The Problem with Mood Reading

Or, Why I’m not a mood reader.

I’m sitting here with my cat sleeping nearby. The idea for this post is something I’ve had on my mind for a while. So here I finally am typing it up. And yes, I am writing this entirely pointless introduction as a way to pad out this blog post—thank you so much for noticing! I haven’t planned any of this out, so who knows how short or long this will be? Let’s find out together.

disclaimer

I guess I should start with the disclaimer that I find nothing wrong with mood reading. Have I been a mood reader in the past? Sure. Will I be one in the future? I don’t know; maybe. But would I consider myself one now? No.

how I read

I read a lot and try to read a little bit every day. Sometimes that’s two hours one day—15 minutes another. I pull from a number of sources to find my next read. There’s my physical TBR, ebooks, owned audiobooks, and my library that I am fortunate to have access to. Needless to say, there are a lot of books to choose from. I completely understand mood reading and that feeling of, “I’m just not in the right mood or headspace to read something like this,” or, “I really want to read something that’ll make me feel X.” (I know these aren’t the only types of mood reading; I’m just speaking broadly.)

This touches upon things I’ll talk about later, but I love to explore with my reading. The opposite of mood reading is not structured, planned reading necessarily. It can be as spontaneous as mood reading, which itself can be just as meticulously planned. I’ve picked up books at random because I loved the title. One time I read a bunch of books with Silas in the title or as a character. Why? I wanted to. I had no idea what these books were about before going in. There have been books on my TBR that I personally would have avoided indefinitely if I were a mood reader. They simply weren’t books I would ever find myself in the mood for. However, by just deciding to actually pick them up and give them a chance, I found that I was so happy to have them on my shelves.

the issues

The issue for me personally becomes what I just now said above: There are books on my TBR that I will never be in the mood for but that I am still interested in reading. Or sometimes I just don’t know what feeling or mood the book is even going to convey. There’s also the whole subjective opinions thing. One book may instill a feeling of melancholy for one but peace for another. An author’s intentions might not match a reader’s interpretation in terms of the mood achieved.

There are books I’ll look at and just really not feel like reading at the moment. But that’s mood reading! you might say. Well, I’m going to slightly disagree with you there. Despite me not wanting to read a certain (type of) book at any given moment, it doesn’t mean I won’t still read it. And even if I don’t, my reasons for not could be as trivial as the page-count or maybe I’ve had a mediocre experience with the author’s previous book.

how I choose my books

I choose my books in a variety of ways. A few examples: I’ve used RNG for my ebooks. I count the number of rows R and columns C, generate a random number between 1–R, and then a random number between 1–C. And it has helped me get through my ebook TBR so well. I’ve got so many books on there that I would never pick up on my own. I’m still interested in them, which is why I keep them. But I’d probably keep passing them by, especially if they aren’t new and shiny. You might remember the reading experiment I did with City of Lies. And it’s actually been a great way to find other books as well. Sometimes I’ll search for a book on Hoopla or Overdrive and discover similarly worded titles that catch my eye. Or even other books from that author I hadn’t known about. Heck, other times I’ll look up things that sound like they could be book titles and read what I happen to find. And I’ve found many books this way.

Ultimately, I don’t consider myself a mood reader. I simply feel (heh) I would’ve missed out on too many books.