Finding Blog Direction

2021–there’s something aesthetically pleasing about the combination of numbers that symbolize this calendar year. Perhaps it’s just because it’s not 2020. Entirely possible. Regardless, I like the look of it. And I also want to like the look of this blog.

It’s been kind of depressing, sporadic, and feeling low-reward for a while. And I hate that feeling. I want to want to write posts. I think the most excited I was about writing posts last year was in the spring when I had just finished up my final year of my degree from home and had literally nothing else to do. The novelty wore off as the year and the pandemic wore on. But while I’m not great at starting new things, I compensate by also not knowing when to quit; I am not giving up on this little blogspot yet.

However, I am giving up on my original self-imposed injunction that this not become a book review blog. I felt for a long time that book reviews were a waste of time because I could easily fall into reading reviews compulsively regardless of whether I was interested, and it really took time away from me actually pursuing things I wanted to read. But now I’m coming to appreciate honest, comprehensive book reviews and their value for making people aware of and exposed to new books. It’s also a shorter time commitment than reading an entire book to tell whether you would like it or not. And I’m all for saving time for books I’ll really value.

I already started posting the odd solo book review between regular posts last year, and while I still don’t want to exclusively do reviews, I’m going to do them more regularly. I’m reading the books, why not share the experience? I’m making it a personal goal to write some kind of review for every book I read this year which I will then post to Goodreads and/or The StoryGraph (a developing Goodreads-esque site I just got onto). I won’t necessarily post every single one to this blog, but I think one every week is reasonable for my reading pace. It might actually be a bit ambitious to maintain that, but I’m setting the bar high.

I also hope to finish my 100 book suggestions series. If I don’t finish it soon, the list will evolve to incorporate books I’ve read since I first made the list and then it will disrupt all my neat categories. So I’m going to get it done. I also have more ideas for my Books Inspired By series of posts where I review books that are based on a classic or the works of particular author. I had fun doing those and intend to keep doing some books comparison posts when I can. I enjoy making connections between books, their character dynamics, and tropes. It’s not as exciting for me to reduce my thoughts about a book to its own text in isolation without relating it to my collective media knowledge. So I like to articulate them in the context of other works that I can compare or associate them with.

I have also given some thought to consistently participating in book tags/memes. I’ve done a few here and there, but I would like to pick one or two to do on a regular basis. I haven’t yet decided which ones, but it’s something I’m looking into to keep the content and creative juices flowing.

And, I love book quotes. And author quotes. And about any other type of quote as long as it’s good. So I want to start sharing quotes I’ve saved from books I’ve read–beyond the odd book quote I mash together with a pop culture reference to make a “meme.” I don’t yet know what that might look like, but I would like to create some type of format for quote posts. Maybe a series, maybe just odd quotes on certain topics, who knows. Would a quote a day be something anyone would read? It would create a clutter of short posts, but as my sister so kindly points out, I can be very long winded. Maybe the contrast would be refreshing.

And in the interest of keeping it short, that’s about the last thing I have to say. I hope I can bring back the energy and passion and infuse that into my posts. Here’s to another year!