It was my decision to assign ratings to my reviews, and this is something I’ve been doing since I first started this blog. I know many people don’t use them but for me it works to link my reviews with a number. Before I write the text of my review, I’ve already given the book a number, and in many ways this helps me when it comes to the tone the review should take. I have a basic idea of what amounts to the different numbers; it’s nothing concrete but it’s a foundation of sorts and I’ve been using the ‘out of 5’ rating since I started creating websites – over a dozen years now.

In general I like it. I can say why I gave a book the rating I did in the context of all the other reviews. But one rating often stumps me.

3.5.

For me, 3.5/5 is a book that is just slightly above average. Perhaps it’s average but the heroine is well-written, or the author improves the story by the end, or there’s a sub-theme that is amazing – these sorts of books will earn the 3.5. By comparison, 3 out of 5 is a very average book. Not surprisingly, when I’m reading an average book the rating I’ll give it swings back and forth between those two.

3/5 reviews are difficult to write, but nothing is harder than 3.5. It tends to be those reviews I procrastinate on the most because there tends to be little to say in any extreme. I can’t say how bad the book is; I can’t say how good it is. Every now and then I’ll manage a long, thorough review, but those days are few and far between. (You might wonder, if I’m using .5, why I don’t just go ahead and mark out of 10. It’s difficult to explain but I find 10 far more difficult to use as it’s an even number. There is no strict middle to work with. Yes, even though in reality 2.5 is the middle.)

I suppose you could sum this post up by saying I find it hard writing reviews of average books, but it is specifically that 3.5 rating.

If you rate books by number, is there one that you find more difficult than others? If you don’t rate, which ‘type’ of reviews do you find hardest to write?

Do you prefer books to be written in the first or third person? For many books it is thr case that whichever is chosen, you know it couldn’t have been any other way. In other cases a reader can point to chapters or even whole books that would have been better from a different written angle. There are positives and drawbacks to both, which is what I’ll be focusing on today.

There is of course a second person, but it is rarely used, perhaps because of the difficulties in keeping it going and the limitations it places on writing.

The most obvious aspect of the first person is the way it invites bias and limits objectivity. A work written from the point of view of a character is not going to give you a good sense of other characters’ opinions – the narrator can tell you what they think, but it might not feel detailed enough or correct. Unreliable narrators are an intriguing element, but for the very nature of the first person you may miss out on a lot of information. The reader is left to decide how reliable the character is and what the truth is of other characters. Depending on the book, this can be a drawback or a fun part of the reading experience.

First-person narrative informs the reader of the character’s personality more than can the third. However it may also mean that it’s easier to find the character annoying because you hear their thoughts. Of course a character can be annoying in the third person but it is more likely to be caused by their actions.

First-person inevitably argues for knowing the character the best. You hear their thoughts straight from them, in their words, and get an intimate knowledge. True, the third-person can include thoughts, but only as a report of kinds – ‘she thought…’. It’s not the same.

Third-person narrative provides more of a general overview of a character – you will possibly learn more about them overall than if they were in the first person and concentrating on certain thoughts, for example. Yet this is of course restrictive, you won’t know the character as well as you might have otherwise, and of course you’re only hearing from the author (which, whilst fine, does open your opinion of the character to the author’s own biases towards them).

The third person is also the author’s voice. Granted, so is first, but first-person is more likely to be styled to fit the character. In terms of plot threads left hanging it is surely more acceptable in the third person as the first would think in detail.

These are some of my thoughts, and interestingly in writing this I see that it would make more sense for me to prefer the third person when instead I like both equally and only see issues if a book isn’t working for me.

This post has only covered a few points and differences – what features come to your mind? And do you have a preference?

When we moved we packed up my books (unfortunately by format and size rather than by subject or alphabetically – you all understand my upset here, right?), leaving out only three or four to add to my canvas bag. The moving equivalent of carry-on luggage. These books were the two I was currently reading and the next print ARC I had to read. (My Kobo was of course put in the canvas bag, too.)

Once at the new place, we unpacked, and whilst it was again by format and size as we’ve no bookcases, I was happy enough. My books were in piles and there was space enough in the room to walk amongst them and dissemble if a particular book was required.

Then we had an issue with the living area and my books were moved into a smaller room where the piles were and still are crammed against each other. In order to combat the issue of not being able to get to the books I wanted, I picked out those I most wanted to read at that time and set them in their own pile. I forgot to add ARCs – this explains the lack of the phrase ‘I received this book for review’ on the blog so far this year – but other than that it’s a good pile.

This is where I get down to business, so to speak. Although I have inevitably lamented the fact that my decision on what I want to read soon has since changed, that I wish I’d included, for example, The Cuckoo’s Calling in my pile instead of placing it wherever it may be amongst the inaccessible, I have made wonderful progress through my immediate to-be-read (if I do say so myself).

My pile consisted of the following books:

Alison Weir’s The Lady In The Tower
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
Elizabeth Chadwick’s A Place Beyond Courage
Emma Henderson’s Grace Williams Says It Loud
Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl
Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française
Laini Taylor’s Daughter Of Smoke And Bone
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
Lindy Woodhead’s Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge
Lyn Andrews’s The Queen’s Promise
N K Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Nancy Bilyeau’s The Crown
Vanora Bennett’s The People’s Queen
Vikram Chandra’s Red Earth, Pouring Rain

Out of these 14 I have so far finished 4 and am currently reading two others.

I haven’t deviated from this pile except on the odd occasion – mostly for ebooks I had already started. I’m enjoying reading my own books immensely and there is a lot to be said for reading books you’re really excited about one after the other, even if you find you don’t like them. I don’t feel I’m missing out by sticking to older books (even if I do have to get back to the ARCs as soon as I can) and it’s resulted in an enriching year so far. Making a TBR pile to your liking, your complete liking, gets you reading. It’s a TBR that works.

The moral of the story: if you want to find extreme success with your collection of unread books, move to a needy residence. The longer the repair work takes the better your reading may be.

Do you have a particular method for conquering your TBR?

This photograph was taken by aptmetaphor.

I’ve been blogging, on and off, for around eight years in total, and my habits have changed quite a bit during that time. Namely, I switched subject and started writing to a schedule. Eight years is a fair amount of time to see changes, though I expect that bloggers who’ve blogged for less time but more consistently will have noticed any ‘errors’ they’ve made a lot sooner.

Because I only know about my own bad habits this post is me-centric. If those of you who are bloggers could write about yourselves in the comments, I’d be grateful. (Don’t let me be alone in my admissions here!)

1

When I was new to blogging – when I wrote an ‘anything goes’ blog which was impossible to keep up because it’s impossible to write well when you’ve no limits – I used to wait until a post got comments before I blogged again. I worried that if I kept blogging without comments no one would ever read the posts that had come before the newer ones. It’s very easy when you’re blogging about ‘whatever’ to get a bit ahead of yourself and think that this means that you’re creating a blog that will attract everyone, but hindsight has taught me that of course this is not the case. (This is perhaps the biggest traffic/audience-focused reason for sticking to one subject – few people will be interested in every single post you write if you’ve no focus yourself.) Obviously I was a new blogger and didn’t know many other writers. As well as this, as much as I liked to think otherwise, my blog wasn’t really a good ‘fit’ for the bloggers I connected with because it wasn’t a true personal blog. Looking back, I probably wouldn’t have become a reader of my blog either!

Of course the problem with waiting for comments and not posting new content is that I expect people thought I’d stopped blogging – and quite rightly, really, because in effect I had. So they wouldn’t come back. And I know now as a reader myself that it can feel weird to add a comment to a post that is a few weeks old.

I don’t know if I made a deliberate decision not to wait when I started The Worm Hole. But by then I had taken to heart the fact that a blog needs an actual subject, and that really is key.

2

Before I started The Worm Hole, I published my – few – reviews to the anything goes blog. They were full of rants and over-the-top. (In fact my earliest ones on this blog were, too.) I’ve stopped that.

3

I used to think of design over content. I suppose that’s understandable as I was a web designer first and foremost, but I did have this idea that an awesome design would be good enough. True, some bloggers had amazing websites, but they also had a firm grasp of their written theme. Nowadays I believe content is more important than design, though design can make the first impression, of course. I’ve realised that focusing on both design and content is what’s needed.

4

I used to publish silly posts when I had no ideas – they were posts to say I had no posts. After my boyfriend noticed I planned to post a second one of these only a couple of weeks after a previous one, I realised how unnecessary it was.

5

Lastly, I used to over-do the comedy, or at least what I thought was funny. Those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while may remember over-written posts.

And that’s the erroneous history of this silly blogger.

What bad blogging habits have you broken?

Although I have already written on the subject of blogging, I feel that it’s worth looking back every now and then to survey progress made. This isn’t about blogging in a business sense – it’s not about how any marketing might be going, for example – instead it’s about thinking of your blog, your routine, and how it’s working for you.

So this is what I want to do today, and I thought that discussing it here might be of interest or help to others. I wrote when I first decided to blog to a schedule, I wrote again to analyse how that was going, and I wrote about insights. Now I have to add to the information in that second post – I am finding that having a schedule continues to create ideas. It wasn’t a fluke. It’s as though ideas are forced to appear because there are deadlines and the ‘need’ to create on a constant basis.

Deadlines & Ideas

Plenty of times in the last few months, I have looked at my list of draft posts and been at a loss for what to do. Most of my drafts are incomplete or are posts that I may not end up sharing because I do not like them enough. The majority of incomplete ones are articles that require a lot of time to finish – that’s why they’ve been drafts and plans for so long. But no matter what, even if it’s pushing at the limit between time and lack of, I have so far always had a post for every day of my schedule. I don’t know why or how, but having a schedule promotes creation, inspiration, imagination. It just happens.

In regards to my schedule I’ve discovered I like to be at least a week in advance, but not much more than that. It may be obvious to say that it’s not good to be working the night before the post is due, and the occasions I hinted at in the last paragraph confirmed it, but also it’s not generally a good idea to be too far ahead. With reviews it’s good to be ahead and easier to swap them around a bit if you want to accommodate a new blog tour post or some such, but if you schedule too far in advance or too rigidly you’ll make anything spur-of-the-moment impossible to be happy with and you can forget about any sudden news stories.

Being a week or two ahead means that you don’t have to rush, but at the same time it keeps you on your toes. And it means that if you get sick your blog won’t fall silent.

Ideas & Keeping Them

It’s crazy how long it’s taken for me to improve, but I’m slowly learning to remember to note down even bad ideas. So often I used to have a snippet of an idea and not bother remembering it, but there is great value in noting everything. Small ideas can be combined with larger ones, single sentence thoughts added to a broader topic. I’ve started allowing myself to get out of bed to write if I have an idea whilst trying to get to sleep, and a few weeks ago I actually spent an entire night writing – once the first idea came to me I couldn’t stop the flow of good sentences and fun smilies. (That post may not see the light of day as I placed no limits on the information I was giving, but it was a good exercise.)

And of course keeping a blog means you’ll inevitably question the design from time to time. I asked you all about my genre list; the second thought in mind of that nature is the site search. It took me ages to get the coding correct, indeed it took me ages to get it added in general, but I wonder if anyone uses it.

As I continue my fourth year of blogging I’ve not doubt I’ll soon have many other things to consider.

What have you been thinking about in regards to your blog recently? Or, if you don’t blog, tell me about a long-term past-time you’ve had which kept you thinking about changes and impacts.