The month of February hits a milestone of sorts for the blog (not necessarily the space as I moved recently, but just existence of the blog as its own entity): eclectictales.com turns TEN.
Not my gif, as always
Yup, you read it right: 2017 makes ten years of me blogging. It’s pretty surreal to think it’s been that long since I’ve started blogging (steadily; I think I mentioned in my About the Site section that I had a previous blog/domain but had to stop for offline reasons). And after ten years, one does learn a few things along the way… 😛
- It’s easy to follow what others are doing (format-wise, books read and reviewed that are popular right now, etc.) but at the end of the day it’s your blog: you do the thing that makes you happy.
- Blogging is an ever-changing process: you pick up new ways of formatting or presenting your thoughts and ideas, the focus of your blog shifts and changes…Gosh, just look at some of my posts circa 2012 compared to now. It’s normal, and it’s part of the fun.
- You don’t have to review every book you’ve read–I learnt that recently, actually. I use my blog as my book journal so to speak (as with the amount of books I read per year, I will have used up a lot of notebooks O_O) and for the last few years my approach has been to record my thoughts as much as I can on the books that I’ve read. But sometimes when you don’t have much thought about a book you’ve read, why struggle churning out what turns out to be a wee & generalised review? This is still a hobby at the end of the day, not your dissertation.
- Yeah, it’s dismaying when no one comments on an awesome book you’ve reviewed (or a review you’re particularly proud of having clobbered together), but it happens. It’s there, maybe one day someone will read it and appreciate thoughts in it. But as long as you’re happy with it and you’ve got it jotted down somewhere, it’s all good.
- On a related note, at the end of the day stats don’t matter, really. I mean, yeah, I too wish I got more traffic and more readers, but those that drop by and comment do make my day 🙂
- Being different has its benefits in terms of what you offer in your reviews and what readers come across in your blog. What do I mean? Well like my url suggests, I do read an eclectic range of books, perhaps a little more far out than what you may necessarily come across, and while perhaps that may contribute to a lack of traffic or comments at times, I do get the occasional comment saying they appreciated coming across this book or that that they had never heard of and want to check out now. I’m always happy to recommend titles to people!
- The book blogging community is a supportive place. Yeah, it’s had its weird drama moments from time to time but the friends I’ve made over the years through the community and the memes and the discussion are priceless. #hugsforall
- Scheduling blog posts = life saver.
- Blogging burnout happens–and it’s okay. I never thought I’d be one of those people who would experience it, and perhaps it’d be a surprise to you to know that I did experience it considering my blog posts are scheduled at a daily frequency, but the hiatus time I had back in December? Sure, I was experiencing headache after headache transferring my blog over to the new server but in the same vein it gave me the time to step back and take a break, which I didn’t realise I even needed. !
- I guess this reiterates #1 a bit but most of all? Have fun blogging!
As always I’m thankful for everyone’s support and friendship over the years of chatting about books and other things; I honestly don’t think I would’ve continued blogging for as long as I have (or perhaps with the same vigor as before) if it wasn’t for your guys.
Not my gif but this is for you all, this cute puppy in a bowl 😛
As a thank you to you all and in celebration of my blogoversary, I am hosting a book giveaway! Now, I’m doing it a bit different this year; rather than going by my favourite reads in 2016, I’m going to give you an option to choose any one book I’ve read & reviewed on my blog.
Now, this prospect sounds crazy daunting as I’ve written over 900 book reviews in the last 10 years (see tag; omg where to start?!) O_o But there’s a few ways to navigate through and discover/decide what book to choose:
- On the right-hand menu I do have a section called Book Categories Featured if you want to browse by the major genres that I review
- Or you can browse by my star ratings; if you want to just go through my top-rated books, just browse through my 5-star books, my 4.5-star books, my 4-star books, and my 3.5-star books
- Or another option, and you just want to know what books I recommend the most, you can browse through my book recommendations tag and my So You Want to Read… feature
- And finally, if you want to cross-reference with what’s on your wishlist there’s always browsing through my Read shelf on GoodReads
This giveaway is open internationally as long as the Book Depository ships to your country. The contest will run until Monday, February 13th @ 11:59PM EST. Please make sure you use a valid email address when you enter (as the winner will have 48 hours to respond to my email or I will draw a new winner). You can read the rest of the terms and conditions with the Rafflecopter below 😉
And that’s about it! In bocca del lupo! If you have any questions about the giveaway or any issues with Rafflecopter, please email me at webmaster [at] eclectictales [dot] com or comment in this post. Many thanks again for all of your support over the years 🙂
