I read a ton of books when I was young. I would take my little red wagon to the library and load it up with as many books as I could pull home, 20, 30, 40 or more. As the librarian made her way through my towering stack of books, I always had a moment of panic that she might cut me off like a bartender, withhold my selections and tell me "Go home, you've had enough!" I think that the limit was 50 books, but vaguely recall the librarian telling that the limit was whatever I could read in two weeks. I stopped myself at 50. Taking any more would look downright greedy.

When I came home, I would sort through the books and stack them in "to be read" order. I still do this when I have a stash of new books and enjoy it just as much. It's like planning a meal. First, start off with an appetizer (humor, graphic novel, pulp), followed by the soup course (ghost story, fairy tale, fantasy), fish course (memoir, food, travel), entree (literary novel, biography, nonfiction) and dessert (romance, chick lit, guilty pleasures) etc., striving for a balanced reading experience the way a chef strives to create the perfect complement of flavors and textures, sweets and savories.

Reading, however, has always been a private experience. It's just me and the world inside the book (I know it's a good one if I stop seeing the text on the page and see the characters instead). When it was over, I'd pick up the next book and plow through that, unless I paused for a day or two to enjoy a particularly tasty story whose flavor still lingered. Today, I might pass a book along to a friend with a general recommendation that it was awesome, or more her style than mine or vice versa, but try it anyway. The discussion ends there. So I was quite surprised to discover the enormous community of online book bloggers and reviewers when Ice Song was published and began making its way around the blogosphere.

Shelfari, Goodreads, Living Social and the numerous book blogs loving maintained by avid readers -- who knew? Readers' devotion to their favorite genres and authors astounds me. The depth and care typical of their analysis demonstrates a whole new way of absorbing and digesting stories--reading as a communal exercise. The open forum for reviews and the comments they generate transform reading from a solitary activity to a shared one--a DIY instant book club.

Whether or not I'll join the discussion is yet undecided. Call me old school--a book is a personal thing. Maybe I'm selfish in not wanting to share my experience with other, break it down into components and analyze its parts. I fear the magic would be lost.But maybe I'll be brave and try it, and discover my enjoyment enhanced by a shared appreciation, rather than diminished by too-close scrutiny.

(Man, that was like drawing blood from a stone. Now I can chuck my literary voice and tell you that my head is foggy 'cause those little germ machines that live with me brought suitcases full of rhinovirus home from school. That the rain is beating down and I'm distracted by cloud patterns and long for bed and laptop and warm choco chippers. That I'm considering buying a pizza with next week's gas money so I don't have to cook tonight -- and will worry about how to get to work later, like next week when I don't have any gas money. That I really need a hot toddy with honey and lemon and that today is definitely a five cups of tea day.)

Last night I confessed my fear of the sophomore curse to my very lovely and wonderfully encouraging friend, Gayle. It’s a nagging little anxiety, about the size of dust bunny, that’s been blowing around in my brain for a while now.

OK, I get that that the sophomore curse/slump hinges on the precedent that your freshman effort was wildly successful. Still, the fear haunts nearly every artist. Can I do it again? Am I a one-hit wonder?

It typically applies to bands, sports rookies and sometimes movie sequels, but the follow up effort can carry with it potent ju-ju. Sure, we read “Cold Mountain” or “A Million Little Pieces” but can you name the books the authors wrote in the wake of their big, splashy debuts? Here’s Bee Season author Myla Goldberg talking about the sophomore slump.

Ice Song received some really wonderful praise, and some rather not-nice critiques, all par for the course, of course. But overall, I feel fairly happy with the outcome. I can only imagine that the next book, Tattoo, will do even better because it will incorporate all the lessons learned from my virgin foray into publishing.

Instead of riding the downward slope from a glorious pinnacle of success, I’m still making the trek upwards to the top, so the pressure is much less than it would be had my first book been a bestseller. Mostly I’m just trying not to think about it. All those outside voices simply obscure the ones that really matter, the voices of my characters, and the gentle guidance of my muse.

Lit agent Nathan Bransford posited an interesting question on his blog: "When is writing unhealthy?

If writing makes you miserable, it's time to take a break from it, whether a short sabbatical or permanently abandoning the pen. However, asking writers to evaluate their own mental health is like asking the emperor to show you his new duds. Here are two takes on compulsory writing:

Listen to an NPR podcast about hypergraphia by the author of "The Midnight Disease."

From the Electronic Book Review:
"Kundera has the perfect term for this sort of writing - Graphomania. As Kundera describes it, graphomania is not "the mania to create a form," that is, not a mania to create challenging new aesthetic forms and media, but rather a mania "to impose one's self on others" through already established modes of "received ideas" and pervasive non-thought [ idées reçues  ]. Graphomania reflects a singular neurosis common to modernity: namely, the need to have an audience, "a public audience of unknown readers." Graphomaniacs aspire to make stories out of their lives and thus presume to do a lot of people good. Writing four love letters a day is not graphomania; xeroxing your love letters so that they may be published one day is."
Read the complete article