Book bloggers say it with a picture

A few years ago, to ensure I read more books, I enrolled into an annual reading challenge as part of an online book-reading community. In this virtual space you could interact with fellow readers, discuss and discover new and old books, and find your favourite authors.

To be safe, I tasked myself with 25 books in 12 months, hoping I’d read at least two a month, and cleverly slip in a comic or graphic novel to help meet the target.

I completed the challenge with ease, but never went back. I didn’t discover any great book on this platform, nor did I get to engage in a book discussion with others. Perhaps I missed the visual element. For books are beautiful and a bit of vanity, especially for lovers of the written word, never hurt anyone.

Around 2016, book bloggers moved on from their verbose lairs to the visual-rich social media platform Instagram. They started reviewing their favourite reads in picture-posts. The ‘Bookstagrammers’ soon became all the rage, adding a new dimension to the world of reading.

Throw in a string of fairy lights, a few stems of flowers, a succulent, coffee (pairs perfectly with books), pens, any baked dessert, hipster spectacles, and there you are, all set for your first #bookstagram post. And, oh, you need to bring in the book you’re reading, of course. A phone with a good camera will do, but you could amp it up with fancy photography equipment, if you wish.

Resh Susan (@thebooksatchel) started blogging and bookstagramming in December 2015 to help cope with a stressful time in her life. An avid reader, she caught the photography bug as well.

“I didn’t know that the bookish community on Instagram was a huge one. I simply started posting pictures of books I was reading and found that the community was warm, friendly and very welcoming,” says Resh, who has nearly 66,000 followers.

She credits this large following to the fact that she posts consistently and makes an effort to engage meaningfully with her audience to ensure they feel noticed and important.

Growing numbers of schoolchildren and college-goers from India are now bookstagramming, she adds.

Mir Khubhaib (@khubaibliophile) of Aligarh began reading voraciously from a young age and loves non-fiction in particular. He didn’t have many friends who read, so he looked online to connect with other bookworms.

“I started off with Twitter, where a group used to discuss books every Sunday for an hour. They once ran a competition to build their Instagram page and we had to post a picture of our current read. When I searched for books on Instagram, I found hundreds of great profiles. That was in 2014, today there are hundreds of thousands of them. I only post on Instagram now,” he says.

Mir is followed by 12,000 people. “When you have so many followers, they start defining you. You start thinking how they will react to your content and you modify accordingly,” he says. Besides literature, he posts his views on social and political issues too.

So from a serious How Fascism Works: The Politics of US and Them , to a classic War and Peace , the contemporary Less by Andrew Sean Greer, to a dive into pop culture such as The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister — Mir’s Instagram account is a diverse mix.

Love and labour

A pristine white bed, on which rests a wooden tray containing coffee, cakes and a book in the middle — many of Resh’s Bookstagrams are composed this way and the photos are professionally shot.

“Some pictures may be more elaborate, and some might require more post-processing. You get better with practice. I often sketch my ideas first, so that I don’t lose or forget them,” she says.

Mir, on the other hand, uses merely his phone to take quick photos of his books.

“I am always looking for props that I can use in a set-up. But the actual photoshoot hardly takes 10-15 minutes,” he says.

Word of mouth

One of the greatest things to have come out of bookstagramming are the authentic book recommendations. When posting to large numbers of followers, bookstagrammers naturally take care to open up honestly about their likes and dislikes about a certain book or author. The more personal the post, the more real they appear.

Resh, who had read Sally Rooney’s latest novel Normal People , posted that she loved the book many times over. It was a book that even her husband, who is usually indifferent to reading, enjoyed, so she posted about this rather personal detail that not everyone would be comfortable sharing.

Coffee forever: Bookface by Resh Susan aka @thebooksatchel

Close to 30 people messaged her and commented on her post. They were intrigued. They may or may not have bought the book, but their interest was certainly piqued.

Far from the relentless trolling on Twitter and the negative to-and-fros on Facebook, Bookstagram — a free community — is an oasis of cerebral interactions, devoid of hate. It brings people together into a world of learning.

It’s home.

Arunima Mazumdar is an independent writer