Some Things Around Here Need to Change...

You may have noticed that I’ve not been blogging much lately. I’ve lost count of the number of reviews I’ve started and then given up on half way through, unable to find anything to say that even interests myself, let alone anyone else. We’re more than three quarters through the year and I’ve achieved none of my reading challenge goals, nor am I going to, and that’s starting to get to me. Blogging has never been a burden to me, it never will be. I won’t let it because this is what I do for fun, so I’m making some changes

1.       I am no longer going to put any pressure on myself to review everything I read, or even most of the things I read. I plan to do a lot more mini reviews, and if I really have nothing to say about a book I will just mention it in my Saturday posts and say whether I liked or disliked it.

2.      I’m going to do a weekly Saturday post. It might be about books, it might not, but I do miss blogging. I miss the rhythm of regularly writing and getting everything out there, and I miss the interaction, so I’d like that back please!

I’ve been a totally crap host of The Telling Tales Challenge this year. There will be a link up post going up tomorrow for the first time in three months, and I will keep hosting the challenge because I love it. I will probably keep running it in 2014 as well, but (drumroll please) aside from that and The Classics Club, I am, from this very moment dropping out of all of the challenges I’ve signed up for. No more pressure, no more lists, no more feeling like I’ll never get to read the books on my shelf because of all the other books I ‘have’ to read.

Today we went for a wander round Waterstone’s before Benji’s bedtime, and it was just us and the staff in there and it was so quiet and relaxing. Rhys took Benji off to the kids section and read him The Very Hungry Caterpillar and played with Gruffalo hand puppets, and I just browsed, and this will probably sound ridiculous but I was so happy. I kept thinking this is my place, why have I stayed away so long? It’s been ages since I just browsed in any book shops really, without having to worry about what Benji was doing and if he needed to eat or whatever, and then I went to find him and he was giggling his head off to The Very Hungry Caterpillar finger puppet book and a noisy book about farms and it makes me so happy to see that he’s growing into a love of books just like I have, and I feel that I’ve lost that a bit lately and I’d like to find it again.

I’m making another list, which will be on a separate page in the blog, just so I can keep track of it, and it’s a list of all the unread books I have in my house. From now on I plan to read from my shelves and from the library. I think the library (and the Ninja Book Swaps throughout the year!) will give me the freedom to read things that I really have to read right now, and reading from my shelves will let me read all those books I just had to read right then when I bought them a year or two or five ago.

I feel better and more relaxed just from having written this post.  You’ll probably notice an increase in personal and craft related posts around here, as well as participation in memes and suchlike. There will still be reviews, of course, but only of the books I felt really strongly about probably. Keep your fingers crossed that this works for me :-)