Welcome to my first post commerating 10 years of book blogging! You’ll see a few of these posts throughout 2024. I’m taking this blogiversary as an opportunity to reflect on a variety of aspects of my blogging history and present.
Updating the List
The topic of this post was coincidental to my blogiversary. I thought, “I should really update my review archive”, and then I thought, “If I update my review archive, that’s nice that it coincides with 10 years of blogging”. I hadn’t maintained my archive since 2018.
I designed the archive primarily for my own benefit… my theory is that the only time someone looks at my review archive is to 1) get a sense of what type of books I review or 2) find out if I’ve reviewed a specific title.
Previously, I simply split my archive into fiction and non-fiction. Maybe. I don’t even remember at this point, haha. Now I’ve split it into the eight categories listed below. I kept ‘Archived reviews’ (ie reviews I wrote before deciding to become a book blogger, so they have a different tone/approach) as a separate ninth category. These categories may not be a perfect decision. For example, if you want to find all my reviews of books by Catherynne M. Valente, you’d have to look in several categories. But I think if anyone is that keen, they can do a search in page with CTRL + F. 😉 Anyway, here are the categories. Links will take you directly to that section on my Reviews page.
- Middle Grade Speculative Fiction
- Middle Grade Realistic Fiction
- Young Adult Fiction
- Adult Fiction
- Tolkien
- This category includes pre-2014 posts, as I wrote some formative reviews of Tolkien books before I became a book blogger.
- Non-fiction – Lifestyle / Self-help
- Non-fiction – Arctic / Northern
- Non-fiction – Other Topics
- Archived reviews from 2010 to 2013
Alongside each listed review is the date the review was published. I left a few reviews out of the list. You’ll still be able to find the posts on my blog, but I didn’t see a need to highlight those titles. Mostly that’s for books where my review was exceptionally short or basic, or the book was by an author who has since exposed herself as a nasty TERF…
So, How Many Reviews Have I Published in 10 Years?
I have published 336 reviews. Here is the breakdown by category:
- 89 Middle Grade Speculative Fiction
- 75 Adult Fiction
- 55 Middle Grade Realistic Fiction
- 41 Young Adult Fiction
- 41 Non-fiction – Other Topics
- 22 Tolkien
- 8 Non-fiction – Arctic / Northern
- 5 Non-fiction – Lifestyle / Self-help
- (plus 116 archived reviews from 2010 to 2013)
Working on this review archive project has had me considering my reviews from all sorts of angles. Perhaps I’ll write more in the future…
Do you maintain a review archive?
Do you ever visit review archives of other bloggers?
Oooh 10 years, that’s amazing. Keeping up review archives can be tough, I used to do it by hand but since I use the Ultimate Book Blogger plug-in, reviews are automatically added to my review page. (At least from the last 6 years or so) As far as using archives on other blogs, I have never done that. If I want to find a review I usually just use the search button if that blogger has one. I do like all the categories you’ve come up with😁
Thanks Tammy! I think I looked at that plug in once upon a time but it didn’t quite organize things how I would like, or something (I can’t recall, lol) – I do like having my little categories 😛 But the automatic updating sounds handy!
Your archive looks great! I’ve kept separate pages for each year’s review list, mostly because I like to be organized and when I’m like “what was that book I read two years ago” it’s super handy to scroll through. I think I might want to make one main page though because I have pages back to 2016
Thanks Sam! I can imagine how having multiple pages might be a bit much to reference, but it could be neat to see reviews laid out by year and be able to compare how reading habits may have evolved over time.
Congratulations on 10 years of blogging! That is amazing!
Thank-you so much! 😊
Congrats on your 10 years. That is great!
I used to have a big review archive but it was such a hassle to keep updating. And it wasn’t getting a lot of traction. Last year I made one for 2023 release reviews and was meant to make one for the 2024 releases I reviewed but I kind of fell of that bandwagon. While we review a lot and have big archives, a lot of views on reviews came and come from search engines I’ve found and not through the archive on my own blog. So sometimes I wonder why I do it (except for my own feel of wanting to be organized lol).
Thank-you ☺ I’m starting to feel like it’s somewhat inherent to a book blogger to want to maintain an archive even if we’re the only ones who look at it, haha. It’s true for me as well that most folks find my sepcific reviews via search engines.
Oh gosh, I JUST finished updating my own review archive/index thing. It can be a lot of work, but it’s so satisfying to have everything all organized and browsable in one place, right?
I think it’s smart that you have a designated section for reviews from before you had a dedicated-to-books blog. Wish I’d thought of that, too! (But too late now, I’m not going back and changing all that work I just finished LOL)
And I do occasionally use review archives when I want to see if other readers who have similar tastes or interesting takes have posted about something I’ve read or am thinking of reading. But I do this more often for backlist books, as I don’t really want to overly influence my own reviews for new releases.
Also, I had a little chuckle at your subtitle — “It’s not that exciting but I did it and now I’m going to tell you about it” pretty much sums it up, but FWIW I think this sort of metadata (metablogging?) is fun.
Way to go on also getting your archive organized!! I’m glad you enjoyed this metadata post haha it was such an undertaking for me, I had to share. I think I will do a few more analytical posts like this in the coming months…
Maintaining a review archive is something that could be useful and interesting, but that I have not wanted to take the time to do. I used to have the Ultimate Book Blogger plug-in on my old blog but I decided not to bother even with that! What I have started doing is looking back at my fiction and non-fiction reading at the end of each year and breaking it into categories. It’s like a mini review archive, but I have not gone the extra step of putting it all together.
Your archive is fun to look through. It’s especially handy to have at a glance the date when you read a book.
[…] @ Falling Letters is celebrating 10 years of blogging! And discussed her process of updating her blog’s archive, which is inspiring me to set up an archive […]