I recently noticed that I’m getting regular hits from Bloglovin’. I must admit ignorance – until I saw referrals from there I was under the impression that it was solely a network for fashion bloggers because those were the types of blogs I saw the logo on. However my ignorance has now been blasted away by knowledge and due to my readers from Bloglovin’ (hello!) I have integrated the link to The Worm Hole on my bar of social media buttons at the top of the page.

I have written a rather long post about a trip I made to a historical site. By long I mean over 1000 words, and that is after extensive editing. I had a lot I wanted to say about it and many photos I wished to share. I put this question to Twitter, but it makes sense to ask my readers directly – would you read a post of that length, and would such a post be of interest to you? It is not a straight-up description of the site, rather a more comical mixture of description, my feelings, and the mysteries surrounding it.

I’ll be breaking my blogging schedule briefly this weekend in order to join Jodie’s Small Press Fortnight. By breaking schedule I mean there will be an additional post this Sunday (I don’t tend to post on Sundays any more). I will be discussing Persephone Books and Peirene Press and whilst the writing isn’t too good as I’m suffering from an inspirational block, I hope the content itself will be of use.

And a quick note to say that I have added email subscription to the site. To subscribe via email please click here.

You may have noticed, and indeed you may have realised my plans from the posts I’ve been writing recently on RSS feeds and the best days to blog – I’m in the process of making changes. Many are yet to be implemented, as I have a long list but not much time, but a few have been and I thought it might be an idea to talk about them.

The first change is to my blogging schedule. After a lot of thinking I have decided to go for the proposed Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as it makes the most sense. As Ana confirmed for me in a comment two weeks ago (second link in the paragraph above), Saturday is a slow day. Therefore my every-three-days former schedule was a bit silly, especially as I knew full well that anything I was posting on the weekend was rarely viewed. People want to relax at the weekends, and while I know that many count reading blogs as relaxing, a lot of people also leave blogging until Monday and posting some of my best-written posts at the weekend against my better judgement is ridiculous when I’m all for discussion.

Unless I happen to have an offline issue going on, Monday Wednesday Friday it will be from now on.

Secondly, The Worm Hole has a Facebook page.

Thirdly, I have re-written and re-formatted my about page. I noticed recently that the page is the one with the most hits, which makes a lot of sense given it’s nice to know about the writer behind the blog – and my about page had been sorely neglected. So gone are the piddly few sentences and in its place a good thoroughly informative page.

And finally, most importantly, I’ve changed how I reply to comments. I don’t know whether anyone noticed how I used to do it, because there was no way to notify readers, but I’ve always been editing your comments in order to add a reply at the bottom of them. I did this because I don’t like how replying on one’s own blog gets counted as a comment in number terms, but something needed to change because it wasn’t obvious enough. So now I’ve a new method. I will reply to everyone via one comment, and if a reader posts a new comment after I’ve posted my reply I will copy my comment, delete it, and repost it with the addition of a reply to that new commentor. So if you return to my site looking for my reply, you’ll always find it at the very end.

What do you think, are these good changes?

In many ways it feels I’ve been book blogging longer (I guess writing so many reviews is bound to do that), in many ways shorter, but I’m just glad I’ve managed to stick it out.

Since 4th April 2010, this blog has had 239 posts published, of which 109 are reviews. That second statistic really surprised me, as I’d thought it would be nearer to 90. And there have been 349 comments – again another surprising statistic, I’d thought there would be a lot less considering I’m hardly a prolific blogger.

While reading and writing reviews may take time, I can’t help but be thankful for what it has helped me to achieve and for the roads it has created. Reading made up a big part of the reason I decided to go to university, because I found myself analysing in the ways a historian should, and writing reviews helped prepare me for essays. Blogging has led to various interesting events and introduced me to many treasures I never would have found otherwise.

Thank you all for the discussion, the comments, the recommendations and reviews that have improved my reading life, and for being there. No matter how much or how little I’ll be able to blog in the near future, I’m looking forward to the next year.

You may or may not have seen the post I uploaded to The Worm Hole a few days ago to say I was about to move server. That message is now lost because I issued it after having backed up the site, but it hardly matters anyway because, well, the site is up again. I won’t say here why I’ve moved, but if you’re a frequent or not-so-frequent visitor you will probably be able to take a good guess.

As far as it seems this end, everything on this site is working properly. Do let me know if you notice any bugs so that they can be sorted.

That I am still here, but that study is taking a lot of my time at present. And I am aware of the randomness of access to this site. I’m reluctant to post reviews while the site isn’t working very well, but will likely post something up within the week.