The Kari AnnAlysis

Posts Tagged ‘book reviews’

I love my blog, I really do. It’s like my little own piece of venting paradise. I can write whatever I want, whenever I want. So what is my problem? I am not being a good blogger.

My blog was born on MySpace, then grew on to Blogger, then to Wordpress, then I got my own little domain. I started the blog because I fell in love with Jane Eyre. I wanted to scream it to the world and let everyone know how I felt, not that they would care. My blog became a book blog naturally, because I love and know books and love to talk about them. And what a better place to do it than on the Internet? I can talk/write and if you don’t want to hear it or read it, you can click away and not hurt my feelings by rolling your eyes at me or blatantly ignoring my chatting.

I have been blogging for, geesh, three years now I think. I have had a lot of phases and trends, which is a constant in my life. I have been on meme kicks including Wordless Wednesday, Teaser Tuesday, In My Mailbox aka On My Bookshelf, etc. etc. etc. And I have been all over the place with posting book reviews from on time and often, to few and far between. There are times, like now, when I have a list of posts I need to work on, but they are just sitting there, gathering dust and losing steam.

I don’t want to say I am in slump, because I have the content, I just need to get it out there. So it’s a slump of sorts, I guess.

So what am I babbling on about today? I need to be a better blogger. If I want people to stop by and read, I need to give them a reason to do so. I need to be a stickler about getting my content on here and I need to be diligent about posting topics people will want to read about.

Yes, I have been busy lately, with work and life in general, but I need to quit making excuses.

I am asking for a little help from you, my readers, while I am working on getting back on top of my blogging game. I am asking you to be patient with me. I need to not only fine tune what I know and what I am good at, I also need to find out what I want my blog to say about me. A lot has changed in my life since I have started blogging. I am moving up the ladder at work, gaining more responsibilities daily, I am married, and even though I know I am in no way old, I am not getting any youner. I need to decide where I want my blog to go from here. I want to keep it based on books, but I want it to be more.

I have a few ideas up my sleeve on how to make this happen, but please stick with me as I am figuring it out.

I also want some advice. How do you keep up with your blogging game? As you grow as a person and blogger, how do you move forward and make changes to fit your personality and your life without making a complete overhaul? Do you have a blogging schedule? Do you do posts daily? Or take a day and knock out a whole week’s worth?

I am going to be positive here and hope on lots of responses and give you all a pre-Thank You for your help!

Books Read:
Tyger Tyger
Father of Lies
Lydia’s Charm
Avalanche Dance
Emily Ever After
Anna and the French Kiss
Babe in Boyland
Read all of these reviews here

Pages Read:
2118

Bookmarks Given:
0 Bookmarks: 0
1 Bookmark: 0
2 Bookmarks: 0
3 Bookmarks: 1
4 Bookmarks: 3
5 Bookmarks: 2
-Babe in Boyland has not been reviewed yet

Favorite Book:
My favorite book this month, by far, was Father of Lies. I loved that it was based on history and I learned a lot about the Salem Witch Trials. It was a nice little twist of fiction to actually teach a little history.

Least Favorite Book:
The book I gave the least amount of bookmarks to this month was Tyger Tyger.  I didn’t hate it, but I’m not used to goblins. I will pick up the second book, with hopes that they’ll grow on me. But they’re scary

December Goals:
This month is dedicated entirely to holiday reading. I’ve already started my first one, The First Love Cookie Club. I have three of my holiday books on my Nook. I read a whole lot on there the first month I got it, and have fallen off since, only reading 1 on it in November. I need to spend some more time with it this month and have made a list of books I want to download after Christmas. Oh, and I found a local library that offers ebooks that I am going to start checking out. Anywho, I don’t have a lot of other big aspirations for the month, knowing I will be doing a lot of decorating, a lot of shopping and a lot of wrapping.

Now I did already give my husband one of his Christmas presents, a PS3, which will consume most of his time. In return for this, I am getting my Christmas present, a Canon Rebel XS, a little early. This will give me time to practice with it and get associated with it before Christmas Eve so I can take bunches of pictures. So, when I get this, I’ll probably put everything else to the side and focus solely on perfecting my camera knowledge.

I didn’t finish NaNo in November, but got almost 30,000 words down. I hope to continue on this and get my first draft of it done, then I’ll work on editing both of my WIPs. I am still feeling pretty good about them and have even set up a third one. Wow. I can’t believe I’m writing books. Now, just to get them finished and published.

Now last month I posted with joy that I had the biggest month ever on my blog. This month totally trumped that. Whatever is going on with Pretty Little Liars, I am not complaining. I had over 2600 blog views this month, up from 1300, which was my highest ever. And the majority of those came from people who were searching Pretty Little Liars. I have no idea how they found my blog. I searched Pretty Little Liars and my blog wasn’t on the first 5 pages. I also added ‘book review’ to the end of it and it still didn’t pop up. Either way, thanks to Sara Shepard!!!

I hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving and are gearing up for the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

 Books Read:
The Secret Society of the Pink Crystal Ball
Carrie Pilby
A Vintage Affair
Haint Misbehaving
The Boyfriend League
Matched
To read all of the reviews for these books (Matched to come this week) click here.

Pages Read:
1,897

Bookmarks Given:
1 Bookmark: 0
2 Bookmarks: 1
3 Bookmarks: 0
4 Bookmarks: 3
5 Bookmarks: 1 already given, 1 to be given

Favorite Book
I gave two books 5 bookmarks this month, Carrie Pilby and Matched. I loved both of them in a completely different way though. And now that I have finished Matched, it definitely takes top honors! I can’t wait until this book comes out later this month and everyone else gets a chance to read it. I loved it and hope we get another one!

Least Favorite Book:
My least favorite book this month was The Secret Society of the Pink Crystal Ball. I’m starting to have a hard time with some YA books. Either I love them, or I hate them. This one was way too young for me. I liked the idea behind it, but I couldn’t stand the immaturity of the characters. Maybe it’s time for my 24-year-old seld to start reading books written for my age group.

November Goals:
I am not sure how much reading I will be getting done this month. I have a couple coming to me from book tours and I have a couple that I won from Goodreads.com and Librarything.com, but I have nothing really urgent to read. That’s good news because I am attempting to take part in NaNoWriMo this month (Yikes) and want to be able to give all of my free time to that.

I still haven’t finished my WIP yet. I went back through and made some plot twists, that I am really happy about, but I am having a hard time tying it up at the end. I have my ending complete, just have to figure out how to put the middle and end together cohesively. I am hoping that NaNo will help me get in the writing mode in the evenings so that when NaNo is over, I will be ok with this new habit and will be able to hole up in my house and write. I’m sure my husband won’t mind. He’ll be watching hunting shows all month!

One of my last minute goals from last month didn’t quite make it. I had really planned on being all Halloweened out this year. I sort of was. I watched so many scary movies I had to sleep with the light on, but chickened out about reading Hell House. It is downloaded on my Nook, the cover staring at me every time I turn it on. But since my husband was in Japan on Halloween week, I was too scared to read it by myself. I also had to cut down on the scary movies, but I still got a good number in. Check out my list of movies I watched Halloween week by clicking here.

I did have an AWESOME month on my blog this month. I am not 100% sure why. I did have quite a bit more life posts. I added pictures from events I went to and did some posts about writing. Maybe that had something to do with it. Anywho, I had over 1300 views this month. I know it’s not a great number, but my blog is getting more readership and I feel like it shows my hard work is paying off.  A funny note with this though is that the last two days of October, I had over 100 views on my review of Pretty Little Liars  and over 60 people found it by searching for the book title. Did something happen with the series that I don’t know about? Hey, I’m not complaining at all!

How was your month?

I’ve never done a monthly wrap-up post, but it’s a new year, might as well try new things. Kind of like my last post on Cover Wars.

Books Read:
Dead to the World
The Life O’Reilly
Pet Peeves
Gods Behaving Badly
Truly, Madly
The Lovely Bones
Dead as a Doornail
Tainted
To read the reviews for these books, click here.

Pages Read: 2393

Bookmarks Given:
1. 0 Books
2. 2 Books
3. 2 Books
4. 2 Books
5. 1 Books
*There was one book I didn’t give a rating to because it was short stories.

Favorite Book: Tainted
Least Favorite Book: Dead as a Doornail

Giveaways:
I gave away Truly, Madly and had quite a few entries. The Duty of Love didn’t fare so well. No entries, but if you are interested, let me know. If I don’t hear anything by the weekend, I’ll give it to my church for the church book sale.

Goals for February:
1. Get some reading done for my 2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge
2. Finish up the books I have from publishers/borrowed/contests and read the ones I’ve bought
3. Read 9 books. That may be a stretch. I didn’t realize I read so many in January, but it’s a goal

Looking Forward to in February:
Starting the Private series and finishing the Sookie Stackhouse series.