Bring Back Rebellious Reading
2026 Issue # 24
Lots happening in today’s Issue…
Descendant Publishing Crew hits Realm Makers…
Bring Back Rebellious Reading essay…
Realm Makers Floor Plan…
Next week is Realm Makers. The Descendant Publishing team will be selling books all weekend long! If you are in the St. Louis area or within driving distance come visit us. We’ll have a ton of books available for you to purchase.
Realm Makers is the largest gathering of Christian nerds who love Sci-fi, Fantasy, and all things Speculative. During Wednesday thru Friday I’ll be handling a number of staff duties, but on Saturday I’ll be signing books at booth 705 & 1002. I’ll also be hanging out at the Realm Makers Info booth, or running around putting out little fires that pop up. Regardless, stop by and say hi!
Bring Back Rebellious Reading
There’s this weird pressure online that nobody says out loud anymore because we’ve all quietly accepted it as normal.
Be visible.
Post consistently.
Stay relevant.
Show up.
Engage.
And if you disappear for a few days, the algorithm acts like you died in a cornfield somewhere.
I’ve gone back and forth on social media for over a year now. Maybe longer if I’m being honest. To date, I’m on TikTok, Instagram, and here on Substack. Occasionally I post on Facebook and then immediately remember why I hate the place. Five minutes on there and suddenly I’m watching two distant relatives argue about politics under a blurry minion meme from 2017.
But underneath all the noise is something darker we rarely talk about.
Somewhere along the line we started believing visibility equals safety.
That if people can see us, we matter. If our posts get attention, we belong. If our content performs well, we’re succeeding.
If we stay “relevant,” we won’t disappear.
But relevance is a moving sidewalk powered by anxiety. You can walk on it forever and still feel like you’re falling behind.
I used to say I was on social media as an author because I liked books. And that was true for a while. There’s something genuinely exciting about finding readers who love stories. About talking with other people who still get emotional over fictional characters and old paperbacks and midnight release days.
But lately?
Reading online has started feeling weirdly performative.
Especially in places like BookTok.
Not fake exactly. Just… staged. Optimized. Filtered through trends and aesthetics and reaction culture until books start feeling less like companions and more like accessories. You don’t just read a novel anymore. You present your reading life. You build an identity around it. You announce your TBR stack like quarterly earnings reports.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, reading starts feeling less private.
Less sacred.
Like there’s this unspoken pressure to read what’s hot so you can remain part of the conversation. Read the trending fantasy. Read the buzzy literary novel. Read the book everyone is crying about on camera this week.
Otherwise what?
You fall behind?
Become irrelevant?
There’s that word again.
The truth is I don’t always like what’s trending. Sometimes I actively dislike it. My reading taste is all over the place. One month I want grimy neo-westerns. The next I’m rereading Fahrenheit 451. Then I’m digging through some obscure sci-fi paperback from thirty years ago that smells like dust and attic insulation.
That’s the kind of reading life I actually love.
Uncurated.
Unoptimized.
A little messy.
I miss discovering books accidentally.
Not because an algorithm pushed it in front of my face seventeen times.
Not because influencers collectively decided this was the Official Book of the Month for the internet hive mind.
But because I wandered into a used bookstore and found something strange on a bottom shelf. Because a friend handed me a dog-eared copy and said, “You might like this.” Because curiosity led me there instead of marketing.
What does it even feel like now to read without influence?
To pick up a book without already knowing the discourse surrounding it?
Without ratings.
Without aesthetics.
Without someone explaining what you’re supposed to think before you’ve even read page one?
I honestly don’t know anymore.
And maybe that’s what bothers me most.
Not social media itself. Not even the algorithms.
But the realization that silence, obscurity, and private enjoyment now feel almost rebellious.
To read something simply because it interests you.
To enjoy a book nobody online cares about.
To not document it.
To not rank it.
To not turn it into content.
That feels rare now.
Maybe even dangerous to the machine.
And yet I think that’s where real reading still lives. Not in trends. Not in virality. Not in stacks arranged for engagement.
But in quiet moments where nobody is watching.
Just you.
And a book.
And the strange little freedom of not needing anyone else to approve of it.
Realm Makers Floor Plan. You can find me splitting my time on Saturday at booth 705, 1002, and the Realm Makers Info booth.
(Note: Layout and floor plan could change. Visit expo.realmmakers.com for all updated information)
I am a rebellious reader.
I don’t have a to-read or have-read list. I read kid books and old books and weird books. I don't have a favorite genre. I alternately ignore or consume classics. I sometimes hate other people's favorites, and sometimes quit in the middle. I pick my next read by mood. I read for enjoyment.
I'm a rebellious reader, and I'm glad to hear I'm not alone.
Well said, J.J. Great article. I hate the idea of reading a book because social media told me that I'm supposed to be reading it. Book reading is a very personal thing that occasionally gets shared between friends, because a book is that good, and one human can't wait to tell another human about how awesome it is.