Whatcha Thinking Thursday

Let's start by acknowledging the fact that I suck at blogging lately. Life has been busy and time has been short, but I'm really hoping to find a balance with school work, volunteering (an offshoot of school work), being a Mom and blogging. It's slow going, but I'm getting there.

It's time for Whatcha Thinking Thursday, hosted by me! Here's how it works. Each Thursday I'll simply blog about something book related that's weighing on my mind. Feel free to comment away if you agree or disagree (just keep it clean, okay?), or if you want to post to your site either on the same topic or about whatever it is you're thinking about go right ahead. I just ask that you link back to here. Also, make sure you let me know in the comments if you've participated so we can find you!

I've been thinking lately about weeks and months. You know, Teen Read Week, Banned Book Week, Poetry Month, Black History Month, etc. and why they are neccessary. So that's this weeks topic: What do you think of special weeks and months, and are they neccessary?

My thoughts? I like them, kind of. Here's what I mean. I love the fact that having a week, like Banned Book Week, gets us all moving in one direction, thinking and reading together. It was great to see all the comraderie and posts about our favorite banned books, our personal experiences, etc. It's a great way to share books and ideas, and for me a great way to find new books that I may have missed.

I think there is a negative as well. By giving it a week, or in the case of Black History Month, a month, are we giving ourselves permission to only think about these topics during that time period? Do we think "well, I did my banned book stuff" or "I featured my Black history month authors" and then move on to something else without a backward glance? I hate to say it, but I think we do. There aren't many blogs out there who routinely feature censored/banned books (off the top of my head I can think of Roof Beam Reader's Saturday's Uncensored), and even fewer who feature other specific topics. That doens't mean their not out there, because I by no means read every blog, but compared to the numbers in which we turn out for Teen Read week, or Poetry Month it's noticibly scarce.

I wonder why that is? For me I don't feature things based on those catagories because that's not what I think is important. Whether it's banned or written by an author of a certain race isn't as important as whether or not the book was good. It's fun to join in on events within the writing/blogging community so I do those things, but for my everyday reviews, I try not to focus on those things, and instead focus on what I loved (or occassionally hated) about the book.

How about you? What are your thoughts on special weeks and months?