2019 Mid-Year Resolutions’ Evaluation

We are almost midway through 2019. Thus, this is the perfect time to evaluate if I’m fulfilling my bookish resolutions for this year. A couple of them are vaguer than usual, so it may not be easy to come to objective conclusions.

When it comes to numbers, my desire is to read at least 35 books. I’ve finished 17 so far and am halfway through another. It seems likely that I will achieve my goal, particularly because I’ve already read more than half of the total number of pages that I’ve read last year, according to Goodreads. I may end up reading less books than in 2018, but it looks like I’ll have read more pages.

My second goal is to reread at least one of the books that I remember as old favourites, meaning books that I constantly mention as being favourites of mine but that I’ve read both before having this blog and started using a rating system. I’m currently rereading O Ano da Morte do Ricardo Reis (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis in the English translation) by José Saramago.

My Blog’s Search Terms

I’ve recently read a post on Ally Writes Things in which she unveiled some of her blog’s search terms. That aroused my curiosity to take a look at my own. Most people visit my blog via the WordPress reader, but search engines are also responsible for a meaningful number of views (in the context of my tiny blog). Although the vast majority of the search terms are unknown, some aren’t. I selected a few that I consider interesting and will now try to guess which posts those visitors read.

 

“The role of the miniaturist in the miniaturist”

I’ve mentioned The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton countless times on my blog, so I’m not surprised that someone visited it after searching the terms above. They probably read my review in which I touched on the possible reason behind the title, despite the miniaturist not being one of the main characters.

 

“Sophia de Mello Breyner poems in English”

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen is one of my favourite poets. I haven’t reviewed any of her poetry collections yet, but I’ve mentioned them on an author spotlight that I wrote about her. That must have been the post that the person who searched for these terms ended up reading. In case you’re interested an anthology of her poetry has been translated into English. It’s titled The Perfect Hour, if I’m not mistaken.

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 those 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 myself remembers that I wrote certain things.

Last year, I published a post about the books featured on 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 with 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. Most of all because I have no interest at all in some of them. I just want to read a couple of 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.

My 2-Year Experience as a Book Blogger

Last Sunday was my second-year blog anniversary! So, I decided to look back on my book blogging experience and share some thoughts about it. To be honest, when I first started blogging, I wasn’t 100% sure about what I was doing and had no real expectations. I had written content for websites before (just not about books) and had tried to start a travel blog some years previously (which was quite silly, seeing that unfortunately I don’t really travel that much), thus I knew my way around content management systems. But what was I going to write about?

At the time, I was watching loads of BookTube videos and had just started reading some book reviews. That made me want to discuss the books I was reading with other people. But, as my friends are not massive readers, I couldn’t really do that in real life on a regular basis. It was then that I decided to start this blog! Some months before I had read The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton and had some thoughts to share. So, my earliest post was a review of that book, when probably it would have been wiser to write an introductory post first.

Before writing that review, I came up with a kind of structure for the blog. I wrote an ‘about’ page and established a set of categories that I thought encompassed the types of posts I was planning to write – reviews, favourites and author spotlights. Soon I realised that I needed a new category which embodied features on a variety of subjects that didn’t fit in with the other ones. It was then born the ‘other bookish content’ category. After that, I also started doing book hauls and, more recently, have introduced a new category focusing on bookish places.