Bookish Musings - 12.06.26
Another week of my reading plans not quite working out as intended, which is somewhat disappointing but it is what it is. I am hoping this unexpected break will count as a reset and refresh for a better week next week. I thought I would take the opportunity to update general housekeeping for the blog and signpost some changes. Wherever you find yourself this weekend, I hope you have a good one 📚
Book Ratings
This has been on my mind for some time but I am changing the way I give my star ratings, or at least how I visualise them. For future reference, I am planning to do a post on how I review and what counts as a 3⭐, 4⭐ or 5⭐book for me personally, but this is to flag up I will display the rating in the review posts. I will briefly say, that I began reviewing by way of GoodReads - which may or may not be controversial depending on how you feel about GoodReads - and that system follows 5 whole stars. As time has gone by I have found that not to be a particular great system for nuance and I have always added a point value (between 0.1 - 0.9) to expand that. Recently, I have read books that I thought were 4.5 ⭐ and definitely not 5⭐, but because I round up the value, it would have made them 5⭐. Therefore, I have had to adjust how I scale that and I now will show the star and .value, e.g. ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5 for all my reviews from now on. I don’t expect this to change things overall but should make for more consistent and transparent reviews.
HEA Micropodcast and YouTube channel
The HEA Micropodcasts has been on hold for several weeks now and while I really enjoyed making the content, it clearly hasn’t found an audience or a home. If I am completely honest, both this and content produced for the general YouTube channel have had very little engagement. Now this isn’t a plea for people to watch, although you are always welcome to view what is currently available. I think it is more a realisation that things are not working and I am debating the long term future of these elements. For now, I don’t expect to make more content under The HEA micropodcast name but this isn’t the final decision. Regarding, the YouTube channel, that is tougher for me. I started my book journey as a BookTuber and the blog and everything have come from that, and while it is nice that everything is ticking along, it is sad that the my booktube channel has all but died a quiet death. Again, I haven’t made any final decisions regarding its future, however, I am at the point where I am making decisions about its future and that in of itself is quite sad. As things currently stand while I review my options, my content will continue to be available on the blog, my TikTok channel and my Pinterest and my Bluesky accounts.
