Category: Let’s Discuss

Recently, I’d found that I wasn’t visiting as many blogs as I used to. I have a solid group of blogger friends who come by my blog and I visit them back regularly, but I was rarely visiting any other blogs, and I started to feel like my blogging world was getting a bit myopic. Especially since, over time, some of my blogger friends have (sob!) stopped blogging. Don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT complaining about the folks who hang out with me all the time (I love you all!), but it’s a great big book blogosphere out there, and every once in a while I notice what a tiny sliver I’m interacting with. So I’ve decided to make an effort to expand my bookish world a little. Here are a few steps I’m taking (each of these on an occasional basis): Visit posts that my friends have linked to. This… Read more »

I have to start this post by saying that I’m not expecting anyone to do anything about this issue, and I don’t blame my fellow bloggers at all for my own state of checkbox confusion. I just need to vent for a minute!!! Ever since the disaster that was the new (or, no-longer-all-that-new) GDPR regulations, commenting on blogs has become a game of navigating a minefield of checkboxes. I mean, I get why they created these regulations, but for the average blogger, it’s just made our commenting lives a mess. I’ll admit it: I’m easily confused. Now every time I go to a blog to comment, I have to spend five minutes figuring out which of the fifty checkboxes I want to check, and I’m not too proud to admit that half the time I want to pull my hair out in frustration by the end! It doesn’t help that every blog… Read more »

When I was younger, I LOVED going to the movies. I went often, and I especially loved Disney movies and the iconic teen movies that came out at that time (10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless, Say Anything…, Heathers, Can’t Buy Me Love, Sixteen Candles, She’s All That, etc.). As I got older, my movie watching habit slowed WAY down. A lot of it just had to do with how much it cost—it always seemed like there were better ways to spend that money, and we’d occasionally rent something but it got harder and harder to find movies that everyone wanted to see (or even that my husband and I were both really interested in). When my kids were little, we often went to see the newest animated features, but other than that, my movie excursions were rare. Lately, I’ve started watching more movies again. It started because of… Read more »

I’m one of those people who pretty much exclusively follows book blogs. I’m not particularly interested in following blogs that focus on something else like travel or fashion or general lifestyle stuff. BUT I’ve found that I actually really enjoy getting little snippets of those things on my friends’ book blogs. I thought I’d highlight some of the types of non-bookish posts and topics I enjoy seeing on people’s blogs. Not because I’m expecting anyone to specifically create more of these because I like them, but just because I thought it might be fun to feature some of the other types of posts my bookish friends create. Crafts – I absolutely love seeing the crafts that my fellow bloggers have been working on. Whether you’re knitting cool scarves (or cowls–this post was actually inspired when I saw this knitting post at Bookwyrm’s Hoard), or creating pottery (Steph Pajonas makes cool pottery),… Read more »

I am always in awe of people who manage to blog ahead. I mean, some of you guys have things scheduled out for months. It’s beyond my comprehension. I always say that I’m just not organized enough to manage blogging ahead, but I’ve realized that there’s another reason as well: I am terribly impatient and I can’t wait to get that post I’ve just written out there. Case in point: I just wrote a goofy little post about exclamation points. It’s nothing brilliant or mind-blowing, but the second I finished it, I really wanted to post it. Except I couldn’t. I had a tour post that went up that morning, and it needed to be top post of the day (plus, I’m aware that it would be silly to put up two posts in one day when I had only put up one other post that week). So, my next instinct was… Read more »

Of course, my main addiction is fiction (as my blog title so aptly points out), but I’ve realized that I’m addicted to something else as well: exclamation points! Yes, I am one of those terrible over-users of the exclamation point. If I have commented on your blog, I have probably exclaimed over you in egregious ways. Sometimes I’ve used three exclamation points in a two-sentence comment!! It seems like the shorter a comment is, the more it needs an extra oomph. Somehow adding that little exclamation point makes me feel like the comment is more cheerful, more interesting, more vibrant, more encouraging. Am I fooling myself? Probably. Will I change? Probably not. I know that some people find exclamation points really annoying. And sometimes I do go and remove one or two from my comments before I hit Send. After all, I don’t want to be obnoxious. But this is a… Read more »

Have you ever read a book and felt like there was a bit of issue overload? Like it dealt with just too many topics, and you started to wonder if it was all maybe a bit too much for one story? I definitely have. But I’ve also read books that handled multiple issues incredibly well, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how, in real life, many of us deal with a lot. I mean, we don’t really get to say, “No, sorry, I’ve already had my fill of ‘issues’–it just isn’t believable that I would have one more.” Believable or not, life is what it is. Take my family for instance: If I tried to write a book about my kids, people would read it and say, “This is so unrealistic. She just wanted to add in a bunch of diversity (or neurodiversity) for the sake of diversity.” And… Read more »