book community – Lost in the Story

21 bookish post ideas for 2021

Published on January 6, 2021January 2, 2021 by Arabella3 Comments

This year I’ve decided not to take part in a yearly review of 2020. There’s going to be a lot of people saying how much they’ve achieved over the previous year. But I’m very aware so many others missed out on many of their yearly goals due to the pandemic. All things considered, 2020 was a good year for me but I’m not thinking going over why would be all that tasteful right now. For many, making it through 2020 was the biggest achievement for the year, something that should be celebrated as the past year has not been easy.

Instead of a yearly review I thought I’d be fun to keep things light-hearted and looking forward. I know many have entered this year tired and as a blogger I know I came into 2021 exhausted on the writing front. So, after some brainstorming (and some searching on Pinterest) I gathered 21 bookish post ideas to help us kickstart 2021. If you’re struggling for post ideas give these a read, there’ll be something you can draw inspiration from.

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Why I’m learning to write negative book reviews

Published on November 4, 2020October 22, 2020 by Arabella3 Comments

Leaving negative reviews of books has become a tad of a controversial topic in the book community. There’s been a fair amount of discourse over if anyone really benefits from them and if it’s morally OK for people to be writing them in the first place. Once you’ve gotten past that debate you then come to the question of what is even classes as a negative review? Is three stars a negative review, but three and a half a positive one? Very quickly you can find yourself overwhelmed with a lot of people with a whole bunch of strong opinions.

In all my years of blogging I’ve never published a negative review on my blog (I class a review of under three stars to be negative). Goodreads yes, but here on Lost in the Story no. My reasoning behind it was why waste time reviewing a book I didn’t enjoy? Why spend all that time going through the book a second time making notes when I didn’t enjoy it? I also had the opinion that there was enough negativity in the world, and I didn’t want to be adding to that. All of that combined with the fact I tend to dnf books I don’t enjoy meant I never really had to face these problems.

However, I wouldn’t be writing this post if my thoughts on the matter hadn’t changed to some degree. Over the past few months, I’ve been doing some thinking and I want to break down for you why I’m now learning to write negative reviews of books.

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Pros and cons of re-reading books

Published on October 21, 2020October 5, 2020 by Arabella7 Comments

Autumn is one of the best months for reading not because you can curl up with a blanket, but because the weather is so wet and miserable you can’t quite muster the motivation to go outside. I find I read more in these months than I do for the rest of the year. However, this means that the autumn months can get a tad expensive with all that extra book buying and that’s not ideal as a student. But this got me thinking, why don’t I just re-read some of my old books? It makes sense, after all my books only collect dust on my shelf and make me sneeze.

After flicking through some of my old books, and not really getting anywhere reading wise, I began to wonder if there were any downsides to reading my old books. I was obviously struggling to get through them, so something had to be wrong. This then lead me down the rabbit hole of the debate with re-reading books, where I think I got a decent enough understanding of it to apply it to my own reading and summaries it for you guys. I don’t think this debate is anywhere near as large as some others in the book community, but either way I hope you enjoy my break down of the pros and cons of re-reading books.

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