At a Christmas party a young man asked me, ‘How do you know what to write?’
My quick reply was, ‘I write book reviews’. Another friend said, ‘She writes poetry too.’
Round the turn of the year I ran out of book reviews and haven’t any poems I wish to share at present. My two most recent posts have been summaries or roundups. This one is attempting to answer the question I was asked.
Scrolling through Twitter, questions sometimes appear. Someone was asking for book recommendations about the Lake District. I realised that I have read and reviewed dozens of books either about the Lake District or written by authors living in the area.
I decided that a page collecting all these together might be useful. Pages on blogs do not appear in the WordPress reader, so this post is to introduce you to my pages. They appear in the menu for this blog, but that is more easily spotted on a computer than on a mobile device.
Here are links to my pages (and some more information below the links):
My A to Z Challenge 2013 used alliteration and linked to passages in the Bible. In 2021 I picked important words from the Bible for each letter. (Space did not permit longer titles in my menu.) I already have an idea for some very short posts for the 2023 A to Z Challenge.
I have recently overhauled my pages, checking that all the books I have reviewed appear in the Author Indexes, and editing a post, which had broken links. It is possible I have missed a few posts from my contents list. If you do find anything not quite right, please let me know. One or two authors appeared in the wrong place alphabetically!
I enjoyed reminding myself about some books I had read, but not thought about recently.
If you are a blogger, do you use pages? In my opinion every blog should have an About and a Contact page. Any other pages are at the discretion of the blogger.
Yesterday I signed up for the Blogging from A to Z in April Road Trip. Last year I took part, but I’m not sure how many blogs I visited. Some years I haven’t signed up due to previous failures to visit many blogs. There are so many blogs and time is limited!
As well as the official Road Trip list I shall be using links in my Reflections post to visit blogs. I have already started on this.
My future plans for this blog include my regular Thursday posts and possible extra posts on Saturdays with my responses to the paint chip poetry prompts from Giggling Fattie, who was one of the participants in the A to Z Challenge this year.
On Sue’s words and pictures I intend to continue to post a photo each Wednesday for Cee Neuner’s Midweek Madness Challenge (CMMC). Hopefully I shall also post on some Saturdays with photos of places I have visited.
This year in addition to completing the challenge on my own blog, I was privileged to have a post on the official Blogging from A to Z blog. Through the comments on my guest post I found some new blogs to visit.
I had written and scheduled my posts before the end of March. This might have left me with more time for visiting and commenting on blogs, but I had not allowed for some health issues and other time-management priorities. It is impossible to follow more than a handful of blogs during the challenge. I seem to remember that the first time I took part we were encouraged to follow five blogs near to us on the sign-up list.
In practice everyone will follow their own interests and find like-minded bloggers.
My thanks go to all those who have visited my blog, especially to the A to Z team. Special thanks to Anjela Curtis for the graphics and J Lenni Dorner for posting my guest post.
I’ll begin with the bloggers, whose posts I did not wish to miss. Apart from the official A to Z Challenge blog and its copy on WordPress I have three favourites.
The quiet writer prepares her posts with attention to detail. She is a seasoned A to Zer. Her previous challenges are worth reading if you missed them. This time she has written about British bridges. Barbie is another veteran of A to Z. Her posts are interesting and she has links to many challenge participants, promoting visiting and commenting. (I still have to catch up with most of her posts.) Lynne has done the challenge a few times, but missed the sign-up list this time. Her coloured quirky sketches show street scenes in Peterborough, England – a place I have not visited.
When I signed up to the A to Z Challenge his year I didn’t click the ‘look for new blogs’ check box. New blogs came looking for me!
I found it difficult to comment on this blog, but the owners were very supportive of my A to Z. Thank you Rishie and Bilbo. Cheryl‘s personal blog. Ronel writes about books. A good story by a supportive blogger, Leslie, was too painful for me to read at the present time.
Genealogy is a recent hobby of mine, so I may catch up with Anne Young’s blog later. A thought-provoking post from Barb Klein. Unfortunately I cannot strain my eyes by trying to reading purple on black or I’d have spent more time reading a post about rockets from Regina. Anne’s blog looks interesting but the text size is very small. (Almost ten years of blogging has not improved my eyesight!) A blog with interesting photos belongs to Anne M Bray. An interesting blog with good sized type from Betty, and a post from Tim Brannan I found interesting.
Gonzalo‘s blog about gaming Andrew blogs about food.
Blogs I already followed or had visited previously
Three A to Z team members: The Multicolored Diary has fascinating folklore stories based around gemstones from a member of the A to Z team. Csenge is the given name of the blogger posting as A Tarkabarka Hölgy on the official A to Z blog. Her full name is Zalka Csenge Virág. Tossing it out is the blog of the founder of the challenge, Arlee Bird. The sound of one hand typing is John Holton’s blog. He is the computer wizard, who set up the simulcast blog on WordPress.
Other bloggers I recognised from earlier A to Z Challenges
Thank you, Dave, for encouraging me to take part again this year. I’m glad I did!
I didn’t find time to follow all of Jamie‘s posts. Poetry from Donna A post I enjoyed from Trisha Faye. Damyanti is a veteran A to Zer. Anstice has a blog which I visited more than once.
A blog with the theme women’s interest. Astrid‘s blog. A writing friend, Sophie Neville is a newcomer to A to Z, who approached the challenge in a novel way. Janet’s smiles is the blog of a very creative blogger.
Church music played by Romi, which I hope to listen to later. Amusing art from Cathy History from Sara Zama, which I hope to read later. Vidya writes about books
Excerpts from her book Deeply Shallow: The Tale of the Hostage Prince by Anna Tan
Thank you to all the bloggers, who have read, liked, commented on and shared my posts. I hope to catch up with some of the blogs in this post through the year, Perhaps I should sign up for the road trip, although in previous years I have failed to visit many A to Z posts after the challenge. By using links from this post I may have more success than from the whole sign-up list of 235 blogs!
If we interacted during the A to Z challenge and I have failed to mention your blog in this post, I apologise. Please remind me in the comments.
Sue's Trifles 