have different entryways into the book world, I’ve always felt a kindred with librarians. We both belong to that demographic of American readers who read more than the American average. We have spent hours reading books and talking about books. Personally, I literally always want to know what someone has read and their thoughts on it.
At the end of 2019, my Twitter feed was predictably peppered with links and videos to best-of lists and favorite-of-the-year lists. However, a new thing also started to make the rounds. A sizeable number of people I follow created threads of their favorite books of the year. They would post a picture of the book’s cover or with them and the book, a synopsis, and a star rating. These threads varied greatly as some were ten posts long while others were thirty posts long. I thought this was genius.
As great as I found the idea of a Twitter thread of top reads, I also found them limiting in that they only shared what people greatly enjoyed. As I said, I always want to know what someone has read. This interests me for several reasons. Key among them being wanting to discuss a book that I too have read or am interested in reading. Knowing what someone reads, in my opinion, gives a better indication of their reading life in a way that I don’t think an end of year wrap does or can do.
Inspired by what I saw, I decided that I would modify this idea by creating a Twitter thread of all the books that I read in the upcoming year, 2020. Each time I finished a book I would add to my thread.
Right now my thread has over one hundred fifty titles. I intentionally do not include a star rating nor a synopsis. To that end, this thread functions more as a way of tracking my reading than as a way of reviewing. I’m simply sharing my reading life, which is the part of Goodreads that I enjoy and value the most. I should point out that this thread is of read books. I do not share what I am currently reading because I do not complete all the books that I start. As Twitter is a very public forum I do not want to disrespect authors or get mired in a social media fight over not enjoying a person’s favorite book. If a person wants to know my thoughts on a book I’m happy to DM them or text them if they’re a friend of mine.
About a month or so ago—or maybe seven months ago as 2020 has obliterated linear time—a good friend texted me, Wow I had no idea you read so much romance. It was a gentle ribbing, yet I think it speaks to how he’s getting insight into me. He knows I read a lot and read a widely, but seeing it appear on his timeline is quite a different thing altogether. I really like this. I like that people are not just seeing that I read horror or romance but seeing the volume at which I read those genres and which subgenres and tropes I read.
As I get older my tastes simultaneously expand and get more specific. I read horror (cosmic, body horror, creature features, science fiction, weird fiction, slasher), romance (historical, science fiction, romantic suspense, erotic, erotica), mystery (whodunit, howdunit, detective novel), science fiction (time travel, dystopian, multiverse, thriller), experimental fiction, and sociological novels. A friend of mine whom I met at work will tag me in posts when a person she follows is looking for a particular type of book. The most recent example is when a person was looking for a romance in which someone was gifted to another person and wanted the characters to be plus size and people of color. This made me so happy because my friend trusts my knowledge and tastes, and I get to recommend a book to someone. This same friend reads romance as well, but we have very different tastes in romance, so this particular request was more in my wheelhouse.
In general, I’m the one my friends turn to for recommendations. They do this because of my profession but also because I’m constantly reading. The thread is a shortcut for them to find their next read—especially books that are not as well-publicized. I read a good amount of books in translation and books from small independent presses. For example, this year I read The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper. It is a cosmic horror novella published by Off Limits Press, a new horror publisher. I absolutely loved it, and in tandem with posting it on my thread, I also tweeted about how much I enjoyed it. This created publicity for the title and the author, which is something that wouldn’t likely otherwise happen.
People have retweeted my posts or liked individual posts when they see a book that either they want to read or have read. Seeing people engage in this project has solidified that I’m definitely doing it next year. Right now the thread is pinned to my Twitter account and I expect that the current year’s iteration of it will always be.
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