I used to think that there was only one “bookish community” and that everyone who loved books automatically fit into it. And then I discovered this was very far from the truth. There are countless bookish communities and not all of them are good fits for every book lover. It has been challenging to find my place in these communities… and in some cases, I’m still looking.

In the past, it was the book blog community that I knew. I followed a bunch of book bloggers, they followed me, and we all interacted on each other’s posts. Now I feel like not a lot of people still read book blogs, so there is a lot less interaction in this sphere.

Then it was Bookstagram, with beautifully curated pictures and random pictures, and everyone liked each other’s posts and commented occasionally. This overlapped with the book blogging community a lot in the beginning, then became more specialized. I never did well here because I didn’t own the newest, hottest books and all of my ARCs were digital. I personally don’t even post on Instagram much anymore, I just use it to follow bakers from Great British Bake Off and cat accounts. Ok, I do still follow some bookish accounts too.

The next big thing for me was Book Twitter. And I really found a home here. I was very active on Book Twitter and interacted with a lot of people. These were my people. And then Twitter was sold to evil and became X and I couldn’t stay there any longer and my community split in several directions.

So now there’s Bookthreads and Booksky. Booktok has been around for a while. And I found out Tumblr is still alive and has a Booklr. I started posting on Booklr, but have not kept up on it very well. I watch some Booktok videos, but am not really involved with the community there (I watch mostly animal videos, show edits, and random stuff). So that leaves Threads and Bluesky.

Threads is my go to social media app now, but while I do interact with a lot of bookish content, I tend to be a lot more political here. Though, Threads is where I’ve really started to follow and interact with more authors (especially those who share my views).

As far as my bookish space, it’s mostly Bluesky. This is where I get the most visibility on my posts, and almost everyone I follow is bookish. I do still struggle a bit with it and am having a hard time finding people to follow (and followers).

I didn’t mention Facebook, though I do belong to a readathon group there, I don’t use Facebook for anything but games these days.

Last, but not least, is Discord. I belong to a Discord group for Dewey’s 24-hour Readathon and would love to join some others. The Readathon group is only really active in the weeks immediately adjacent to one of the 3 yearly events, so I would love to have another place to talk books the rest of the time (and maybe find out about other readathons).

Where do you find your bookish community? I would love to hear some suggestions! I’m Reinvented Reader everywhere.