Wow. My "resolution" (if you can call it that) to update this blog more completely backfired. Three months into a new year and I've only got about one proper post up. Yeah, I'm not very good at the follow-through stuff. The planning and promising I can do. The actual execution I skip out on. But, I will seriously TRY, I promise...er I guess that doesn't hold much wait anymore does it? Didn't think so.
What I actually wanted to write about: I was going through my blog and reading all my past reviews and stuff and I noticed that they weren't very good at all. They lack good writing and a good voice and interesting observations. Since I critque those very same things in the reviews that I do, it seems a bit hypocritical to me that the reviews themselves lack the same qualities I criticize books for.
Then I went further back and realized that I used to do a lot of just...ME blog posts. Stuff about my life. To me, those were considerably better written. They were just more interesting and candid and just...real. I know so many "book bloggers" take the professional route and just post reviews on books and have a clear system down on what they will and won't write. But I'm not looking to be a professional. I didn't start this blog to get any professional recognition. I started it because I love reading books, I love talking about books, I love writing, and I love talking about writing. And since I used to chew my sister's ear off after I gave her in-depth analyses on every single book I finished before I started this blog, I figured it was time to meet new people that I could share my thoughts with. But recently I've noticed that those thoughts haven't been very ME. I mean, they're honest. I do say which books I liked and which books I didn't like but it's about HOW I say it. So many of the reviews I've done have been less "this is me and this is what I thought" and more "this is someone who is trying really hard to construct a proper review." In my case, that means trying to fit as many writing cliches into one post as humanly possible.
New resolution: I'm going to TRY to write down my thoughts on books rather than try to type up reviews like I'm working on a magazine or something. Reading my blog, I don't want it to feel like anybody could've written this, I want it to feel like I wrote this at one point in my life. And I want it to be clear to you, the wonderful person taking the time out to read this ridiculous post, that Sara wrote this. That is, if I ever get around to actually WRITING something. I guess I gotta work on my original resolution before I start making new ones, right?
