Hello, everyone! This week I was very unproductive and rather escapist. I read one a beauty book: The Beauty of Color by Iman. But really, I spent most of the week rereading some of Harry Potter, the His Dark Materials, and fanfiction.
Yes, I read fanfiction. I have done so for years, for perhaps dozen years now. I have read it from many fandoms. While I have not read many real published books as I would like, it is often because I get waylaid by fanfiction. I can not count the amount of time I have done so nor how much it constitutes my actual reading, but it is a significant. I love stories. I love fiction, and I love characters so it makes sense to explore it.
The grammar and the syntax may not always be great, but if you’re good at research, you can find some very interesting storytelling and exploration of characters from canon. A number of writers started in fanfiction online and went on to become published authors. I remember the days when certain writers wrote only fanfiction and now they are published best selling authors. Cassandra Claire is one example.
A few fandoms I read fanfic from as follows: Harry Potter, Doctor Who, Pride & Prejudice, and Star Trek. This is just a small sample as I read fanfics from movies, TV shows, book series, etc. I do not read fanfic from every series I love. For example, I don’t really feel the desire to read His Dark Materials or Laura Ingalls Wilder fanfiction. There’s no criteria why I seek out fanfics from certain works of fiction that others. I also do not stick to a fandom consistently for long periods of time like I did when I was a teenager. I’ll go months or even years without reading fic from a particular fandom and then get in the mood for it again.
While I don’t count this in my books reading, it is reading and even I forget that I spend a good amount of time reading. Perhaps all this online reading has also helped with my reading speed as much as normal published works.
Does anyone else read fanfic?
Speaking of reading fast, I discovered readfa.st which is a site to help you improve your reading speed. The site says I read around 470 reads per minute, but I’m not sure how fast that is compared to others. It’s an interesting idea.
What are you doing this Sunday?