I’ve been in a somewhat funny mood for most of November with respect to blogging. Suffice it to say the whole Twitter takeover and people “jumping ship,” so to speak, kind of triggered my grumpiness. I have *~*thoughts*~ about the exploration of other social media platforms. (Even though I understand everyone’s reasoning.) But I’m not sure I want to put the effort into sharing them unless others want to hear what I have to say. If you do, let me know in the comments.
A shining light amidst my grumpiness was that Tor unexpectedly shared a couple of my book reviews on their Twitter account. The first was a complete surprise and it was a nice confidence boost. It rekindled my raison d’être for book blogging.
I’m also getting back into working out. This really fell off the wayside after we moved house a year ago. It’s tough to motivate myself when these days I’d rather read. But my goal is to do some form of exercise four times per week. I look forward to not feeling sore the next day after a workout!
We also got our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. Wow, I think this is the prettiest tree we’ve ever bought! Our local nursery chain names the trees. This year we have a Hades.
Anyway, that’s my little life update. Here’s what I was up to in the bookish world.
Book Reviews
November I went light on the book reviews and posted only three. From earliest to latest they are:
- A Storm of Wrath and Ruin by Kristin Ward
- Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan
- The Dark Queens by Shelley Puhak
I also participated in memes and book tags throughout November, as I typically do every month. And I posted several BBNYA 2022 Spotlight tours. You can find them all in my November archives.
Blog Statistics
Every month I share some statistics from Google Analytics because I think it helps put expectations into perspective for other micro-bloggers like me who are out there.
My top five posts for unique page views in November are:
- ARC Review: Heart of the Sun Warrior by Sue Lynn Tan: 38 views
- End of the Year Book Tag: 36 views
- November 2022 Hopefuls: 35 views
- Monthly Book Blog Wrap-Up: October 2022: 25 views
- Book Review: The Dark Queens by Shelley Puhak: 23 views
I gained three followers in November for a total of 110!
Overall, though, visitation is down. I commented about this on Twitter a few weeks ago. Those who replied generally said that they also typically see a drop off around this time of year. So while it might not be unusual (perhaps due to the holiday busy-ness?), it is a bit disheartening to see my numbers dip after several months of growth. Hopefully I’ll hit my September viewership stats again after the holiday season is over.
#BeatTheBacklong
I read one book that I added to my TBR prior to 2022: A THOUSAND STEPS INTO NIGHT by Traci Chee. I haven’t posted the review yet, but I did write it!
NetGalley
My feedback ratio is 79%, so hovering near the “ideal” number. I submitted two reviews recently. The first was HEART OF THE SUN WARRIOR by Sue Lynn Tan (ok, technically I submitted it on October 30). And the second was A THOUSAND STEPS INTO NIGHT by Traci Chee. It was nice to review the latter one since it hit shelves months ago and I was super late to read it.
Other Bookish Items
- I lowkey joined three bookish events in November: Nonfiction November, NetGalley November, and Nonfiction November. Clearly there are a lot of bookish terms to alliterate with November! I didn’t post much for any of them, but that’s ok. I’m not Superwoman.
Not only the stress & preparation of the holidays, but I also find mine dropping when I don’t take the time to bloghop and check other’s post out 😅 — We do generally are a community to piggy back on each others, rarely having random commenters that aren’t bloggers. (Not hating it, it gives us a feel of community and friendship in a way?)
Can’t say I got grumpy, but I definately felt more meh this month.. among strong allergy peaks and random migraines leaving me confused. While I can see some people asking if everybody left twitter already- I kinda don’t see it on my end? Everything seems normal to me, just like the pornban on tumblr, i’m just gonna be sticking until I get booted out basically 😂
I’ve seen other bloggers say the same thing about engagement–when they don’t have time to blog hop, they notice their own engagement decrease, as well. I haven’t done any “experiments,” so to speak, on that topic with my own blog, so I don’t have anything to add. However, I’ve been busy with work stuff this first week of December and haven’t had much time to blog hop, so maybe this will be its own natural experiment in the making. 😉
Yea, I don’t think people have left Twitter, but I definitely saw a lot of tweets from fellow bloggers relaying where else they signed up in case Twitter completely tanked. I don’t know what the tumblr ban thing is, haha, since I don’t have one. But what I’m broadly grumpy about is people signing up at XYZ social media account in advance of Twitter tanking, but not taking the time to actually follow the actual blogs of the bloggers they interact with on Twitter. I tweeted about that a couple of times, and there was agreement, but the conversation is still overwhelmingly about finding a Twitter replacement.