Navigating self-doubt, staying consistent on a niche and staying true to yourself: the birth of my book newsletter

This may come as a surprise to some of you, if you've been following me on Vocal consistently, but my very first article that I have published online as part of my blogging journey was a book review, written in Italian and published on Medium.

The novel in question was The Vegetarian by Han Kang, one of my all-time favourite novels to this day.

At the time, I was trying to enter Medium Partner Program and, therefore, I needed to publish at least one article and gather enough followers in order to be eligible.

That book had sparked in me a whole stream of ideas and theories thanks to its clever usage of different perspective to reflect on themes such as the objectification of women and the bond between two sisters.

Years later, in 2023, I have translated the review into English and published it on Vocal as well. You can find it here:

In spite of this, I have never really considered myself a bookworm, I even quit reading as a hobby while I was in high school, and it took me a while to fully embrace and accept my own taste and pace.

I have talked about my journey in this story below:

Fast-forward to 2025: as I complete my master's degree, I finally have more free time to fully dedicate to my hobbies, including both reading and writing (or blogging, if you prefer).

I commit to reading one book a month and, as I progress, I start finding out other interesting stories that sparked a generous amount of thoughts on the widest variety of topics, from dating to anime.

However, putting those thoughts out didn't feel right. I felt like I was not "seasoned" enough as a reader to have book reviews as one of my niches. Moreover, in the meantime one of my acquaintances had also started an Instagram account dedicated to books, centered mainly on young adult, fantasy novels and, while I am beyond proud of all her achievements, I also could not help but feel like a copycat for wanting to start a book-centered project as well.

That was until I remembered a video from TheWizardLiz where she stated that the feeling that we are doing something that has already been done is limiting, because we could still add something unique to make our project stand out.

In my case, what could have been more unique than my own, turbulent experience in discovering my taste in books, and my slow reading pace?

These two elements have created the name The Slow Readress: I am a slow reader, but I am also a female reader who has a strong preference for female authors of different backgrounds.

The reviews will focus more on what we can learn from every novel rather than the most technical aspects of the narration, because I don't always read the original versions and such aspects could differ in the translations.

Since I want to encourage slow reading, I am publishing one review at the end of every month.

In the future, these could be alternated by other articles about reading, but the overall intention remains to never get braggy about how many books I read, and to avoid being pedantic about how many books you should read.

If you've reached this point of the article and are curious about checking it out, you can subscribe at the link below:

Subscribing is free, but you can also leave a pledge if you want (completely optional!).

To conclude this article, I wanted to thank the Vocal community: had I not been here, I would have never practiced consistency with my writing and, without your feedback, I would have never built up the confidence to try out Substack.

Do you also have other platforms besides Vocal? Share your journey in the comments (and your profiles, if you wish)!