It’s Friday and that means discussion time! A lot later than I would normally post, but life happens sometimes. Today we celebrate the sixth birthday of Let’s Talk Bookish and we do this by having a celebratory freebie. We could use this week to catch up on a missed LTB topic (which was my original plan) or discuss something completely different. That is what I’m going for right now, all thanks to a post I found in my WordPress reader last week. Tasya @ The Literary Huntress discusses not being able to find recent releases that work for her, and I relate to this post a lot. So much so that I wrote a lengthy comment on it. Furthermore, another event today is proof that this is not a book problem anymore, but a media problem in general. Sabrina Carpenter released a new album today and although I’m not a fan, I see a lot of talk about it in my social media feed. And this talk is not good. So, I decided to write an answer on Tasya’s discussion post, is the quality of media rapidly declining lately?

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted by Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Since April 2022, this meme is hosted by , Aria @ Book Nook Bits and since February 2025, Dini @ DiniPandaReads is the co-host. Let’s Talk Bookish is a meme where participants discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and share their love by visiting each other’s posts.

Prompts: Do you struggle to find releases that you are excited for? Or are anticipated releases more of a letdown in the end? Do you feel the quality of books (and media in general) is rapidly declining and the rise of social media and especially TikTok plays a vital part in this? How do you find out about books (or other media) that do resonate with you nowadays? What could be done to help increase the quality of books again?

Do you struggle to find releases that you are excited for? Or are anticipated releases more of a letdown in the end?

My answer to both questions is a whole-hearted yes. I indeed do struggle to find releases I’m excited for. Ever since the pandemic, I find myself being curious for releases rather than anticipating them. The books just don’t pique my interest. Besides, as I get older, I’m not that chronically online anymore like I was in school and later college. I have a job, a household to manage and other obligations. This is natural, it’s called adulting. I don’t have that much time to spend chronically online, and I value it less and less. I don’t care about social media trends and so forth. Blogging and bloghopping is an exception though, so is X and Bookstagram. I just scroll through my feeds, comment whenever I feel like and move on. This automatically results in not being in the loop too much with new releases. Moreover, when I do find a release I am eager to read, I often find myself disappointed in the end. They turn out not to be that good as I’d hoped for and maybe even expected. The only release so far I had been anticipating turning out great is Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid was a nice surprise, but I wasn’t really anticipating that one at first.

Do you feel the quality of books (and media in general) is rapidly declining and the rise of social media and especially TikTok plays a vital part in this?

Again, I do believe so. I’ve noticed quality of books, music and so forth rapidly declining ever since the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of social media as a result. Whereas I still read books released before 2020 with a great amount of joy, enjoying today’s releases is an exception rather than a given. Of course, there have been books that didn’t work for me either. There are newly published books that I still enjoy, but I have to really search for them. Okay okay, I do enjoy some popular romances, but when looking deeper into many releases, the tropification is real. It feels like authors rather tick off all the boxes in terms of both tropes and diversity in order to please the general public instead of paying attention to plot and character development. The books that are popular are so… blunt? Or not blunt, but shallow? At Surface level? Mediocre? Mid? Fill in the blanks. Maybe I’m too much off a critical reader due to my experience, but it’s very, very noticeable. The TikTokification is real.

When stretching this into other media, I notice the same for music. Today’s hits are boring, blending into one another and lacking creativity. This is especially noticeable in pop music. Take the new Sabrina Carpenter album for instance. I haven’t listened to it myself, but the reviews on my social media feeds tell me all I need to know. Most music seems to be created for TikTok purposes as well rather than as passion projects. I know, it’s impossible to please everyone as tastes differ, but the rapid decline of quality is pretty noticeable. TikTok has proven to be very popular because it’s absolutely not demanding. The content is short form which has taken a toll on people’s attention spans. Long form content, especially the ones you have to dig deeper into, is generally seen as too “difficult to consume”. Sometimes it’s true, but I like myself a good challenge. Of course, the particular product has to pique my interest. When taking it back to books, the burb has to speak to me first and foremost. The standards are pretty low nowadays, so the bar is set lower as a result. This gives the feeling that most media is similar to one another and creators are too afraid to create a product (which they probably are passionate about) that will stand out. I recognise I am generalizing here as there are certainly nuances to this topic.

How do you find out about books (or other media) that do resonate with you nowadays?

Honestly, by branching out and staying the heck away from TikTok. I’m not on there, never will be. I don’t listen to mainstream radio and my (music) tastes differ a bit from the general public. Actually, I was listening to a commercial, mainstream radio station earlier this afternoon and the Top 40 started playing. I was done after three songs, because they all sounded so generic and seemed to blend into one another. Of course, there are again exceptions to the rule, but these media products are hard to find. For music I therefore tend to stick to the alternative side such as indie and rock, or music from the earlier decades. I was a kid/adolescent in the 1990s (my birth decade), 2000s and 2010s, so I tend to remember and enjoy music from those decades. For books I heavily rely on what I find on book platforms other than TikTok and Instagram. I sometimes find a book I want to read on the latter one though. I branch out genre wise and tend to enjoy literary fiction much more these days. I prefer to read as diverse as possible. This doesn’t mean that I do never enjoy a popular song or book, but branching out is what works for me.

What could be done to help increase the quality of books again?

I want to stick purely to books for this question, because here’s where we, as book bloggers, come in. When I scroll through bookish social media, it’s the same books being talked about over and over. Most of them are white, neurotypical and CIS-gendered. I belong to all these groups, so there is nothing wrong with that. But I am tired. I am tired of hearing about the same books over and over, it’s becoming repetitive. I want to learn more, more about other cultures and marginalized groups. I therefore want to spotlight diverse books as well, alongside the books that are popular. In my opinion, book bloggers and their readers are willing and unafraid to branch out more than the social media crowd. Don’t get me wrong, you do you, but this doesn’t improve quality. If easy to consume books with lower quality keep proving to find a large audience and stay popular, authors tend to continue producing this kind of books. This won’t help in stopping the downfall of quality in books (or other media for that matter). So, shout about these books from the rooftops, on your blog, platforms as Goodreads and The Storygraph, and social media to show the general public that there is much more to discover.

Okay okay, enough of my yapping. I’m writing this post in Word, and I literally am on the third page in this document. So, now it’s your turn.

Do you notice the quality of books and other media declining? What do you think causes this? Do you think social media plays a vital row in this decline? What do you think can be done to stop this? Is it even possible to stop this? Let’s discuss in the comments!