In My Life
Time for Reading vs. Blogging
Lately my lack of reading time has been weighing on my mind. In January I only read three books because I dedicated a lot of my limited spare time to blogging. In February that number rose to eight books as I scaled back a little on blogging. Over the past two weeks however, I finished reading seven books but I blogged considerably little. I’m much happier for the books I managed to finish. Yet, blogging less and hardly checking my RSS feeds has made me feel more disconnected.
How does a book blogger reconcile reading with blogging? Truth be told, I consider myself a reader first, then a blogger. In January I let myself be a blogger first, then a reader. My blog statistics practically doubled from December to January, which I considered quite an achievement. However, am I willing to do this at the expense of my reading time? I don’t think so.
Besides reading and blogging, I have a myriad of other interests and commitments too. Photography obviously matters a lot to me. I also love baking and and am pushing myself to cook as well. While I’ve been feeling torn about my will to continue competitive sports, I do want to take part in the upcoming season.
Thinking about blogging then, I can’t help but wonder about all those books I’ll never read because of the time I chose to blog instead. Is that a bad thing? Yes and no. There are a lot of books I own that I’ve yet to read. The more time I dedicate to them the sooner I’ll be able to say I’ve read every single book on my bookshelves. At the same time, social media has long been an interest of mine and I dedicated a lot of my undergrad research to it. Even for my honours thesis I was bent on incorporating social media and photography and/or photographs.
The question is: where does that leave me as a book blogger? For now, I think discipline is something I need to focus on more. When I make plans to schedule posts, I should follow through. I’ve made it a point to always write initial thoughts on Goodreads after finishing a book. Perhaps I should expand that and write full book reviews immediately. I can always format them when I’m ready to schedule. As for writing blog posts, I’m stepping away from distractions. No more mindless web surfing with a million tabs open at the same time.
Advancing My Photography Journey
Recently I acquired a new full frame DSLR, Nikon D750. For a little over three years I used my cropped frame DSLR, Nikon D3200. The basics of photography remain in terms of choosing aperture, shutter speed and ISO.
Beyond that, the D750 has so many untapped functionalities and hidden settings. For instance, I was so lost on trying to pick single focus points in the view finder of my D750. Then when I tried to look for the burst mode, I hadn’t realized that the dial at the top actually has dual wheels specifically, one specifically to control the shutter.
Upgrading almost feels like plunging into photography anew. It’s disconcerting but I love it. There’s so much from for me to grow and I can’t wait to see where I’ll go from here. Meanwhile, I’m reading up all I can on my new camera’s functions and photography techniques in general. Believe it or not, I have no idea how to operate a flash, particularly if it’s off-camera. It’s time to change that.
Books Read
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- Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard — 4/5 stars [ARC]
- The Rumor by Elin Hilderbrand — 3.5/5 stars [audiobook]
- Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Reigate — 4/5 stars [eARC]
- Map of Fates (The Conspiracy of Us #2) by Maggie Hall — 3/5 stars [audiobook]
On the Blog
Blog Posts
Sarah J. Maas was in Singapore, and I attended her book signing on Friday. I shared photos and recapped the event, which was held at the Kinokuniya main store. As usual, I rounded up last week’s YA releases and shared my Bookish Scene photo, themed Shards.
Book Reviews
This week I reviewed Bluescreen by Dan Wells. As much as I enjoyed the book for its cover integration of gaming, communication technology and mystery, I wasn’t a fan of the narration. Should I decide to reread it ahead of the sequel’s publication, I’ll probably reach for the ebook instead. Same goes for the sequel itself. The audiobook was alright but I would’ve preferred a different narrator.
This year I’ve decided to step back from blogging and spend more time reading and writing (personal projects, journaling, poetry). What prompted me to do this was when I re-read all of my posts from 2015 and realized that the posts I liked the most were the ones that were the most personal, more like journaling entries, rather than those top-10 lists that are fun to write. I never did book tours or cover reveals because I don’t even read those types of posts on other blogs. But basically, I want to make my blog as personal as possible and keep it was a record for myself.
So far my plan has worked! This year I’ve read almost half the amount of books that I read last year, and it’s not even April. I’ve also written a lot more, and branched out in the type of reading that I’ve been doing. Lots more poetry, classics, off-beat stuff. But props to all those who really have fun blogging in ways that I stopped doing!
In my life, reading is a constant, daily activity that happens on my commutes, lunch breaks and often before I go to sleep at night. Blogging, on the other hand, is something I happen to schedule in – and usually aim to spend an afternoon or evening working on multiple posts. I think, for me, it helps to schedule ahead! I write posts in bulk and schedule them out so I don’t have to work on the blog for a little while after I’m done. Also, yay for a new camera!
I struggle with this too. I read only a handful of books in January – February, but blogged LOTS (there’s always so much to write about at the beginning of the year, with resolutions and challenge sign-ups, with the Love-a-thon right behind all that January goodness), and then March I blogged a little but read WAY MORE. I always just go with what feels right. When I’m in the mood to blog, I blog. When I don’t feel like blogging, I read or comment or just scroll mindlessly through Instagram. It is hard to stay connected in all aspects of this wonderful community without making it a full-time job, but I just do what I can with my little corner of the Internet =)
i do a lousy job of balancing the two as in I don’t balance at all. I read over 10 books per month and sometimes review only 2. That’s just an example. I always promise I’ll do better but reviewing every single book seems impossible to me. My most recent attempt is to do mini reviews of 3 books in 1 post. Works better for me and my readers seem to like more anyways. As you can see, I put reading first. I don’t wont to force myself too much with blogging because then it starts feeling like work :/
I’ve been having trouble keeping up with commenting lately, but I’ve still been reading and enjoying your Bookstagram posts!
As far as balancing reading and blogging goes, I would always put reading first. Of course, that’s one of many reasons I haven’t started a blog myself, so take that with a grain of salt. ;)
I’m not a very organised person so I tend to just do what I feel like doing when I have free time. I really want to read more books this year though so I have been pushing myself to read more at the expense of blogging and doing other things. Personally, I don’t think discipline is the answer though (okay maybe a bit), but for me, blogging is a hobby so I’m not very strict on myself when it comes to blogging, I just want to make sure I’m enjoying it. Reading is my hobby as well but I also want to learn more and read more so perhaps a bit of discipline wouldn’t be so bad for that :)
I struggle with finding a balance between blogging and reading, too (and working on my novel…). Because blogging, reading and writing are all interrelated, I think it’s harder to balance them with each other compared to unrelated hobbies.
One thing I’ve found that helps is to schedule them. That probably sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. I don’t schedule every minute of my leisure time or anything like that, but I find that if I set aside a few hours a week for each hobby then I’m more likely to be able to balance them in the time that’s not scheduled, and at the worst I’m devoting a few hours to each of them. At the moment, I’m going to bed an hour before I need to go to sleep so I have that reading time (I’ve always been a reading-in-bed girl), I spend my lunch hour at work on my novel, and I set aside a couple hours on Saturday afternoon and on a weeknight for blogging. In a month it’ll probably be different ;)
I’m new to the book blogger space (but have maintained a personal blog for a few years now, so I’m not totally new to blogging), but I tend to focus on real life first. In this case, that would be the reading. Blogging is secondary for me (I do it during down time at work or home as I can), which means my blog will probably always be pretty small. I’m personally okay with that, but it depends on what you’re looking to get out of your time. If growing the blog is a priority or is something you enjoy as much as the reading, a different time allocation is probably more appropriate