I started this blog in the last month of 2009. I was a
junior in high school at the time. Nearly four years have passed since then. I
am now a junior in college. Between 2009 and 2012, I read three hundred and
eighty-one books. I reviewed one hundred and eighty. As the shortest reviews
were around a thousand words and the longest several times that, it seems fair
to say that I have written many hundreds of thousands of words on this blog,
the contents of multiple novels.
The purpose for this spate of numbers is not to try and get
in one last horn-tooting but rather to attempt to convey the sheer scale of the
undertaking that running the Hat Rack has been for me. I don’t mean that in a
negative way. This blog changed my life. 68,500 people have stooped by since
2009. That’s not a huge number of people by the scales of some of the
blogosphere’s giants, but knowing that those eyes were on my work, and knowing
that some of them found that work worthy enough to not only read but to come
back, to comment, to engage with my words—that’s changed me.
I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that the Hat Rack
changed my life. I found all sorts of other fantastic blogs and reviewers,
listed to this page’s right. I read more books for this blog than I would have
otherwise. I read different books. I got to interview one of my favorite
authors, Thomas Ligotti. The act of reviewing changed the way that I interact
with books. Because of those one hundred and eighty essays, I find myself
engaging with what I read in a way incomparably deeper than I could ever have
dreamed before. The effect goes beyond reading. The very way that I think has
been changed.
But, no matter how much a part of me reviewing has come to
feel, it is not something I can continue.
It’s tempting for me to cite practical reasons and leave it
at that. I read one hundred and thirty-eight books in 2012, fifty-three of
which were read during the summer. More than enough material to get a review a
week out of. In the seven months of 2013 that have passed, I have read only
fifty-three in total; the summer, which is nearing its close, has seen only
fifteen. Many of those were histories or other books that cannot really be
reviewed on a blog of this sort. Clearly, then, there are far fewer books that
I can get reviews from, perhaps no longer enough to sustain weekly postings,
and that’s not even taking into account my ever-decreasing well of free time.
But that would be an excuse, for the sharp drop in the
number of books that I have read is really just a symptom of the real issue: my
interests have shifted. History consumes more and more of my passion, and,
perhaps more importantly, I have lost much of my faith in fiction. The
idea of finding some sort of Truth between the pages of a fantasy has been
receding farther and farther from my reach.
For months, perhaps even longer, I have been trying to
ignore this, assuming that my old love would snap back into place if I just
kept trudging on. Instead, the act of reviewing has grown to seem like a chore,
and perpetually forcing myself to analyze what I read in the hope that
profundity will be reborn has just strangled the enjoyment I used to get from
stories. Some of my recent reviews felt entirely like form without substance,
like I was distantly ascertaining how enjoyable a tale would or would not be
without feeling a shred of that pleasure myself.
Obviously, this state of affairs can not continue. It’s not
pleasurable for me, and it would soon turn into the reviewing equivalent of a
television show meandering on for ever-declining season after season after their
writers lose all inspiration. Accordingly, for the next few months at a bare
minimum, I plan to try and read without the pressure, to rediscover what it
means to read for the pure joy of the tale and the prose.
Writing fiction is another consideration. In the past two years, I have written a bare handful of stories. That's not because I have been blogging, and it's true that I used to review frequently during my most productive writing periods. Still, that was when I had far more free time. Nowadays, with the need to keep a steady stream of reviews, I wonder if I would have time to write a story or novel even if the idea did strike me. So while I am not ending the blog in favor of creative writing (the burnout has hit that at least as hard), I do wonder if this might eventually improve my productivity there.
This may not be a permanent departure. When my story in Space and Time Magazine surfaces in 2015, I will post about it here, and, should I get a new burst of creativity and publish more stories, I will keep the fiction bibliography up to date. If a book strikes me strongly enough, I may still do a review. Perhaps someday I will even return to reviewing as I once did. But I can’t promise any of that. For the moment, I think it’s best to say farewell, dear readers. Knowing that you were there meant a great deal to me. I hope that some of my work did live up to the silly tagline at the top of this page, that some of it was indeed in-depth and insightful, that it was worth your time.
If anyone would like to stay in touch with me, or to have me notify you in the event of a return to blogging someday in the future, feel free to send me an email at nskteh[at]gmail[dot]com.
