Sunday Post #1

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share News. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog. This is your news post, so personalize it! Include as much as you want or as little. Be creative, it can be a vlog or just a showcase of your goodies. Link up once a week or once a month, you decide. Anyone can participate as long as you… Enter your link on Sunday’s post, link back to Kimberly’s blog and visit others who have linked up.

Today marks the first time I’m participating in The Sunday Post. I’ve seen it many times but never felt like I would have much to say, so I never joined in. One of my goals for 2020 is to become more disciplined about things—for my blog, that means posting regularly, catching up on unfinished/overdue reviews of books I’ve already read (while staying current with reviews for 2020 reads), and finally, to interact more with other bloggers. Taking part in this weekly meme feels like a great way to help accomplish that blogging goal, and I’m excited to join in.

On the Blog

For the very first time (I think), I posted something every single day for a week. It felt like an amazing accomplishment. For various reasons, it was a struggle for me to post anything consistently in 2019—some months, I didn’t post anything at all—and it felt like I’d lost my blogging mojo completely. It feels great to kick off 2020 with renewed motivation and a true desire to write reviews again.

Posts for the week of December 29 through January 4:

December 29: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
December 30: The Dilemma by B.A. Paris
December 31: The Best (and worst) Books I Read in 2019
January 1: Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera
January 2: Followers by Megan Angelo
January 3: Westering Women by Sandra Dallas
January 3: First Line Fridays
January 4: Stacking the Shelves

On Reading

I kicked off the week with by starting a reread of Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon—continuing on with my decision to finally review all eight books in the Outlander series. (Perhaps I’ll even review the accompanying short stories, as well!) Mindful of my reviewing goals for the new year, I set it aside temporarily in order to read some ARCs I have for books that will be published this month, and started reading Westering Women on January 1st. Sadly, this book turned out to be my first stinker of the year. Luckily, I finished it rapidly. On January 2, I moved on to The Good Mother by Cathryn Grant. Holy guacamole, what a book it has been so far! I can’t wait to finish reading it so I can share my thoughts with all of you.

(Outlander #2)

On Organization

I mentioned in another post that I’d been making changes with the look of my blog. I’ve got that pretty much wrapped up. What I’m doing now is getting the (blog) social media accounts organized. The main focus of that my Pinterest account. Since starting this blog, I’ve changed the look of my review graphics—switching to a single image showing both the book cover and author(s), rather than separate images in the post—as well as the look of the highly recommended badge I use, so that it matches the new overall look of the blog. Now, in order to have a uniform look, I’m having to go through all my pins for book reviews: delete the obsolete images, and repin with the new ones. Me being me, I decided I should also create new boards, sorted by year, rather than leave them in a single board called Book Reviews. I love the idea of having it all properly sorted, but damn… it’s going to take a lot longer to get it all done!

Another item on my organization list is to add all my reviews to Bookbub. I signed up last year, so very few of my reviews are actually on the site. My plan is to add them gradually, so it won’t feel too overwhelming a process. With 252 reviews on the blog so far, it’s going to take a while to get them copied over!

On Possibilities

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about discussion posts. Some of the most interesting posts I see from other book bloggers are discussion posts (and y’all have come up with some great topics). I haven’t taken any steps in that direction as of yet, but there are a couple of topics—book-related and otherwise— I’ve been mulling over these last days that I’m giving serious thought to writing about. I think it would be a fun addition to the blog to have something like that became a semi-regular thing, assuming I can think of enough interesting topics to write about.

On Life

After struggling with a chronic illness (hyperthyroidism) for well over two years—with 2019 being especially debilitating—I had an RAI (radioactive iodine) treatment in early December. While it will take time to see what the end result will ultimately be, for the time being I’m feeling better than I have in a very long time. In fact, I’m feeling great! I feel like me again, rather than a shell of my former self. This is main reason I’m feeling so motivated about blogging again. Last year, it was a struggle for me to write anything. I had zero concentration, and felt exhausted all the time. Reading was easy, but being able to write a decent review? That felt like an impossible task. I couldn’t find the words, much less focus my thoughts in a coherent manner. But now, I feel an incredible amount of focus. I’m able to think about what I did and didn’t like about a story, and the words needed to express that in a review are flowing effortlessly into my mind. It feels amazing!

On Other Entertainment

I’ve been so busy reading and writing posts, I’ve had little time for anything else. I’ve abandoned my umpteenth re-watch of The Walking Dead after I finished season six. I’ll get back to it eventually… probably not before the back half of season ten begins airing, though.

Something I do intend to start re-watching soon is Falling Skies. Wikipedia describes Falling Skies is “an American post-apocalyptic science fiction television series created by Robert Rodat and executive produced by Steven Spielberg. The series stars Noah Wyle as Tom Mason, a former history professor who becomes the second-in-command of the 2nd Massachusetts Militia Regiment, a group of civilians and fighters fleeing Boston following an alien invasion that devastated the world.” It’s a fantastic series and, having watched it only once, it’s time to do it again!

In Closing

Well, look at that! I actually had a LOT to say. So much for being worried I wouldn’t have anything to talk about, huh? I should have joined in a long, long time ago. I hope everyone had a great weekend. Until next time!