Shannon had a post detailing why she still reviews books. It made me think about all the reasons why I’m still blogging after all these years.
I started this blog in 2005 after blogging elsewhere for a year. So why am I still writing, all these years later?
It helps to download the thoughts out of my brain
I started the blog because my husband at the time liked to hear himself talk. He didn’t care to hear me talk. If I wanted to air my thoughts I needed a different outlet. It turns out that I don’t like talking anyway so this works just fine for me.
If I read a book and have thoughts about it, I can review it and get all those rampaging thoughts out of my head so I can move on.
It has helped me recreate events from my life
There have been a few times when I couldn’t remember what year something happened or in what order some events happened. A quick blog search set me right. How do people who don’t blog know what happened in their lives?
Social media is ok but it is so ephemeral. You can’t really search it to find old things. It could all disappear if it gets bought out.
It helps me find my people
I know most people in the world don’t care at all about whatever book I read last, let alone want to read all my thoughts on it. Here people actually at least want to briefly skim it.
Why are you still writing and/or reading blogs, despite all the articles declaring them dead every year?
The community keeps me here. I’ve met so many interesting people! Blogging also helps me remember what I read. If I didn’t write little reviews, I’d probably forget everything as soon as I put the book down.
It’s the community for me. I have booky friends but not nonfiction ones so much, and I loved especially in lockdown being able to talk to people all over the place.
Also, as I am self-employed and work at home, it gives me my only platform to share about the social justice stuff that is really important to me.
I never know people in real life who have read the same books as I have to discuss them either.
I’m very fortunate to be friends with Heaven-Ali and we have a big overlap in our fiction reading and swap books, and Kaggsysbookishramblings who I don’t see so often.
I just started blogging but I ten years ago I shut down a blog I had been writing for about seven years. Truly, one of the reasons I came back after all this time off is I miss the community and I love playing around with code and figuring out all the blogging stuff. I opted for books this time because it doesn’t require me to share as much personal info and I was tired of realizing ten pages in that I already read a book. Now I can just put everything together in one neat little package.
I once I read a whole book, didn’t enjoy it, went to review it, and realized that I had already read and reviewed it. I had absolutely no memory of it. The first line of my review called it “forgettable”. Got that one right!
If I don’t write down my book thoughts, they will disappear, and I really like to be able to go back and see what I thought about books I read in the past. I like that there are still other booky dinosaur folks hanging on, because those are my people. I can’t do BookTok or videos or Instagram, it’s not my format; I like this format! I do also use it to journal about travel. I’ve been very bad at blogging this year, but I also don’t want to let go of it.
Watching videos just takes too long. I like to read about reading!