I can’t believe I actually made it 100 books into this. I know there were a couple lapses where I was less than good at updating this blog (or even reading books for it). Even still, I have a tendency to give up on projects pretty quickly. I’m good at ideas, but pretty bad at follow through. The fact that after two years and 100 books, I’m still working on this (and enjoying it) is impressive. To me, anyway.
So, I guess I should try to recap. I was going to try and talk about all the books, but that was too hard, so I’m just going to talk about a few posts and how this blog has evolved. This might be boring for you. If so, don’t worry, I’ll be back with regularly-scheduled book posts just as soon as I can pull myself away from Orange Is The New Black and The West Wing long enough to actually read more books. Netflix addiction is a real thing, guys.
So I guess I’m just going to list a couple of the posts I’ve written that I’ve liked the most. It’s interesting to see how this blog has evolved. When it started, I thought I was going to really analyze the books and it was pretty academic, as you can see from my first post. I didn’t really know how to just write about a book or respond to it. I’m still sort of trying to find the right voice for this blog, but it’s (clearly) different now. I used to really think about what I wanted to write and read the books much more academically, and I’d take a lot of time to craft intelligent posts.
I still try to write intelligent things, but I now I just start writing and see where the review takes me. A lot of times I’m surprised with where the post winds up. I don’t really edit posts much before I post them anymore, but I end up cutting out a lot of personal observations. A recent example: The Embers review had a lengthy portion in which I reflected on how I think it’s worse to fight with friends than significant others and talked at length about painful fights I’ve had with friends. I cut it all out. Most of my posts start out like this one, where I got personal and talked about the end of my time in Prague. The difference is that I almost always cut the personal stuff out. Maybe I’ll start leaving some personal stuff in, or at least save the personal stuff so I can go back and reference it later, because there are a couple vague things in some posts where I’d love to know what I was referring to, but I can’t remember. In one, I say that “it made me really uncomfortable in a way I really don’t want to describe.” I’d love to know what that was all about.
When I started writing, I wanted this blog to be unique. I wanted to do things other than just review or analyze books. There were a few times where I got experimental, like when I wrote a post in the style of Diary of a Nobody or was inspired by Out of Africa to write about part of my time in Germany. I actually really like both of these posts, and might try to do more like that if the book seems right. I think I totally failed in doing a “different” sort of review, however, when I wrote about The Yellow Wallpaper. I reread that and at first I had NO clue what I was trying to do. I definitely could have executed that better.
Sometimes I write observations that I think are really clever. Often, posts I like the most don’t seem to get any likes, and I think, “Damn, guys, I’m FUNNY, why don’t you like this?!” One of those moments was when I wrote about Les Miserables. I still think it’s hilarious that at some point somebody decided to turn it into a musical. Speaking of books that inspired musicals, I also think that my Oliver Twist post is hilarious. The moral of the story is I probably should stop trying to be funny when I write these things.
Anyway, this post has been…something. Really I just wanted an excuse to link to my favorite posts, because I’m pretty proud of some of them.
The Quixotic Reader 