As anyone who reads my blog will know, I’ve recently been a bit under the weather and my blog has born the brunt of my illness by being ignored. I had been doing quite well in reviewing books and then I got sick and didn’t touch my laptop for days on end and simply couldn’t work up the motivation to blog when all I wanted to do when coming back from work is sleep. This has meant I’ve fallen behind in all the books I want to review.
I’m Behind In My Reviews And Don’t Know If I Can Catch Up
I don’t read all that many review copies of books, but I always prioritise those books to review over other books I’ve read which I’ve bought myself. I do like to try and review all the books I’ve really enjoyed though, even if it’s just a short review, because I like to bring attention to those books I liked. Sadly, when I was sick I was still reading but I wasn’t writing anything up for review and I was already a few books behind for reviews in the first place, getting sick just put me way behind.
My question to all of you is simple, when you fall behind in your reviews (for whatever reason) do you carry on trying to review all the books you originally planned to on top of the new books you’re reading or do you forget those and start afresh?
I’m Thinking I May Have To Forget My Old Books
I am not the best about making sure I get posts written anyway, but to have to work on old reviews for books which have already drifted from my mind is a daunting task. Even my half written notes about a book are not always the best guide for what I should be writing, they are more spontaneous moments of inspiration that don’t make sense out of context.
I am not helpful to myself, and it seems my lack of order and method in writing reviews makes it even more difficult to know what I initially wanted to say. In some ways it’s good, my reviews end up taking a completely course than originally intended and I discover something I hadn’t realised about a book, but a lot of the time it is just confusing and unhelpful until I’ve edited things down.
As such, I now have a bunch of half written reviews and useless notes that don’t help me in writing reviews and leave me quite unmotivated to finish them. That lack of motivation means that any review I write will not be my best, and I don’t want to do that disservice to the books I want to review. I enjoyed them too much to not attempt to capture and explain my enjoyment of them to the best of my ability.
It’s OK, though, because isn’t it an excellent excuse for a reread?
I know I probably shouldn’t just abandon the books I wanted to review, but it’s the only thing which makes sense to me because I know how poorly I manage my time anyway, let alone creating time to write reviews for books that have faded slightly from my mind. I have vague notes written down so maybe I’ll go back and review them, but for now they are on the back burner. There are a couple of books I did really enjoy, and those are the books most likely to drive me to go back and write reviews, but this is also a perfect excise to go back and revisit the stories. Who doesn’t like an excuse for a reread?
As you can probably tell, I’ve already made my mind up on my course of action, but I do want to know your thoughts. How would you go about tackling a review backlog? Would you review your absolute must reads, work on getting all your reviews ready or simply just ignore them and move on?
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