Are Wattpad reading lists private? No. The whole point of making a reading list on Wattpad (according to the company — I realize you’re asking because you have something else in mind), is to share the story. To show others what you liked or loved. To get folks to read something along with you or, even, to set a trend for what others might read next. They want you to create community around a given story. That may be stupid or silly in your mind, but that’s what they’re after. It’s like Spotify playlists, honestly, but as if only the social component existed: books as social media and nothing else. 

I get it. 

You want to sort your stories as if they’re on a bookshelf so you can keep track of them, organizing what you liked or didn’t like, or (let’s be really honest here) what you liked that you don’t want others to know you read. If you’ve already done it, you can still edit or delete a reading list, just like you can add or remove stories, rename and share it, sort the items on the list or the lists in your set. 

But since the reading lists cannot go private — since they appear as recommendations on your profile for everyone that isn’t blocked or muted — we need to talk about that last motive. 

Why don’t you want others to know what you’ve read? 

If you’re confident you should have read it and that it was good for your soul, a beautiful book, and spoke to the truth of the world, then you shouldn’t hide it at all. Truth will come to the surface anyways, beautiful will prevail and emerge in the darkest corners of the world, and goodness stands in the teeth of evil. Why not join up with what’s really real and share what helped you? Be brave, to the good thing, don’t be embarrassed: share it.

Of course, it might not be shame.

It might be guilt.

That is you’re reading something that actually damaged your soul, that actually tried to trick you into believing lies (I don’t mean fiction, I mean the truth of the themes of a work of fiction), that got you to do something wrong, or that warped and twisted your own inner beauty out of proportion. 

If that’s the case — if you know it was wrong for you — maybe, just maybe, don’t collect it. Tell a close friend what it was, have them forgive you for it, and steer clear of books like that.

I can’t be your conscience. 

But I can tell you two things: privacy helps us grow safely so that we can share what was good, but there are some things that should be exposed within us because it was morally wrong to take part in. 

Consider both. 

Share the good and purge the evil. And I can’t tell you what that is.

Only you can self-censor.

Are Wattpad reading lists private?

No.

But then again, some things are more important than that.

What do you think? Tell me in the comments.

---

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash