a look back

I've been thinking more about the reading experience that was 2011. It was hard for me to pick a "best book" and so I finally gave up trying. There just weren't a lot I read that really wowed me this year. I think that's because I read so much non-fiction. A lot of those books were great. They were interestting, satisfied my curiosity, even entertained me sometimes- but I didn't fall in love with many of them, or feel very passionate about recommending them to people.

In one regard it was a good reading year- I did read over a hundred books- but it many other ways it wasn't. I was dealing with pregnancy and then a new baby, lots of sleep loss. So even though I read alot while nursing the baby, much of the time my brain was too tired or mind wandering, to focus on the book in hand. And then I found when I sat down to write blog posts nothing seemed to come out right. I either couldn't think of much to say and wrote really brief posts, or just started rambling about the book and had a hard time organizing my thoughts. I feel in part that my visitors dropped off because my writing was suffering, but I know it's also because I failed to visit and comment on other blogs as much as I used to. I also didn't write a single past-reads post, something I've been meaning to get back into lately. So overall I feel like my blogging efforts were really lame this year. Not enough visiting around, not enough focus, poor writing on my part. I'm really hoping to do better again, now that the baby sleeps most of the night and I get a few hours to myself during her daytime naps....

Excuses, excuses. Mostly just writing this to remind myself there were good reasons I failed to blog well as last year, and that I want to and can get back into the swing of things again.