Blogging break

I've already unintentionally stopped blogging, having not posted in the last week, but now I'm going to make it official. I'm in the wrong headspace for blogging and for most reading, and a different part of the internet has captured my attention. I may still post occasionally, probably just links and maybe photos, reviews if I get round to reading anything. I'll not be actively blogging, though.

I'm still reading all the blogs I always read, and I'm still around, and hopefully I'll be back to the blog eventually.

Book memory

Going through old posts to link them up to my Books Read lists, I'm completely shocked by how little I actually wrote about books. Only rarely in the first year and a half of this blog did I write an actual comprehensive review of a book, which seems bizarre now. So there was a lot less linking to be done than I expected.

I'm sorry I didn't write more. There are certain books I'd love to go back and read my first impressions of. I found I'd never written a whole post about The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, which is one of my favourites, and one I know I will feel differently about on any rereadings. In fact, I read a lot of wonderful books in 2008 that I never really wrote about.

I don't know what use it is being able to go back and reread my old thoughts on books, but it's always fascinating. Books have such an immediate, almost visceral effect on us, that it's impossible to remember how we felt about them without rereading them. Sometimes, rereading doesn't even work. Books are muscle memory--like all the things you can't remember or explain how to do until you do them. But unlike riding a bike or dancing a certain step, how we "do" books is affected by the passage of time. We change, and our "book muscles" change with us, so rereading a book doesn't always use the same muscles as it did the first time. I suppose that's why people envy new readers of good books, experiencing them for the first time.

All this to say: in future, I'm going to write a full post about every book I read that's worth remembering.

P.S.: Natalie Foy was also talking about book memory recently.

Goals

I don't know when I'll stop remembering or planning in terms of school years instead of calendar years. Probably when I'm out of school, but I suspect it will be difficult to let go of the feeling that September is the beginning and June is some kind of end.

For now, though, it still makes most sense to me to make my New Year's resolutions (of a sort) in September. And I move out of my house and into my dorm today, so it's a good moment for beginning things.

First, I want a real job that pays me real money. State budget cuts suck and tuition sucks even more (both idiomatically and in that they suck up money like a big education vacuum).

Second, I want to make a bunch of new friends, because I know there are a lot of super fabulous people at UW that I have yet to meet.

Third, I want to make a lot of crafts and art and find a way to make money off it. Not just because of that whole tuition thing, but because it's something I've been talking about doing for years and because I think it would push me to actually make things with my hands more regularly.

Fourth, I want to do a lot more blogging. I've posted every single day since July 12th, and I like that. I was terrible at keeping up with blogging during school last year, and I want to make sure that does not happen this year.

Fifth, I want to go dancing. A lot.

About the blog

You may have noticed that lately I've been posting more non-bookish things. Admittedly in the last month I've also posted a lot more bookish things, having more time to read, but that's not all I've been talking about. When I set out on my blogging adventures, I mostly only read book blogs, so that was all I thought to write about. More recently I've begun reading craft, design, and style blogs, and I've been wanting to write about those things. I've always crafted. I sew, I make jewellery, I embroider, sometimes I draw, I tat, I cook and bake, I take photos, once a year I make Ukrainian eggs. I watch more television than I should, and I need something to do with my hands while I do. Sometimes in the past I've posted about these things, but not in proportion to how much they are part of my life.

So, from here on out, I'm going to post more crafty stuff. I'll still write about every book I read, and about books in general. I tag every book related post I write, so if that's all you're interested in you can go on reading only those posts. If you're interested in the arty stuff, though, keep an eye out. Art is imminent.

New look

You'll notice everything looks a little different. I've been rather unsatisfied with the layout for ages, and Blogger just updated its templates, so I went for something new. I think it's better, but either way I have no idea how to change it back. I hope it looks all right!