Does Reviewing Books Take Away The Pleasure Of Reading?

After a great summer of reading roughly 13-14 books a month, September saw a huge reading slump. However, as a book blogger, small though I may be, having a reading slump is inconvenient and annoying because I won't have any reviews to post and therefore it will affect the readership of my blog. I feel a pressure to be reading more when in reality I just want to take it slow. To a normal person reading 3-4 books a month is pretty good going, but to a book review it is not. I am lucky in a way that because I had such a great summer of reading I have been able to have posts queued up however, they are running out and with it my enthusiasm for reading.

I never wanted reading to become a chore because it is something that I do for fun and to relax me, however, recently, probably through fault of my own I have been feeling a bit like a failure for not being able to read as much, both from being super busy and from just being lazy I guess. So that brings up the question of this post: Does reviewing books take away the pleasure of reading?

I do love this little blog and although I have a very small readership in comparison to the large bloggers and booktubers, I take pride in making it the best I can. Further pressure is put on when receiving books for review from publishers, something that makes me very proud but also very stressed, because I don't always have time to read the books before they come out, either because they aren't what I feel like reading at the moment or just because I am simply too busy to read. By not reading the books before the review date it seems rude to be taking the books without giving something back to the company.

All in all, I am not sure this post makes any sense at all, I am also not sure it even matters, I feel like I am putting pressure on myself for something that no one even cares about, I don't have a big readership so they won't care if I don't post for a while, so why do I feel so guilty about not reading?

If anyone has any thoughts about this topic talk to me on twitter @reviewswithemma I'd love to know your thoughts.