New Year of Positive Cheer

Happy New Year one and all, I hope you all had an enjoyable eve of it.

Unlike other years, I’ve refused to look at the end of year stats round-up that WP kindly provides, partly because I don’t want this post to become a vehicle of a self-critical nature and partly because although I feel my standard of writing has been raised, my overall post total is down on last year and as a result so are my page views.  I know it isn’t all about views but there is a certain manic joy at exceeding x number of visitors and views and I do like to think that this year I will stop those diminishing returns and become better at blogging.

To avoid self flagellating too much, I have decided to become more focussed when on the laptop and write posts in two hours or less, that way I can devote more time to reading other blogs, although when I do that, it takes me on average around four hours to get around all my usual haunts.  Saving time with that will mean more quality reading can be done for writing content and that is my round about way of justifying an excuse for spending the morning of New Year’s Eve scouring bookshops for more fascinating stories and ideas.

I managed to find a blend of new and second-hand books, balancing an atheist with a theologian as well as mixing up the different cultures, prize winners and genres which will hopefully interest you.  Previously I have attempted to turn back to my book roots only to be distracted by other things but this time I am hoping the wind will blow back more towards the books with other posts to break them up rather than – as has been of late – the other way around.

My current read is none of these by the way but as I still have hundreds of books to review, I will keep you guessing over what the next one will be, a clue of which is it doesn’t include ducks…at all.