Next year I’m hoping will be a little less crazy so I can manage more of a one review per week schedule, but other than that, I don’t expect next year to be all that different. While I’d love to be one of those people who posts 3 – 5 reviews a week, I’m afraid it just isn’t going to happen unless I win the lottery and get to manage my own schedule (which would be a great thing to have happen in 2011 but I’m not holding my breath waiting for that one!). I do tend to write rather slowly since I often end up rereading part of the book when writing a review and trying to make sure I’ve really thought it through – and sometimes I even end up changing my mind about what I initially thought in the process. I’d rather try to write the best review I can than try to write more reviews that I feel are rushed and not great quality (not that I think my reviews are particularly great now, but I at least feel like I’ve given it my best shot when I publish them).
So as far as reviewing goes, I’ll try to do more of what I’ve been doing but will hopefully improve with practice – which would be my hope for every year. My goal is to give you some information about each book I read – if it fits into a series and where, if it works as a stand alone or not, the plot (while always putting this in the same spot so it’s easy to skip for those people who don’t care), and any thoughts on characters, pacing, writing, world-building and anything else that stood out. Since everyone’s taste in books is different, I attempt to provide enough information that you can get an idea of whether or not it’s a book you will like regardless of if I liked it or not without spoiling too much – which can be a difficult balance to maintain. I generally decide what is too much information by asking myself if knowing what I’m saying beforehand would have spoiled the reading experience for me, but of course that differs from person to person. Also, I sometimes ask what my husband thinks since I generally ask him to read my reviews before I post them anyway (any editor’s notes you find occasionally sprinkled throughout reviews are his).
The one thing I would like to change in 2011 is that I’d like to do some more interviews with authors whose work I’ve read and enjoyed. This year I did an interview with Ginn Hale and one with Danielle Bennett and Jaida Jones and both of these were a lot of fun to do.
I would also like to open this up to suggestions. Is there anything you’d like to see more or less of in 2011? Now that there’s a new website, is there anything you’d particularly like to see on the new site? The only feedback I received about changes when the site first went up was that it would be nice if Disqus let you just post a name and URL, which it does if you type your comment and then go to submit it instead of logging in first. Is there anything else that would make the new site better?
Thank you to everyone who read my site in 2010!