8 Phrases for Combatting any Reader Pressures You May Feel

I was planning to combine this post with yesterday's post, "6 Pressures I've Faced as a Reader." Initially, I had the post "6 Pressures I've Faced as a Reader, and How I Combatted These Pressures." However, as I continued with drafting the post, I realized that it was better for me to have 2 separate posts on this topic.

It's very easy to feel reader pressures, especially with everything that inundates the bookish community via the internet. You may feel other pressures aside from the ones I've personally felt and mentioned in yesterday's post. This post, hopefully, will help you combat those pressures.

Here are 8 phrases for combatting reader pressures.

Phrase 1: Reading 50+ books in a single year may work for other people, but I don't need to read that many.

Phrase 2: I don't need an aesthetically pleasing bookish social media account, or even a social media account dedicated to books, to prove that I have or read books.

Phrase 3: If I decide to attempt an aesthetic bookish social media account, it doesn't need to be similar to other bookish social media accounts, and it doesn't need to "stand up to" other bookish social media accounts.

Phrase 4: I don't need to read from every single genre, and I don't have to stick to a single genre. I can read whatever I want.

Phrase 5: I don't need to have physical books of every single book I want to read or have read. Ebooks and audiobooks are perfectly acceptable.

Phrase 6: Borrowing library books before I buy a book is a great way to save money and avoid buying books that I may ultimately unhaul.

Phrase 7: Unhauling books is perfectly okay. There are plenty of others who most likely will enjoy the books I'm unhauling.

Phrase 8: I don't need to have 2+ bookshelves. Having one bookshelf is perfectly fine.

If it helps you, feel free to add "to be a good reader" to the end of each of these phrases. I didn't include it because it would have eventually felt repetitive, and I feel like that's a little redundant for this post.

There are so many other ways for you to combat reading pressures. The main thing to do is remind yourself that you are a good reader, no matter what you do as a reader.

6 Pressures I've Faced as a Reader

This is something I've seen a couple of times on Booktube, Bookstagram, and bookish blogs. I haven't seen this a whole lot, though, so I thought I'd give it a shot here on my blog.

You may think "How can a reader face pressure?" or "What are you talking about? There's no pressure to reading!" That is, safe to say, ignoring the bigger picture of reading, no matter the reason. Reading is something that is capable of touching both our personal and our social lives. There are personal pressures, and there are social pressures.

Here are 6 pressures that I personally have faced as a reader.

Pressure 1: I need to set a reading goal of 50+ books per year.

Pressure 2: I need to try to have an aesthetic bookish social media account that "stands up to" the aesthetics of other bookish social media accounts.

Pressure 3: I need to keep up with every new release, and that I'm not a "good reader" if I read backlisted books.

Pressure 4: I need to read from every single genre available.

Pressure 5: I need to only read from "my genre."

Pressure 6: I have to own physical copies of every single book I buy.