Recently I have been thinking about how I tag my books, and wondering if I should add more. This is the case with books that focus on or include GLBTQ themes. I started off by asking my Twitter followers whether or not adding a tag for GLBTQ fiction was a good idea, because in my head I do not differentiate between, for example, straight or gay romance threads – a heterosexual focus on love is a romance, and a homosexual focus on love is a romance. To me the genders of the couple are not important in this instance, unless of course the sexuality itself is a focus.

And sometimes, of course, the sexuality of a character is not a major part of the story. For example in Across The Nightingale Floor, the reader can determine that the main character is bisexual, but the author never says it is so and the encounters that occur between the main character and secondary characters are minor events. But my question on Twitter (which I’ve been unable to find since) pointed me to the very same other view I had been considering, as Amy of Amy Reads replied it’s an important tag – people can easily find stories dealing with sexuality if that is what they are looking for.

And that’s the point here. While in a perfect world, or maybe just in the world, I don’t know, GLBTQ stories would just be seen as another book, the fact is that we, as a society, are only just truly accepting differences in sexuality on an official level and it is surely important to make books with characters of those sexualities and life choices a theme, even maybe a genre. While homosexuality has been around since the dawn of humanity, general acceptance of it has not. So a tag is important. And I know from personal experience that I have sought out GLBTQ books myself, both simply because the story sounded interesting, or, for example in the case of my planned future foray into M/M romance, because I specifically want to read more eclectically.

The only question still left in my head is whether being so specific with tags and not just saying “social” or “romance” can have a negative impact: for example that Across The Nightingale Floor – it contains GLBTQ themes, but the vast majority of it is heterosexual and thus a person picking it for the GLBTQ thread would be disappointed. Though at the same time the fact that the author just includes the character’s sexuality as another part of the his personality is also quite refreshing, in the same way that a character on the television in a wheelchair who does not have to explain their history is refreshing.

I suppose it might seem strange that I’m pondering on this in such a way, but acceptance and education, whilst not making a big deal of it in order to make it natural, is what I focus on whenever a taboo subject comes up.

The GLBTQ tag will continue to be part of my labelling when it makes sense in the context of stories, characters, and spoilers.

Yesterday my boyfriend decided that we’re going to go on holiday. It’s going to be short and mainly about relaxing – I have exams to revise for and neither of us want to go on a lot of day trips right now so we picked nice accommodation in a relatively boring-looking place so that we wouldn’t be tempted to go out much.

I fully intend to stick to my newly cemented blogging schedule and exam revision whilst there, but despite this I still like the idea of taking a book that I can enjoy in the sun as a holiday read. Of course it being England, the sun might not come out at all, but one can always hope. It’s just as well our accommodation is lovely.

A big part of me wants to ask you all for recommendations, but I know that I don’t have time to act on them because our library is shoddy at best. I reckon I’m going to take Pride And Prejudice because although I fully subscribe to the notion of there being little time to read enough without falling behind by re-reading, I can’t deny that my desire to laugh with Austen again is building.

But I’m still going to ask, do you have a specific type of book you like to take with you on holiday, and furthering that, does your choice depend on location and time of year?

In other news I have just signed up for Pinterest and am loving it so far. I decided to take the plunge a couple of weeks ago when I realised the site would be a much better way to handle the idea I had of creating a scrapbook of inspirational photographs. My username is CarnelianValley. I am totally friendless at the moment so if you have an account, I’m going to go completely first-day-at-new-school on you and ask would you be my friend?

A question I’ve asked myself many times is how much is too little? Indeed, rather than wondering if I’m over-saturating my corner of the blogosphere with content, I wonder instead it I’m saturating it enough. Often I don’t post if I have nothing to say, it seems silly to post short posts of excuses for lack of inspiration, but on other occasions when I do have enough to say, I worry I’m not speaking as often as I ought.

I find that having enough to say and posting frequently are related. When I am actively posting on a schedule, nine times out of ten, content comes naturally, even if it’s not written to the standard I aspire to (standards is another thing that sometimes stops me posting content). But when do I post it?

I see people posting every day and visitors being able to keep up with it, and I also see people posting every day and many of their posts have no comments because visitors don’t have the time to read them all. And of course I see people posting infrequently and no one visiting because the random nature causes them to forget to check the blog for new posts.

The schedule for The Worm Hole, when there is time and content to post, is an update every three days. This is because it gives you guys time to find the posts, and it gives me a breather and space to relax and not worry about writing. But my schedule is random – if I post on Monday, the following post will be on Thursday and the one after that Sunday. However this means that the next post from that will be on Wednesday, a completely new day. I wonder if this style is confusing and whether I should stick to certain days of the week. This would still mean three days a week, but the frequency would seem quicker, because Saturday and Sunday tend to be slow days.

I’m very much leaning towards Monday, Wednesday, and Friday – and to hell with my worries about having enough content.

What do you think? How many days a week do you try to post, and as a reader which days do you prefer to read blogs?

When I first began blogging, RSS was in its infancy, in fact for a while I contented myself with Firefox live bookmarks as I waited to see what would happen with this new feed phenomenon. By the time RSS had taken a hold of both the world and my affections, I had a lot of time in the day. I subscribed to many sites, and got excited each time I found a new blog to follow. Quality and kindred spirits didn’t matter much, as my goal was simply to know about most of the sites that were around.

That was during my time of personal blogging, and although when I started to blog about books I did look for kindred spirits, inevitably I ended up adding blogs that had nothing to do with any of my personal tastes in reading, writing, or the structuring of content. Two years down the line, with a lot of material to study for university each week, I began to feel bogged down. It was time for a change.

So I’ve gone through my RSS reader and deleted blogs that I added on a whim and don’t read, I’ve deleted blogs that feel like a chore to open and have instead left myself with those that I love. The ones that speak to me on a personal and/or academic level, the ones that I can comment on the most (because I feel rather bad for having in my reader blogs that I never comment on, unless of course they are written by a famous figure).

However although my reader is a lot more manageable, I’m far from adverse to discovering and adding new blogs, and have in fact added a number of blogs over the last few months. Though this time there is a dedicated trial run – if I’m not finding a reason to read and/or comment, they’ll be deleted. Otherwise I would just be back to square one. I know that there are likely to be tens if not hundreds of blogs out there that would be a perfect fit for me, and I’m never going to find them by myself. Right now, of course, my focus is on book blogs.

So I would like to know, which blogs do you recommend – you know the sorts of things I write about, my writing style, could you recommend me a blog I might love? What are your favourite book blogs?

I did think of posting a list of the blogs I currently follow but that would take up a lot of space and I know that many of you will already know some of the blogs I follow through my interactions with them. And heck, if someone mentions a blog I already know about then that will just help me to further realise whether it’s a good fit or not.

It seems to be the general rule, not always left unsaid, that when a reviewer discusses a novel they should not take into account the writer of it.

I struggle with this. It is sometimes possible to separate, depending on the book’s subject matter, but in more cases than not I find that neglecting to acknowledge the author’s personality as a contribution to the book means that the review only scratches the surface.

When I say these things there are three authors specifically in my mind. There is Philip Pullman, whose His Dark Materials hints at his Atheism. There is Alex Bell, whose book, Jasmyn, demonstrates in the use of a scene her dislike of animal testing. And finally there is the person who is responsible for this post, Charlotte Brontë, whose hatred of Catholicism, seen in Villette, is abhorrent for her writing of it in the extreme.

These three authors are not the same in the levels of writer/work connection. On one hand Bell’s dislike of animal testing is shown in a non-preaching and short way, the author makes her point without pushing it on the reader. On the other Brontë’s abhorrence is ever-present and extreme. She clearly cannot conceive the possibility of Catholicism being a denomination to ever tolerate.

Now that’s not to say that I berate Brontë for her feelings. I may feel she is extreme but then I am looking at the situation through the eyes of someone whose ancestors had done all the debating for me, I have all the history and reasonings in which to decide that there isn’t enough difference to be so negatively passionate about it in the way that she is. But there is no way I could review Brontë’s work without taking into account that, for example, Lucy Snowe’s feelings are a direct result of Brontë’s own, that Brontë is using Lucy as a puppet to voice her own views. And account for it I must, likewise I cannot simply brush it under the carpet because there were possibly people in that era who were forward-thinkers and opposed to seeing a difference.

However, of course, this does not speak for the other side. There are times when a book proposes a certain idea that has nothing to do with the author, for example perhaps a character is obsessed with science but the author themselves finds it incredibly boring. I know from the limited experience I’ve had of writing stories that this can often be the case. Here though, I generally find that you can tell by the way the author has written the text, or by the information in their author notes, whether or not the author writes personally about the subject and if there was specific research involved to fill a gap in their knowledge. But I have definitely found in most cases that it isn’t too difficult for a reader to gather this themselves without looking to the Internet for answers.

And that’s the thing. When an author writes about something they don’t know much about, they tend to tell you about it and thus you can assume that they are not their work. When an author doesn’t say this, when they are well known for speaking about the subject, or when they write it in such a way that shows they are very passionate about it, it is impossible to put them on one side and their work on another. This does not mean a person should always judge an author by their work, or believe that the work represents the author fully, but there is a definite connection that cannot be denied.

We cannot always disconnect an author from their work, and I do not believe that we should.