discussion: monthly wrap-ups

Posted on by whatthelog Posted in Uncategorized, wendyTagged ,

I’m thinking about writing a bit more about blogging in general. I always enjoy reading posts about people’s blogging processes, and I want to generate some discussions on here! So, for my first one: monthly wrap-ups. I don’t do monthly wrap-ups. There’s a couple reasons for this.

I am lazy. I can barely bring myself to add link-ups to Naz’s Read Diverse 2017 Challenge, let alone make myself go through a whole month of posts in order to create one post that people might not even read. (Do you read monthly wrap-ups? Be honest! For me, it depends. If they’re a blogger I interact with a lot, then yes, I probably will read it. But if not, I usually don’t.)

I have a terrible memory – I find it very difficult to remember what books I’ve read in what month! I’m also in the terrible habit of reviewing books months after I read them, so my posts are probably not going to be about books I’ve read that month.

I post quite a lot. I don’t want a monthly wrap-up to be just a list of links. I’d rather put the time into writing another book review or discussion post, because to me a list of links looks a little bit…eh, idk. Boring. (Let’s just ignore the fact that my last post was a list of links, ‘kay?!)

However, I am beginning to see the appeal. This year I’ve been making an effort to track my reading, and specifically the ethnicities/gender identities/sexualities of the authors I read. I love the idea of statistically seeing how well my efforts towards diversity are going. For example, as my first (terrible) pie chart shows, 12/16 of my books were written by women. And as my second one shows, out of those 16, 10 had an ethnically diverse cast. I’d like to be able to show statistics like this more often!

 

gender
12 female, 3 male, 1 mixed
ethnically-diverse-cast
10 ethnically diverse, 6 not

I also do quite like the idea of holding myself accountable to the reading/blogging goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. I don’t even remember what my goals were, and it has only been a month! I should probably look at those again. I guess here I could also go into specific targets. For example, in February I want to read books by mostly black authors, whereas in other months I’m thinking about focusing on neurodiversity, or mental health.

Finally, this is probably a complete lie, but I also kind-of get the impression that bloggers who do monthly wrap-ups are quite put together? Like, everything is regularly scheduled and organised. I am in no way scheduled or organised, but having a wrap-up might start to change that!

Okay, so it is over to you now! Do you do monthly wrap-ups? Why or why not?

16 thoughts on “discussion: monthly wrap-ups”

  1. Reply
    Rita C. says:

    Really like the questions you’ve brought up. I actually do read wrap-ups quite a lot, however I do like the idea of studying the author’s “background” and including that statistic.

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  2. Reply
    theorangutanlibrarian says:

    I’m the exact same- I don’t do monthly wrap ups cos I really can’t be bothered and to be honest I don’t feel like I have the time. Like you, I read some wrap ups by bloggers I follow regularly. But I can see the appeal of doing them! Great discussion topic

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  3. Reply
    Ceillie Simkiss says:

    I’m always scheduled and (vaguely) organized, but wrap ups are something I only do every so often. This month, I had a couple of really fun (for me) posts that I wanted to share, so I decided to do one. They are a good way to drive traffic to older posts, though. This is a fun discussion!

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    1. Reply
      whatthelog says:

      I really liked the section in your January wrap-up about ‘actual journalism’ (the title made me giggle!) I sometimes want to talk about non book-related things and struggle to figure out where to put them – a wrap-up post is a really good idea 🙂

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      1. Ceillie Simkiss says:

        I’m glad – that’s my day job right there! I kind of have to keep my blog and job separate, but there’s no reason that I can’t mush them together a little and share my days with y’all! It’s really one of the only reasons I did a wrap up post!

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  4. Reply
    Laura Graves Massey (@iamlauramassey) says:

    I just started doing monthly wrap-ups. I’ve sort of done them before as a way of highlighting books I never reviewed or just looking back on the exact books I read, but I’ve pretty much replaced those posts with other things. When I created my monthly posts for this year, I decided my focus would mostly be on my progress on reading challenges and goals. I started tracking certain aspects of my reading last year, but I never had any ways set up to keep me on track. This year, I think monthly wrap-ups will be the way I do that. I’m excited to see how it goes.

    On the topic of bloggers who write wrap-ups being put together, I wrote my monthly wrap-up in 30 minutes right before I posted it last night. I’ll admit I sometimes write in fits and have several posts scheduled, but mostly I write them right before I post them.

    If you’re interested in seeing how I structure mine, here’s a link to my blog: That Librarian Lady.

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    1. Reply
      whatthelog says:

      I really like that – I’m also doing a couple of year-long challenges, and I really should keep people updated about how I’m doing 🙂
      Haha, that is quite reassuring for me to hear! I am amazingly disorganised.
      Will do! 🙂 Thanks for dropping by.

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  5. Reply
    ceearrbooknerd says:

    Ha, I do monthly wrap-ups and I am *not* put together! But then, most people have some sort of structure to their wrap-ups with headings and some kind of idea about what they’re going to write. I’m just there like, “this is some sh** that happened this month, and here are the books I reviewed. Boom. #DealWithIt.” Because I am a rebel. Sort of. XD

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  6. Reply
    Jackie B @ Death by Tsundoku says:

    I completely understand where you are coming from. Monthly wrap-ups can be time-consuming to create, and they aren’t the most popular posts you write. However, I do these posts for myself. I’ve gotten in a bad habit of not writing reviews for books once I’ve finished them, so they pile up and sometimes never get posted! Once this habit started, I knew that my monthly wrap-ups needed for be more for me than my readership.

    I use my wrap ups to highlight all the books I read that month, particularly since I don’t post reviews for all of them. I also provide updates on my reading challenges and blogging goals. If I didn’t do this, I’d totally lose track and find by Q4 that I’m not going to make my goals for the year.

    To help me, I use the same template for each month, and I create it right after I finalize the previous month’s post. Then, I update it as I ago, instead of updating it all at the last minute. The process works for me. And if you want to do it, I encourage you to do so! If not, well, to each their own! 🙂

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    1. Reply
      whatthelog says:

      I like the way you think about this – as these posts being more for you than for readers/hits. I guess I’ve never really thought about any of my posts like that!

      Updating as you go is also a brilliant idea. I think that if I did do monthly wrap-ups, I would do it like this 🙂

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