The Downside of Book Blogging (and My Solution)

Have you ever thought about how your reading life changed after you started blogging? So many of us talk about the positive aspects, including becoming a more critical reader and being very much more aware of the great variety of books that are published each week.

The Dilemma

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the negative effects of being a book blogger. I’m not talking about the self-imposed pressures of producing regular blog content. Instead, I’ve noticed that my reading habits have changed over the last decade, even though my reading tastes haven’t.

Let me explain. For the last 10+ years, I’ve been committed to writing about each book I read (or listen to). I don’t have long-term stats, but I know there are very few books that I failed to review or comment about either here on Beth Fish Reads or on another venue for a freelance assignment. One of the side effects of this commitment is that I think of my blog each time I’m pitched a book for review, I visit Edelweiss or NetGalley, I scan the new purchases at my library, and I hang out in a bookstore.

So what does that mean in a practical sense?

• It means I’ve stopped reading some genres that I used to love because I’m pretty sure the bulk of my blog readers wouldn’t be interested.
• It means I don’t read the books I don’t really want to write about, even though I want to read them.
• It means I don’t read the books I know I won’t read straight through in a reasonable time frame because I’m devoting my time to books I’ll write about.

Let’s look at these points in a little more depth using a real-life example.

I'll use Kathleen Dean Moore’s Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature (Trumpeter) to explain my thoughts. This book of nature essays is just the kind of thing I ate up in my pre-blogging days. I accepted a review copy in spring 2010 because I loved the pitch and publisher’s summary. This book called to me, but I’ve never read it. Why? Because I don’t think many of my readers are as outdoorsy as I am. Because if any of Moore’s essays had a strong emotional effect on me, I don’t know that I’d want to dilute the feeling by having to write about it. And, finally, because I might not read every essay or read them in order or read them in a timely manner. If I don’t read every essay, can I legitimately review the book?

Here’s another issue: I like to read series. Sadly, I’ve let some them go by the wayside or I purposely space out reading them because I eventually run out of new things to say. In addition, I don’t think my blog readers are interested in reading review after review about the same characters or author, especially when they’ve already decided not to read the series.

I can think of several other reading issues that have been negatively affected by blogging, such as my commitment to read a short story a week. I want to do this, but I don’t want to come up with something profound to say about each story. This is really just a personal goal, and maybe it should stay there. Yet, one of the reasons I started my blog was to have a public record of what I read (and to have a place to describe all the books I want to read).

So What Am I Going to Do About It?

I can already hear your answer: It’s your blog, you should write about the books you want to read. Yeah, that’s true, and that is indeed what I do most of the time. But my real problem is what do about the books I want to read but, for whatever reason, I don’t want to write about in a meaningful way.

Here’s my solution, at least for now. At the end of my weekly review post, I plan to list my short story and any other book I’ve read or am reading that I don’t want to write about. I’ll include an image of the book cover, the publishing information, the genre, and then give the book (or story) a yea or nay. I may include a few other other notes or recommendations, but that’s about it.

I may or may not have read every single page in these books. Some of the books may represent a single evening of reading; others may have taken me months because I read only one chapter a week. I’m not going to tell you these kind of details.

This is the place where I’ll also record my progress in series. Although I will write a longer review/reaction to the first couple books in a series, once I get the rhythm of the plots and have commented on the author’s style and the characters’ personalities several times, I’ll simply note that I read the book and maybe add a few sentences about whether the series is holding up or starting to fall apart.

I’m pretty excited about my new approach to blogging about my “I don’t want to review it” books. I hope this will revive my enthusiasm for these kind of books while still allowing me to share and record my reading life.

What are your own negatives or dilemmas of being book blogger?