Farewell, 2012: The Year in Reviews

I thought I’d write a post commemorating the year 2012 at The Book Stop.  It’s been 2 and a half years since I started this blog, and I wanted to think a little bit about what I’ve done this year and where the blog is going.

First, here’s what I read and reviewed:

• Books read in 2012: 64
• Books reviewed in 2012: 51

Books reviewed by genre:

• Classic literature: 8
• Contemporary fiction: 10
• Fantasy, paranormal, steampunk: 11
• Historical fiction: 14
• Science fiction: 5
• Nonfiction: 2

Cross-cutting categories:

• Children/Young Adult: 8
• Part of a Series: 12
• Review requests, ARCs or NetGalleys: 14

Some things I’m proud of in the last year:

• New followers: The Book Stop is a small blog and I’ve never expected otherwise.  But a steady stream of new followers this year made me very happy.  I know that followers aren’t necessarily readers.  But I’m still appreciative every time I get a new follower or a “like” or a comment.
• Review requests: At the beginning of 2012 I received very few author requests.  But the more I review, the more requests I receive each month.  I can’t accept most of the requests, but I love reading and writing about new authors.  I try to choose carefully and I’m happy with most of the books I selected for review this year.
• Challenges: I don’t sign up for a lot of challenges, so last year was a little bit of an experiment, and I think I did really well.  The challenges pushed me to read books I wouldn’t have otherwise, and I ended up reading most of what I committed to read.  On the flip side, I didn’t write posts about these challenge books nearly as much as I was supposed to.
• Reading the classics: In 2012 I finished War and Peace, The Count of Monte Cristo, and North and South – all books I’ve struggled with in the past, and all three worth every minute.  Two books I started but didn’t make it through: Bleak House by Charles Dickens and Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.  Should I pick those back up in 2013?

Where do I want to take The Book Stop in 2013?

• Mostly I just want to maintain.  I’ll be taking some grad school classes and that may eat into a lot of my time. I noticed this year that a lot of blogs I really enjoy sort of dropped out of blogging, which is a shame but I understand that real life intervenes.  I’m hoping to just keep up with my 1-2 reviews a week and write the kind of reviews I like to write.  And I’ll just hope you keep reading.

•  I always want to be a better reader of others’ blogs.  I do believe that being a blogger means being a good blog-follower.  I have about 20 blogs I try to visit fairly recently but it’s not often enough!  There are just so many good blogs out there.

•  In 2012 I didn’t do a lot of meme-ing.  I did two Literary Giveaways, the North and South Read-a-long, and a post for Armchair BEA.   For a few weeks I joined the Not A Mommy Blog hop but those aren’t book bloggers so it wasn’t a great fit.  Otherwise I mostly joined the “It’s Monday, What are You Reading” hop hosted by Book Journey – since that lets me talk about what I would have talked about anyway.  I’m always wondering whether I should do more or less of this stuff.  I like Top Ten Tuesday, for example, but it almost never fits into my schedule of when I want to post.  I like the Classics Club monthly prompts, but again, it’s all I can do to write about the things I want to write about.  I don’t need more ideas, just more time.  Thoughts?

•  What bookish topics do you want to hear more about in 2013?  Right now I’m fascinated by the turmoil over false or paid-for reviews on Amazon and other sites.  Should reviews be validated in some way or just completely open (in which case, buyer beware!).  Is e-reading still an interesting topic?  What about the level of sex and violence in young adult fiction?  Is literary writing alive and well or barely breathing?  I would like The Book Stop to be a place where we think about what it means to read, and not just book reviews.

Wishing everyone a very happy 2013!