Julie Forrest is a busy gal. When’s she’s not running after her two kids, she’s managing the T-Dot Blogger Book Club and blogging about books over at Read, Play, Blog. How she’s going to fit her full-time job in there when her maternity leave is over, we’ll never know.
Read, Play Blog is a blog that champions books–it doesn’t dissect them, it celebrates them. This simple, straightforward non-nonsense approach has made Julie one of the most liked and most trusted book bloggers around. Julie chatted with Books@Torontoist via email about her positive approach to book blogging and the online lit scene.
Torontoist: Tell me about Read, Play, Blog.
Julie Forrest: I read a lot, and I really like telling folks what they should read. Read, Play, Blog is my place to showcase my favourite books and tell you why they’re so hot. I don’t review books per se, but I write concise, enthusiastic teasers. I’m not really interested in being a critic. I see myself more as an evangelist.
TO: Why did you decide to start a book blog?
JF: I’ve had a personal blog since 2006, written under an alias. I was blogging about books there, too, but that space has a different audience. I’m pretty active on Twitter and I want to direct my tweets to book posts without over sharing. So I decided to start fresh with a new blog, exclusively devoted to books. I’m spending most of my time at RPB now.
TO: You say you don’t see yourself as a critic, but rather an evangelist. Why?
I managed to survive grad school with my love of reading intact, and I’ve had enough criticism to last me a long while. I want to focus on the positive. Plus, as one who tells authors to set up google alerts on themselves, I know how many of them do it. I don’t want to be the jerk who has nothing nice to say.
TO: There’s lots of book blogs out there. What makes Read, Play, Blog stand out?
JF: Well, there’s a ton of books out there and it’s not easy choosing among them. I read a hell of a lot of books, and I think I have pretty good taste. I’m honest and I know what I like, and I tell you why I think you’ll like it in 300 words or less, giving you more time to get the right book in your hands and get reading.
TO: When you’re not blogging, you are you and what do you do?
JF: I’m about to return to my job in digital marketing for a book publisher. I have a four-year-old and a seven-month-old and blogging takes place late at night with a glass of wine. It’s my “me” time.
TO: You use Posterous, a relatively new blogging platform. Why did you decide to use it and how has that changed your blogging?
JF: I wanted something clean and simple that works well with mobile, and Julie Wilson suggested Posterous. I love it. You just send an email to Posterous with the text and attachments (photos, videos, whatever) and it automatically formats, publishes, and updates any other sites you want it to. Eventually, I plan to use it more to blog on the fly from book events. It’s dreamy.
TO: What books and authors are your favourite?
JF: My favourite female author is Alice Munro. I’ve read everything she’s written (a lot of it twice). Her prose is so exquisite, her stories intricate and dense. I too have small-town roots and I find so much I can relate to in her writing. I’m also fascinated with her stories on motherhood—there’s so much ambivalence there. My favourite male author is Cormac McCarthy. Like Munro, the writing is so dense. You can take just one paragraph of Blood Meridian and analyze it for hours.
TO: You’ve been following the many literary programs and competitions lately, from Canada Reads to Canada Also Reads.
JF: I read mostly frontlist books. I like these challenges because they get me to read books I may not have considered on my own, or older ones I missed the first time around. Participating in challenges is also a way to support the blogging community. Blogging is very much about listening and responding, not just standing on a soapbox. I’m also a huge supporter of anything that provides some publicity for books–they need every little bit they can get!
TO: You’re also the founder of the T-Dot Bloggers Book Club. What is this?
JF: The book club started out as a group of 12 friends who meet monthly in our living rooms. We drink wine and eat chocolate and talk and talk and talk. We rave about our club on Twitter quite a bit, and more people wanted to join, so we started an online version of the club, where anyone can read along and pipe in whenever they want. We’ve got diverse group of people who take part. You name it: men and women, young and old. We have authors, publishing folk, a librarian, an actor, the head of a charity, a record exec, a stay-at-home dad, a professor. Despite the name, membership isn’t limited to the T-Dot.
TO: What role should bloggers have in the literary world and how do you see thing changing?
JF: As traditional media provide less and less book coverage, bloggers are stepping up and filling the void. There are many smart, articulate, thoughtful blogs out there—just one example is Kerry Clare’s Pickle Me This. Smart publishing houses and authors should read these blogs and interact with the bloggers. Don’t just throw books at them: comment on their blogs, invite them to events, link to them from your newsletter, send them a signed book. Most of all, give them the respect and recognition they deserve. I’m optimistic that book coverage will get better, and it will happen (and is happening) online. By better I don’t just mean more–from small bloggers like me, to mainstream media expanding online coverage, there are all kinds of exciting, interesting new ways to talk about books. We can still read reviews, but we can also watch video, listen to an interview, or participate in a live chat. As more and more authors engage in this world and start connecting directly with their readers, it will only get better.
