Reviewing Delays

Question for fellow book bloggers: is there a point where it's been too long to review something?

Basically, I want to review everything that I read. Not just like I feel like I should or stuff like that, but that I actually want to. But as is probably obvious, I have not kept up a rapid pace when it comes to reviewing.

Me for the last couple months

I've kept on top of ARC reviews but stuff that I just read for funsies is...yeah.

I have a running list of all of the books I have read (as you may know from all of my reading stat posts) and I keep track of which books I still have to review. The oldest one is Grotesque which I read back in July. JULY. That is like 8 months ago.

Is there a point where you move on? Or no, should I press on and get around to reviewing all those older books (even though I'm clearly not reviewing it right now and am instead writing this).

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to be very productive. And by that I mean watch Criminal Minds reruns and play sudoku

How long between the reading and the reviewing?

She forgot post-its don't require staples...

Normally when I write a review I have just finished reading the book. I may have recently started the next one, but the first book is still fresh in my mind. Not this time. My computer vacation meant that I had reading time without immediate writing time and thus I'm doing these reviews* after some time has passed. I know a lot of people let some time pass between the reading and the writing to let the book percolate and really gather their thoughts. This sounds very mature and intelligent and a sure way to get well thought-out, well-rounded post. I never do this and I don't think I have the chops to. I am almost comically absent-minded** and out-of-sight-out-of-mind is entirely true for me.

So what do you do? Do you have to get your thoughts down immediately? Do you let some time pass? Maybe you write down your initial thoughts, put it aside and then after some time has passed write a review? What do you do if you end up way behind on your writing?

*This post began with me writing a review of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and ended up being this. Because procrastinating on writing by writing something else is a special level of avoiding the responsibilities I have put on myself.

**Unless the topic is obscure pop culture references. I am all about those because my head is jammed with them instead of actual facts. Means I rock at bar trivia and can't for the life of me remember what I just walked into the kitchen for.

Why do we (book) blog?

The Reading Ape has recently written a whole host of posts* about why do we blog, what's the purpose of book blogging, where is book blogging going and if you haven't already, you need to start reading those entries because they are fantastic. Most recently he's posed Eight Questions about the State and Future of Book Blogging and figured I like my opinions so I'll post my responses. And I'll post them on my in own blog rather than the comments for a couple reasons: it's what everyone else is doing (blogging peer pressure!), I don't want to have this giant comment with a lot of my rambling taking up his blog space, and then selfishly I can have another post up here and thus (maybe) drive more traffic here. So there you go: blogging is a lot like high school. Please don't ask me to finish that analogy though. I'm done intro-rambling, so now onto the questions

1. What does book blogging do best?
Book blogging offers a casual way to review and discuss books, without the pretentious trappings of some of the established reviewers in publications like NYTimes or academic papers. Not to say either of those are bad or should be done away with, but they already have their place and book blogging is the amateur's response to wanting something different.

2. If you write a book blog, why do you?
I started my blog after I complained one too many times to Boyfriend that my English degree was being wasted and he suggest I start writing. He'd been suggesting I write some fiction for awhile, but that seemed so daunting after not writing anything other than emails for so long. He suggested a blog and I like books so I went with that. I started the blog initially as a means to drive discussion about books, like a reading group online but that never really worked out so I moved into discussing bookish things and discuss/reviewing books as I'm reading them.

3. What do you think the future of book blogging is?
Book blogging seems to be growing and certain blogs gaining the popularity/legitimacy (whichever publisher's go for) to have author's reaching out to blogs for book reviews. I'm sure this means more blogs will be taken over by publishing houses or just in general become "respected" reviewers, like those I mentioned in question 1. Essentially becoming traditional media instead of social media. But enough blogs, even those very popular ones with lots of quality reviews, will remain within the social sphere. At least I hope this will be the case. Awesome blogs, please don't leave me with the I-post-nothing-but-memes crowd.

4. What do your favorite book bloggers do?
My favorite blogs have well thought out, engaging, interesting posts that are either reviews or a discussion about some book-related topic. Some do take part in the memes (they can be fun) but they don't make it the primary point of their blog. And because they're a blog, the tone is conversational, it's casual and my favorites are usually funny or at least make me smile. If I read a book review from one of my favorite bloggers, I feel like I'm getting a book recommendation from a friend instead of a reviewer. 

5. If you could tell all book bloggers one thing, what would it be?
When you post things that you don't care about because you think it will get you more traffic, your readers can tell. And then they'll leave and you'll have a bunch of readers that are following you because of stuff you don't even care about. Quit it. Write about what you care about in a way that will reach the audience you want and ignore the followers number.

6. If you could change one thing about book blogging, what would it be?
Book blogging is so diverse, I don't know that there's anything I'd change about it overall. I don't read the reviews that just consist of "ZOMG I loved this book sooooooo much and you should go out and read it right now kthxbai" but I suppose other people do so I won't start wishing those away. I don't like the all-memes, all-the-time blogs, but again, they have an audience so if that's what they want, go for it. There are quality book blogs out there, even if I have to do some searching to find them and I'm happy that you can find pretty much any genre or tone you want. 

7. How do you think book blogging fits into the reading landscape?
For me personally, blogging has expanded what I read. I've challenged myself more than I think I would if I wasn't blogging, reading classics alongside Christopher Moore and Bill Bryson. There are so many different reading challenges out there that I'm not necessarily taking part of, but plenty of people seem to that open up new works that may have gone untouched if the reader wasn't given this little push from the blogging world.

8. What about your own book blogging would you like to do better/differently?
I want to improve my own reviewing or discussion topics. I want to dig deeper into the text of a book and put more time into the posts I write. Sometimes I rush through posts and I'm sure they could use another editing pass or two before I thrust them upon the public. I like posting a couple times a week and I'm also lazy, hence the superficiality of some of the posts.  

If you have have opinions on these questions, and I'm sure you do, you should post your answers and head over to The Reading Ape to let him know.

*Rhymes make me giggle.

The title of this post gets the song "Why Rock?" by The Aquabats stuck in my head, which is why I chose it. Why do we blog? (Blog!) Why not? I think I need more sleep. Or coffee.

Updated to make easier to match question with the answer.

How do you pick who to follow?

I have a blogging question for anyone that stumbles upon this post: how do you decide who to follow?

So many blogs...

I generally take part in 2 weekly memes, the Tuesday Top Ten and The Literary Blog Hop.  I like these two because they post interesting questions and give me a chance to find new blogs that I otherwise may not have come across.  But I've found myself going through a regular routine while looking at fellow bloggers' posts and I wonder what other people do to figure out who they want to follow and who to skip.  There are only so many hours in the day so there isn't time to really read in depth many posts from each blogger, so how do you choose?

Here's my general method:

• I go to the site.  If there is a lot of blinking, sparkling dealies, if there are a million buttons and badges and links and lists along both sides of the post, if the background is too busy to read the text, I skip it.  I'm sure I'm missing some blogs I'd really enjoy but I can't get past these things.  Sorry.
• If going to the site doesn't induce an epileptic seizure, I'll read the post for that particular meme.  If I really like the post, I'll sometimes start following at this step.  
• More often than not, if I like what I read I'll skim the other posts on the homepage or even the first couple pages.  If I see a post with a topic I think is particularly interesting or about a book I either enjoyed or want to read, I'll stop and read those posts more closely.  A blog doesn't have to read and write about the same books I read (that would be boring) but I like a blog that talks about books I do like.  And this is my nice way of saying if a book is all YA, I'm going to skip it. There is a large audience for those blogs so at least I know they aren't wanting of fans.

Once I get through all of these steps, I'll follow.  Some blogs I follow more closely than others but I am trying to get better about commenting regularly.  So what about you?  How do you decide who to follow?  Are you far less intense about deciding who to follow?