Lost in a Good Book

As a whole 2022 wasn’t the great success I have had in the past. I completely forgot to do my Book Bingo – not even as in I forgot to keep track like before, more like I didn’t even make it in the first place. I did create my Top 5 list so that was something, and while I didn’t have a great posting year, I did try hard to come back by the end before the busyness of the holiday season took over.

I have been think a lot this past year about my blog and what I’m doing with it. I keep thinking if I haven’t got the energy to write the reviews I should stop, or find a way to scale back. But the problem with that is when I do actually force myself to write reviews and make posts I enjoy it. I love telling you about the books I’m reading and sharing them in hopes you’ll read and fall in love with too. Even the bad ones I can give my opinions and maybe sway you one way or another if you weren’t sure about reading something. I like this blog. I like having a place to share thoughts about my reading habits that isn’t on social media because I’m not the best at that. It’s not like I wasn’t reading amazing books either. I read some incredible books that I want to yell about so fingers crossed tapping into that passion will get me through.

The problem is, and I think it’s been mentioned enough times, the past few years have been hard. Hard for everyone and for a myriad of reasons. The reason I officially stopped in 2021 was because everything was getting too much and this was something I could step back from to make sure everything else ran smoothly. I genuinely didn’t know how hard it would be to come back to. The want was there, the desire, but actually making myself do it took more effort than I knew.

I have worked out that if I want to keep this going I need to prioritise it, and find the joy again in writing reviews. I still don’t think I will be able to do review requests again because being inundated with emails filled me with stress, and I felt pressured to say yes to everyone and in the end it fell apart. But I hope I am still sharing some lesser known books with you alongside the familiar and popular titles. One day I do want to return to them because honestly some of my favourite books were discovered through people putting their faith in me and asking for a review.

There’s good news in amongst all this retrospection. This year I am celebrating my tenth anniversary and I have two giveaways to celebrate. I will be doing my regular giveaway, but I will also be doing a destash of my shelves like I did a few years ago with my Loved Loot collection. I have been pruning my shelves of books I got in giveaways, bought with good intentions but never read, listened to the audio and don’t need the hard copy, books I read once and don’t need, even a few books I bought with good intentions at writer’s festivals and never touched. More details will follow but that is one of my plans for this year.

So that is all to come. I am putting a lot of faith that this year will not have quite so many…bumps in the road shall we say as the previous three years because this always brought me great joy and I hope in a small way it does for you too.

It’s been 84 years but I’ve finally returned to my blog. This isn’t even my first post back because the blogiversary had to be addressed (have you got your entries in yet?) but this is essentially the first post back after a long, planned but unplanned break.

I closed the tab on my computer that has essentially been open for the past 8 years. It was a break and one I did not plan on taking for so long (see proud self-proclaiming ‘I’ll be gone for a month’ post), but it was clearly needed but now with my blogiversary I knew I couldn’t let it go by. I needed that to get me back into gear because while last year I told myself over and over that I had to come back, it has only been through January that I’ve felt I’ve wanted to come back. So I got my blogiversary out and it’s kick-started something because I have that familiar feeling of wanting to write about books that I’m reading, want to share with you all my thoughts and recommend some good reads and lament about those that didn’t live up to my expectations. Which goes to show that I still love doing this, I haven’t been doing it out of habit or obligation, I still have that desire to share and talk about books and reading. So while the break was unexpected, it didn’t result in me never coming back again.

I am going to start off slow, mainly because I have not got any reviews in reserve so I’m going to focus on my wrap ups from last year and all the beginning of the year stuff I usually post late Dec/early Jan, and I will go from there. Baby steps to begin with but enthusiastic baby steps all the same.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet. I know you all may have noticed that after a relatively steady posting schedule through April I have dropped off the map. There is a good reason for this which I won’t go into the full details because it’s long and personal, but even with all the Covid drama around, apparently I still felt the need to create some different drama for myself.

All intentions of writing my mass backlog of reviews for May has failed and as I’m still in a wonky kinda state within myself I hope I can get to these eventually. I am still reading a lot, audiobooks are a godsend, Animal Crossing New Horizons is a godsend, and doing them both together is fabulous when you can’t do much else.

I still plan to honour my announcement on my Facebook page about offering a giveaway for my followers there so if you’ve ever thought about liking my page now’s the time to do it. I only need to find the energy to create it and away we go.

I’m still reading, multiple books per day sometimes which is amazing, flying through some great books, rushing through some not so great ones. I miss being able to sit down and type out my thoughts immediately after but I have got many notes at the ready for when I am able to sit at my computer and get a proper post organised so hopefully that’s enough. In the meantime, if you’re after some more recommendations, feel free to browse the tags or categories and maybe you’ll find a new book to love from an old review.

As for next month, I hope to see you here in June. I am looking at dedicating the entire month to Pride and various LGBTQIA books I have read in the past and plan to discover. I have been looking forward to this since last year so I am really hoping I’ll be up for the challenge.

Until then, you can follow me on Goodreads to see what I have been reading or let me know what you’ve been reading in the comments. If you want to vent about isolation go for it, if you want to talk about Animal Crossing I’m up for that as well. As always I’m up for recommendations, at the moment if there’s an audio version I’ll be super grateful but if not, it may find a place on my growing TBR pile.

Putting my best foot forward and reminding myself this is only temporary, I will see you all on the other side.