Jun 5 2017

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Chronicles of an Obsessive Bookseller: Too Many Hobbies!

Too Many Hobbies!

I have come to a terrible realization: I have too many hobbies.

Or maybe the issue is, I don’t have enough time. Someone asked me the other day, “How do you have time to read? Do you give up all of their hobbies or something?” My response was an emphatic: “No, I still do all the things I love.” But after assessing for a few days, I realized just how delusional I am.

I’ve only been on one hike in the last year, I haven’t walked my dog in months, my Prismacolor pencil set is packed in the back of my closet with all of my paints, I’ve only done a few stitches on my cross-stitch project in the last few weeks, and I haven’t touched my WIP novels in two years. O_o This is a problem.

Lately, I’ve been itching to do all of my favorite things, but just can’t seem to find the time. I work forty hours a week, have a baby at home, and what little time I do have I spend either reading or blogging. It’s not a bad life, and by all accounts I’m quite happy, but now that I’ve decided to get back to some of these other joys, I can’t seem to fit them into my schedule.

So what do I do? Since The Obsessive Bookseller’s theme of 2017 is Simplifying Life, the only thing I can do is simplify blogging by taking time away from it to work on other projects. Henceforth: I think I’m going to pull back from gung-ho blogging for a couple of months to see what other creative mischief I can get up to. It’s not a burnout or hiatus, it’s just a strategic step back. I’ll only be reducing my weekly posts by one, but I think it’ll go a long ways towards helping me allocate my time. I know I could have just made the change and probably no one would have noticed, but I thought I’d say something anyway and maybe generate a discussion.

Who else has this problem?? Not only would I love to hear what kind of hobbies you awesome people have outside of blogging and reading, but I’d also love to hear how you balance them all with life.

by Niki Hawkes

Jul 26 2014

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Chronicles of an Obsessive Bookblogger: The Book Review Conundrum

chronicles of an obsessive bookblogger

The Book Review Conundrum:

Today I’d like to discuss book reviews: specifically 1) my reviewing process and how it has changed over the last two years 2) my alternating problem with having either too many or too few books to review, and 3) my battle with publishing impatience. I know these sound like they could be individual topics, but they’re all things I struggle with whenever I try to improve my blogging experience (and that of my readers).

The Book Review Evolutionary Process

When I started this blog two years ago, I was posting a book review every other day. When I finished a book, it got written about immediately. Even I can’t read THAT fast (unless I’m exclusively reading YA), so I supplemented the reviews with my book review journal – which contained a hefty arsenal of books read before I started the blog. It’s how I kept track of books before I discovered blogging. I’d even go as far as to print out little pictures of the covers to tape inside. Anyway, when I ran out of current titles, I just pulled out that journal and transcribed the pages into posts.

Even while “cheating” with older reviews, posting every other day was a lot of work… perhaps too much. I was also at risk of overwhelming my audience. So to avoid burnout and unnecessarily inundating my readers, I took a chill pill and switched over to reviewing two times per week rather than three or four.

Too Far Ahead of the Game

Now, reviewing feels more free and easy – I write them when I feel like it. The downside to this newfound freedom is that sometimes the posts just don’t happen. I went from posting around fifteen reviews a month to seven or less. This is a change I think both my readers and I are happy with, but it did create a problem I never thought I’d have: too many books to review and not enough time… and it’s only getting worse.

I can remember several week stints in which I had trouble reading enough books to sustain my goal of two fresh reviews per week (as opposed to ones taken from the pre-blog journal). But now I’m reading more per week than ever before and am getting completely buried under TBReviewed titles. I can think of worse blogging catastrophes, for sure, but seriously, I now have have seventeen, I repeat SEVENTEEN unreviewed books from this year alone. If I don’t get inspired and post a review right after I’ve read a book, there’s a good chance the review is from a book read in February or March… It’s July. #fail.

At least I don’t feel at risk of forgetting how I felt about the book – I take thorough notes, and I have decent recall of everything I’ve read (within the last ten years, anyway). Every once in a while, I struggle with regaining my emotional reaction to a book, but a quick skim through usually brings it all back. Furthermore, not all reviews have to wait in line. I usually post reviews for 5-star books soon after reading them because, frankly, I just can’t wait to talk about them (has anybody who has followed me for a while wondered why I’ve reviewed so many 5-star books lately? Granted, I’ve been really good at picking titles, but I haven’t been that good, haha). In a way, this method has served me well because my excited “just finished the book” feelings gets poured into those reviews – usually making them better. I should also mention that I always post right away for “obligation” books (ARCs) and ones I REALLY didn’t like (which are few and far between). It’s the middle of the road titles that I find difficult to make time for.

All Is Not Lost!

So you ask, why don’t you just write reviews when you have the time then schedule them for a later date? I think it’s a great idea, but haven’t been able to do it. I don’t know if I’m the only one who’s like this, but once I write a review, I want to share it… immediately. It’s this crazy impulse to hit “publish” even if it means sharing two, possibly even three posts a day. If I don’t publish it right away, it hangs over my head and actually stresses me out more than if I’d just waited until the last minute to write it (this is the only place in my life where that sentiment is true – I’m usually a very “get it done now so you can play later” type of person).

I guess my point in all this is that I am fighting annoyance with how far behind in reviews I am while simultaneously trying not to set myself up for blogging burnout. I have yet to experience burnout of any kind, thankfully, and I think that has a lot to do with stress-reducing adjustments I’ve made along the way. Although I have occasionally felt a mite stressed to get something out on time, I haven’t ever felt like I need a break longer than just a couple of days. It’s essential for me to keep blogging fun because it’s something I’m truly passionate about. Avoiding burnout will be even more important going forward as I am working on several self-motivated projects that require me to sit in front of the computer screen all day (writing a book while starting a magazine… i.e. topics for another post). On the bright side, I can stop reading for several months and still have material to blog about (yeah, like that will ever happen). :)

Am I Alone?

How often per week do you write book reviews? Has it changed since you started blogging? Do you find yourself behind in your reviews or constantly struggling to finish books to write about?

by Niki Hawkes

Jan 26 2014

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Chronicles of an Obsessive Bookblogger: Comment Love

chronicles of an obsessive bookblogger Comment Love

Here’s the thing: blogging for me is an incredibly personal endeavor… but I wouldn’t have made my blog accessible to the public if I didn’t want other people reading it. I wanted to highlight my love of books but, more importantly, I wanted to geek out about them with other people – that’s where the comments come into play.

You could say getting thoughtful comments on my posts is the ultimate goal of my book blog. And, if comments are the ultimate form of support – meaning someone took the time out of their busy day to read what I had to say and share their thoughts on it – shouldn’t a response be the highest priority on my to-do list? In my opinion, the answer is yes.

So why, then, is it so hard for me to respond to comments in a timely manner?

In all fairness, when I comment on other blogs, I don’t expect and answer right away. As long as the blogger gets back to me within a week or so (i.e. before I forget what I responded to in the first place) then I’m happy. But for some reason I hold myself to a much higher standard. If I don’t respond to a comment within a couple hours of reading it, I feel incredibly guilty, and it hangs over my head until I’ve answered back. I think it’s mostly because I want everybody who comments to know how much I appreciate their attention.

However, there are a few exceptions.

My heaviest commenting days are Tuesday and Wednesday where I participate in the memes Top Ten Tuesday and Waiting on Wednesday. There are always a handful of people who hit as many blogs as they can on those days, copying and pasting generic comments as they go. In my opinion, they might as well just write “I’m actively soliciting you to come look at my website and don’t really give a shit what’s in your post.” I know I’m not the only one who finds it a bit tacky, and am always less inclined to respond to the comment if I can tell that’s what they’ve done.

The silver lining is that for every ten generic responses, there’s always one or two genuine ones that surface each week, and these thoughtful comments is where I have met several of my best book blogging buddies. In fact, all of my awesome blogging friends have one thing in common: Comment Love. It is virtually impossible to have good blogosphere relationships without great comments that show you’ve taken the time to read and appreciate what the other person has to say.

So thank you to all of you who are still my blogging buddies despite the fact that I almost always suck at getting back to you in a timely manner. Just know it doesn’t lessen my appreciation in the least, I’m just waiting for a times when I’m able to respond just as thoughtfully!

Now I want to know what you think:

Do you have a difficult time keeping on top of comment love? How long do you think the appropriate response time should be?

by Niki Hawkes

Dec 20 2013

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Chronicles of an Obsessive Bookblogger: Reading Challenges

chronicles of an obsessive bookblogger

Reading Challenges

This is the first year that I’ve taken part in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, and I don’t know about you, but when I signed up I thought, “this could be a very bad idea.” You see, adding a reading challenge of any sort has the potential to suck some of the fun and spontaneity out of reading. I was worried that the end of the year would come around and I would be really disappointed if I didn’t hit my goal of 100 books.

Sure enough, around August I started paying attention to the little widget tracker as it helpfully informed me I was 8% behind schedule. Then October hit and I knew I was in trouble: I was a whopping 12% (thanks to easy math, exactly 12 books) behind my goal.

That meant I would have had to read 3.5 books per week to reach my goal by the end of the year (I average 1.75). Rationally, I knew it wasn’t going to happen – between family, work, blogging, and everything else that keeps my life so busy there was no way I was going to finish that many books a week. But, like any stubborn reader would, I tried…

I even came up with a game plan – I would read as many YA as I could because, let’s face it, they are the easiest to get through. Almost all of the adult speculative fiction on my shelves are well over 500 pages which take me at least a week to read. As you can imagine, it wasn’t long before I started to get really tired of reading all YA (I was focusing mostly on dystopian because I was doing a challenge for that as well). It felt like I was reading because I had to, and not because I wanted to. That’s NEVER good.

A few weeks ago, I finally threw in the towel. I was so tired of reading books that I knew would help me towards my goal that I randomly snatched an 800 page book off my shelf to reread and concentrated on that for a solid two weeks… it was bliss.

So what have I learned? It’s no fun to read things because you feel like you have to (even if they are really good books) and reading challenges can be stressful if you don’t pick goals that are consistent with your current reading habits.

In 2014, I’m going to start with 80 books as my Goodreads challenge goal and if I read more I’ll just bump it up accordingly at the end of the year. I’m still going to continue with the Dystopian Challenge (hosted by Blog of Erised), although I don’t think I will come anywhere near that 24+ books I read for it this year. Finally, I’m doing a Series Challenge (hosted by Read. Sleep. Repeat.) with the hopes that I can finish out a few of the dozens of unfinished series still hanging over my head. I’m worried about the last one mostly because I don’t want to feel obligated next year and I kind of already do when it comes to finishing what I start.

What about you? How many challenges do you have for yourself in 2014? Does participating stress you out like it does me?

by Niki Hawkes