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Citizenship is about being member of the group; whether the group is a country, a yacht club, or a book club. Within any group there are active, participating members and there are members who are merely paying dues or offering an uninformed voting. Most of us believe participatory membership is better than simply signing one’s name to a roster. Learn more about how to be a participating member of the literary community, even if you don’t write. Learn how to celebrate literature and it’s writers.
Within the literary community there are people who are great literary citizens. These are the people who do things to support and value the written word. The difference between being a reader and a good literary citizen. We love you folks who are readers, and we really love folks who celebrate literature.
Celebrating literature is about:
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- Talk up books – When you’re chitchatting with friends do you say stuff like “so I’ve been reading this great book and go on to tell them about it. When you see somebody reading a book do you ask them about it? Or how they like it?
- Offer reviews – When authors write books they want to know if people have read them and what those people think. You can leave your reviews on Amazon or good reads or social media or wherever you bought your book. The point is to let the author know you read it and let others know that you read it and they might enjoy it.
- Join book clubs – I have a friend who has a book club. She loves it and gets to together with her club regularly. I love the idea of a book club because it’s like the discussion that happened in English class but is not compulsory and therefore a lot more interesting.
- Value classics – Classics have influenced a lot of our culture. People make references to classics or spout quotes from those well-known old books, oftentimes without even knowing what their quoting. Getting to know those old stories gives us thought-provoking insight into the cultures they came out of.
- Seek out new works and new genres – many of us have fallen into the habit of doing what we did before because it worked for us. We are news from the same sources we have liked before. We visit the same restaurants that we’ve been to before. We read books from the same authors we read before. When we try out something new were concerned because it might not work, without considering the idea that it might work. We might even like it, maybe a lot.
These are some of the ways we can go beyond reading to celebrating literature. Find more great ideas about being an epic literary citizen from the wise folks at Tweetspeak. The support of participating literary citizens ensures the future and quality of literature. We do this for the same reason we donate to public radio and television instead of listening and watching it without being a member.
What’s Important To You and How Do You Support It?
We all have things that are important to us and we want those things to continue. We believe those worthy of support. If literature is important to you what do you do to ensure it will continue feeding your habit? I talked about my efforts to value my writing in my New Years Post.
Are you in a book club? Have you ever written a review on Goodreads? Do you talk up your local library or local independent bookseller? Do you seek out reads you once wouldn’t have even considered, just to branch out a bit? Tell me about literary citizenship efforts? Tell me about your experience in the comments below?