Are you a book lover? So many of us in Rappler are! And in our team of writers at BrandRap, we would always find ourselves chatting about the books we’re reading or recommending books that we think our teammates would enjoy or find useful.

That’s how #RapplerReads was born – out of our big love for reading. We want to have a platform where we could share this love for reading with more people and connect with fellow bookworms. And to be honest, we also want to find reading buddies to help us get out of the occasional (and very normal) reading slump.

But what is #RapplerReads exactly? It’s like a book club but to be part of it, you don’t need to register or anything like that. You can join from wherever you are. 

What we’ll do is decide on a theme of the books that we’ll be reading each month. In December, for example, since this is our pilot month, we want to put the spotlight on Filipino authors around the world. We will be reading books like Mixed Plate: An All-American Combo by Jo Koy, Never Have I Ever: Stories by Isabel Yap, The Son of Good Fortune by Lysley Tenorio, I Like Wearing Rainbows by Agay Llanera, and more. 

We’ll help you get started by putting out a list of book recommendations at the start of the month – which also includes the books we’ll be reading – and where to get them, too. You can choose to read a book from our list or choose one yourself, it’s up to you.

Throughout the month, we’ll be writing essays about the books we’ve read, what we thought of it, what we’ve learned from it, and the kind of people we think should read it, too. But maybe we’re not going to call it a book review because we’re not critics in any way. We’re just a bunch of book lovers who like to talk about books. We’d also like our not-book-reviews to be able to speak even to the most casual of readers who only want to read for fun and to relieve stress – this is what reading books is all about anyway.

At the end of each month, we will be asking our RapplerReaders to share the book they’ve read and their thoughts about it via social media using the hashtag #RapplerReads. We will be choosing the most compelling ones and create another book recommendation list by our RapplerReaders for other fellow RapplerReaders so everyone can join the fun.

From time to time, we will be writing articles about good reading habits, raiding bookshelves, or interviewing authors, too! So that’s also something to watch out for.  

For now, let’s do our #RapplerReads! – Rappler.com