Future Plans

My poor neglected blog, it has been some time. I’ve been contemplating what to do with this site now I’m doing more freelance work which is leaving me less time for blogging. The irony of this is that I’ve read more books this year than ever, largely because I wrote a significant amount of the copy for the Manchester Literature Festival brochure and so I read many books in a fairly short period of time. This means that books I’ve read but haven’t reviewed have been piling up in my flat. The photo above is just those that were on the shelf nearest to me. There are more in the flat, some on my Kindle and others that I no longer have copies of because I took them back to the Festival office. And you know what? Lots of them are great. Some of them are on my books of the year list. And it seems ridiculous that I haven’t posted about them here yet.

So the plan is this:

• round-ups each month of the things I’ve been reading (in order to write about the good stuff I’ve read this year, I’ll be doing several of these between now and Christmas)
• the occasional longer review – when I have the time to devote to something I want to say more about – and interviews with writers whose work I really love
• I’m going to bring back In the Media, because I really miss reading and sharing people’s articles/essays, but it’s going to be in a much more succinct format
• a new ‘5 Books…’ feature where I group 5 books by theme either because it’s something topical or just something I feel like curating. I’m increasingly frustrated with the number of lists of books predominantly by white men with a token white woman thrown in. I also get asked for recommendations quite often so hopefully this will be a handy resource for people looking for particular genres/forms/gift ideas.

I don’t want the blog to quietly die while there’s still a disparity in coverage of books by women so this seems to be the most manageable way forward. And now I’ve posted my plan for you all to see so you can hold me to it.