I’ve really been working hard to get my blog back on track with daily posts, but it’s hard to come up with five regular posts a week. The two weekly posts that I participate in (Top Ten Tuesday and Friday Favorites) help to take some of the pressure off, but I just can’t read fast enough to post five reviews a week. So instead, I decided to give myself one day a week where I can rant or rave about a bookish topic. Hopefully, this will start a discussion in the comments, or even motivate some of you to join in and make this a thing?

This week I want to talk about buddy reads. I participate in buddy reads on a regular basis, but that doesn’t mean that every buddy read experience that I’ve had has been positive. However, I only knew that the bad experience was a bad one because I had had some good ones and knew what to expect. One of my buddy read partners and I try to do a read together monthly, while others happen whenever we can work it into our schedules or if our planned reading overlaps. 

So what makes a good buddy read? I guess this really varies from reader to reader, and I can only really speak about my own personal opinions. It’s kind of what I’d want from a book club between two (or three) people. The first thing that’s important to me is finding someone with a similar reading pace as me. I’m a pretty fast reader, so for someone who is a slower reader, we wouldn’t be great buddy read partners, since waiting too long between sections makes it difficult to remember what happened and gets boring. Plus, being the reader having to catch up sucks—it makes reading feel like a chore.

Next up is when we reach the agreed-upon discussion point. When I have a good buddy read partner, we get into a deep discussion about what we read. My favorite buddy reads involve theories, no matter how ridiculous they are. In fact, the more outlandish the better. Funnily enough, the most outlandish theories actually pan out more often  than the realistic ones! My least favorite buddy read partner just got to the set point and said “okay, onto the next section” and literally didn’t even want to discuss it at all. It was as if we just read the book together in separate places but didn’t have anything to say about it. 

And hands down my favorite part of buddy reading is the way I’ve made friends with some of the coolest people out there through simply reading and discussing books with them. No matter how similar or different we are, we manage to connect through books, and bring our unique perspectives to our readings. I love hearing other people’s takes on what we read, especially when it is very different from my own, because it makes me look back and see things differently as well. We get to laugh and have fun, and even commiserate over stress and challenges, allowing us to become friends. One of my buddy read discussions relies heavily on gifs, ensuring that we always have an enjoyable discussion.

So while not every buddy read is going to be a great one, I firmly believe that everyone can find someone to have a great buddy read with. So if you haven’t tried a buddy read yet, I urge you to give it a try. And if you’ve tried it and had a bad experience, I suggest giving it another try, if you’re open to it. 

This post is dedicated to my favorite buddy read partners, Becky @ Becky’s Book Blog, Julie @ One Book More, and Susan @ Novel Lives.

Have you tried a buddy read? What do you think of them?