Regrets of A Blogger

Have you ever written something that you wish you hadn’t? After two years of blogging, I’ve put into words quite a few thoughts, opinions and reading plans. However, some of them are no longer true. My major writing regrets are not related with book reviews or ratings. Generally, I wish I hadn’t said that I was going to read or buy specific books. I feel like, in a way, I may be betraying someone’s expectations, although I’m pretty sure no one besides me remembers that I wrote certain things.

Last year, I published a post about the books featured in the 2017 Man Booker Prize longlist and selected the ones that I wanted to read. But, almost a year later and after reading more reviews on them, I realised that I had changed my mind and no longer have any desire to read some of them, because they don’t appeal to me after all. That is the case of Days Without End by Sebastian Barry and 4321 by Paul Auster.

While revealing some of the books that I took from my shelves last year, I got carried away and said that I was going to buy the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, reason why I was giving away my copy of Hamlet. Afterwards, I came to my senses and realised that I would never ever read all Shakespeare’s works, mainly because I have no interest at all in some of them. I just want to read a couple more plays. Thus, I’ve decided against buying a book featuring all his works, seeing that I’d never read them. The worst thing about all this is that I don’t own a copy of Hamlet any longer and will now have to buy a new one.

Whenever I write a post about my favourite books from a certain category, I’m pretty certain about my choices and almost never regret them afterwards. That was not the case of the one about my favourite books by Portuguese authors. Soon after publishing it, I was already regretting having included A Lua de Joana by Maria Teresa Maia Gonzalez on it. Although I adored it when I read it as a teenager and still remember it fondly, it isn’t amongst my favourites anymore and, to be honest, neither was it when I wrote that post. It just has a special place in my heart.

Could I edit those posts so they would be more representative of my current thoughts? Yes, but I won’t! People have already read them, and it’s also completely normal for us to change our minds. It’s just strange how blogging makes me overthink something as normal as no longer thinking or wanting to do something that I did in the past.