Staying up to date

I review every book that I read. 

This is something that I have stuck to since I started a blog. However, there have been times where I have fallen behind in my reviews. Like now. Four months behind, 8 or 9 books to write up and the end of the year is fast approaching. 

I tend to do reviews in monthly round ups. But occasionally I get a month with a dud book. Not achingly bad, but not a favourite either. Or it takes me ages to read because suddenly keeping up with my podcast schedule on the tube seems more important. In these months, I carry these undigested books around. They are literal weight in my bag and serve as a constant reminder of my failure to read them and, often, the fact that I haven't made a post here in a while. 

The domino of this is that in my lack of enthusiasm to read that month, my desire to share the news of this dumb weight of a tomb is dampened. In the case of a particularly bad book, for example one I cannot bring my self to finish (a rare thing!), I may be excited by the prospect of writing a scathing review, which is "fun to write and to read". But mostly it only makes me sad. 

Then the good pick me up book that I read next gets stuck behind the queue of boring OK books and the pile of reviews "to do" piles up to a scary number. By the time I go back to (JUNE!) I have half forgotten the book. Half forgotten the discussion I had about it at the time. Half forgotten what was going on in my life. All of this makes for some strained little paragraphs in my reviews. 

I have decided to change things. I will continue to read every book that I read. BUT. I am going to stop chronological order. I'm going to review when I feel like it for the good ones and try and catch up with writing the ones I'm less excited about. My joy vs my duty reviews. I hope that this will light a fire under me to keep my blog alive. I am so proud of it, I wouldn't want it to fail because I'd set myself rules for how I run it. It's not working so we have to change the process. 

I won't make any promises that this will work. I hope it does though and I hope it leads to more reading and more writing.