love yo shelf

books. diversity. really bad puns.

Love Your Self Saturday #2: Dealing with my reading slump and overall brain fog/funk

Welcome back to love yo self Saturdays where I’ll be rambling about some shame and weird restless feelings, and hopefully, offer some solace for those of you who can relate.

Lately I’ve been feeling real weird about…well, everything. I’ve been stuck in a loop of wanting to do things that make me happy, but not having the energy, then feeling grumpy, rinse and repeat. And I’ve noticed it making me grumpy and restless, constantly sighing and just thinking some angry thoughts at myself. And, as expected, I was also in a bit of a reading slump last year because of it! But seeing as my reading habits this month have been on the up and up, I’m hoping the self-talk has shifted direction a bit, so if you’re still here, bear with me as we talk it out together. And thank you ahead of time. And also I hope this helps.

Recognizing my “funk”

I say funk because it’s fun, but I don’t think it’s the good kind. I can usually recognize the beginnings of a funk when I no longer enjoy doing things I normally love, or when I find that I’m particularly antsy or restless even while doing them. Let’s call this the five stages of funk: restlessness, frustration, numbness, fear, realization. The frustration is usually at myself, followed quickly by numbness and fear; a loss of self if you will. I don’t know who I am if I don’t enjoy things, and that scares the shit out of me. Then, day by day, I slowly come to realize that there’s a reason I feel this way. (And that folks, is because I’m not in therapy).

Keep in mind, these are all just my inner ramblings for you to read and relate to (or not). They have little to no merit in your own life. I support and see, and this is just my way of showing you you’re not alone, in however you may be feeling (or not feeling).

Now, these “stages” are in no way linear, nor do they exist anywhere other than my brain for all I know. However, I think it’s fair to say that the pandemic has been exhausting, and that doesn’t even cover any personal events. I think a lot of my funk comes from constantly being overstimulated, on edge, and prepared for chaos. And while I live for chaotic characters in books, they’re not so fun in the outside world. So when I get the time to sit and not deal with anyone else’s chaos, I don’t know what to do with myself, which leads me to wonder: does this mean I have no identity that exists outside of chaos? Does something bad always have to be happening for me to have a purpose?

Defeating the funk bubble…for now

If you watch Spongebob, I imagine my so-called funk bubble to look like the Dirty Bubble. It feels like I’m suspended in a bubble with every single trash thought in my brain floating around. Now I don’t know how effective trash is at transmitting sound, but in my bubble, everything sounds distorted. My thoughts are blurry and too loud, and they make it hard to focus on anything, much less reading. However, I find that almost forcing myself to read helps to kind of just…push me over the hump.

I read four books in January, which I mean is saying something for me. Part of it may have to do with being around so many books at work, and other readers. It might also be due to the amount of books I have on my tbr shelf, most of which were sequels. As cliche as it sounds, I also started journaling recently, which I think has helped slow the thoughts down and quiet them a bit for sleep. Anything I could do that helped me be excited to read something. Now when it comes to my unhealthy habit of thinking I need chaos to have purpose, that’s where reading comes in.

Reading literally forces my brain to slow down. Especially in fantasy, I have to conceptualize where characters are, what obstacles they’re facing in magic or in life, or what the heck happened in the last book. Recognizing that is one of my main motivations for reading when I’m in the bubble. For just a moment, their chaos replaces mine and sometimes it gets mixed in, but it also provides a sense of solace and comfort. Someone, somewhere, knows what this feels like.

tldr: brain funks suck, and sometimes distractions help, and there are people who want to hear you

If you’re still here, thank you for listening to my nonsense. At this point it’s just me rambling, but I appreciate you nonetheless. This very well could’ve been a journal entry for myself, but I think there’s always something about other people being vulnerable that resonates with me. And I hope my vulnerability offers you the permission or inspiration you may need.

Sending love to all my bubble buddies out there. We’re ready. (For what idk but we’ll figure it out.)

Love Yo Self #1: Welcome to our self-care column!

As we enter the new year, and fresh off of our short hiatus and first year of blogging, Lauren and I have had a lot of time to figure out what we wanted to do more of with the blog. 2020 made it apparent that we all need a little more love in our lives, and I’m so excited to introduce Love Yo Self Saturdays! As we get into 2021, I wanted to get back into our tagline: helping you learn to love your shelves and your selves, one book at a time.

Love Yo Self Saturday’s will (hopefully) be a monthly segment on the second Saturday of each month, where we’ll discuss different forms of love and self-care, and of course, bring in some of our favorite comfort characters and how they care for themselves. Additionally, we hope that y’all will have some input of your own, whether that be questions or topics you’d like to see (which you can submit via email, twitter, or in the comments below)!

My goal was mainly to introduce LYS Saturdays, but also to write about my own relationship with self-love and books. Like most of our ideas, this all started with a text. From our conversations about messy characters who would greatly benefit from therapy and better coping mechanisms, and of course from our own struggles with self care, I found a desire to start writing a mini self-care column (mainly as a joke for said characters). All this to say, how we experience love plays a huge role in who we become. Being someone who learned a lot about myself through books, this felt like a good way to sort through it all, and maybe help some others feel not so alone.

As a little love letter to childhood favorites, I wanted to talk about how much of my growth has come from learning how to diversify empathy; empathizing with others gave me the ability to have empathy for myself, especially watching it happen for some of my favorite characters. If you read our Q&A relaunch, you know that Graceling is one of my favorite rereads of all time. Each time I read, I find an increasing appreciation for Katsa’s character development. The essence of her character remains the same, but she learns to view herself in a different light, which informs how she guides her other relationships. There isn’t just one way to grow with yourself, but with so many role models between the pages of our favorite books, the inspiration is endless.

For future love yourself Saturdays, I hope to hold a space for this degree of vulnerability where I share a little of myself with you. Although this one is short and sweet, I hope you find a piece of me to relate to, and also connect with each other! Who knows? Maybe in the next few months, we’ll all have 400 new friends.

Lauren’s 2020 Favorites: Time is fake and this wrap-up confirms it

2020…what a major dumpster fire. Finishing college and graduating into a pandemic has left me with a lot of uncertainties, but not all of them are bad. Remote opportunities have been popping up all over publishing, which is a huge deal for many people living outside of New York and hoping to break into the industry, especially BIPOC (now if one of them could just hire me…). For a while, I had what I thought was a concrete, post-grad plan, and the pandemic completely threw that out the window. For someone like me, who relies on structure and certainty, this was terrifying for a while – and honestly, I’m still terrified sometimes. But I’m also really excited about where the future will take me as I figure out what I’m truly passionate about. I’m a pragmatist, so my career and education plans have always focused on stability and security, but I’m learning to take chances on myself and my future in order to ensure that it’s the one I want.

I’ve been a reader for my entire life. I’ve fluctuated between wanting to be an author, an English teacher, an editor, a lawyer – I still kind of want to be all of those things, actually. My aspirations have shifted throughout high school and college, but my core interests haven’t; whatever I ended up doing, all I knew was that I wanted it to be related to my English degree. Love Yo Shelf has been an integral part of helping me realize that I’m still very much a book nerd at heart, and whatever I do in the future, I want it to relate back to books. 2020 most definitely and objectively sucked, but here are some books that provided some much needed comfort along the way.

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Comparative Titles: Pros and Many, Many Cons

This post is brought to you by people apparently claiming that anything containing a magic school or a school in general is a rip off of Harry Potter and is sponsored by my ensuing indignation and outrage.

Every once in a while, I’ll be doom-scrolling on Twitter and will come across a screenshot from Goodreads, which, despite its name, never actually means anything good, at least in terms of book-ish opinions. I think the most recent one that personally infuriated me was someone’s review of The Poppy War, comparing it to Harry Potter because – and I kid you not – the main character attends an academy. That’s it. Because comparing a series that is written by a woman of color and is based on the second Sino-Japanese War to one written by a known terf is perfectly acceptable. The existence of an academy is, for some people, enough to prove that the author directly took inspiration from one series in particular instead of literally anything else. That was probably the last straw for me, because at this point, I’m just tired.

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YARC 2020 Update: Almost There!

The longest/shortest year ever is finally coming to an end, and I’ve already surpassed my original Goodreads challenge of reading at least 60 books!! This is a huge deal for me as I went nearly four years without reading much at all, and reading 50 books last year was a bit of a struggle, so I’m thrilled that I’ve seemed to find a good place with reading again. I’ve already bumped my goal up to 75, but since I just finished my 70th book, I think I’m going to try for 85-90 by January 1, 2021 – wish me luck!

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal of reading 41-50 books by Asian authors in 2020 as a part of the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge hosted by CW, Shealea, Lily, and Vicky. With a little under 2 months left to go to complete the challenge, I thought I’d do a little update on my progress!

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Being a New Blogger: 6 things I learned through trial and error

First off, I just want to thank everyone who nominated and voted for Love Yo Shelf in the best new blog category for Marie and May’s Book Blogger Awards!! Orianna and I are completely and absolutely overwhelmed by the love and support we’ve gotten since starting our baby blog in October, and we’ve loved having the chance to get to know other members of the community. I had absolutely no idea what to expect when we first started, and it’s honestly been a steep learning curve, which brings me to this post!

When we launched Love Yo Shelf in 2019, I felt like I was a little late to the game and in way over my head. I spent a couple months prior to publishing my first Love Yo Shelf post observing and learning, but for a self-proclaimed bookworm, I did very little reading. As much as I tried to prepare myself by polishing the Love Yo Shelf site and stockpiling reviews, I couldn’t prepare for what I simply didn’t know. I found a few posts with tips for new bloggers, and I’m sure there are plenty more out there, but the ones I read tended to be a little more generic and strictly about running a blog, with little mention about having a social media presence or the specific obstacles and issues that bloggers of color face.

It wasn’t until I actually started talking to other bloggers of color that my own hesitantly negative feelings about some of the things I was seeing around Twitter were affirmed and validated. I do think that book blogs are more accessible and thus more equitable than other bookish platforms in terms of who can start a blog and succeed. However, it’s an entirely different ball game for bloggers of color and white bloggers, with layers of privilege factoring in as well. There are a lot of facets to being a blogger of color that I’m unequipped to discuss because of my own privilege, but for the time being, here are some bits of advice for new bloggers of color that I discovered through trial and error.

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So You Want to Be an Ally: But what are you really trying to accomplish?

Alright, bear with me folks, because I dove deep into critical race theory during my undergrad and I have a Lot to say. 

I’m sure that almost 100% of the time, white bloggers look to support books by marginalized authors with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, due to the undeniable, incontestable truth that they are white, they wade into unknown waters, often without equipping themselves with basic knowledge through a little research. At first glance, this might seem harmless – after all, I truly don’t expect anyone to know everything there is to know about every diverse culture in the world – but how hard is it to put in a little effort? Or, even better, when you aren’t educated about something, why not defer to someone who does know what they’re talking about and share what they have to say instead?

And yet, despite the fact that white bloggers lack the range (truly no shade intended – this is just a matter of life experience) to fairly and accurately review and promote diverse books, they are praised for doing the bare minimum in advocating for marginalized voices. This is a pervasive problem that extends far beyond the book community, in which people insist on speaking up on behalf of marginalized voices, and end up speaking over them instead. This redirects the focus of the audience to white people instead of the people of color they claim they are trying to help, and as a result, we see the platforms of white bloggers grow rapidly while the platforms of people of color remain more or less stagnant. 

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