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I Wrote How Many Book Reviews?

Angela3 Comments

I thought I should do a final post for 2014 of how many books I actually read, how many of those resulted in book reviews I posted, and anything else I may have thrown in.

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I could really tell from my blog activity what months were the most busy for me. Or should I say, what months I was working on the toughest MBA college classes.

I did a whole lot of nothing in the summer months when it came to posting book reviews. I was really busy from September to December, and although I have every good intention of reading at least 3 more books when I finish the one I am currently on, I thought this would be a good time to do this post.

As a side note, I am off work until January 5th, and am kid free until January 4th. Which means I have a whole lot of reading-in-bed-writing-reviews-playing-with-the-cat-nap-time planned 🙂

For the year as a whole, I posted to date, 67 book reviews.

Of those 67 reviews, 18 were of books I had previously read, so for 2014 I read 49 new books. Not too shabby for being a single Mom of a whole lot of girls, working 50+ hours a week, and going to college for my MBA. The 18 on books I previously read were a combination of Halloween features, Christmas features, and books that I had read in the past that had a great impact on me.

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June was the only month I did not post any book reviews, and October was my busiest month, with 12 book reviews posted. I have to add that for December I am currently at 7, and do plan on at least 5 more before the New Year, but certainly do not expect it to exceed October.

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Some notables for 2014 for me:

I made the very tough decision to begin working on my MBA. After working non-stop for 2 years straight to get my BBA, I did take the entire year of 2013 off, as I promised my girls, and did not start college again until January 4th, 2014.

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After many months of contemplating, searching, and debating, I became the very proud owner of Beeblebrox Bare Bottom Benjamin Blu, or Benny to me! He is a Hairless Sphynx cat and I am not ashamed to say that little ball of wrinkled-velvety-soft skin has changed my life! I like to tease my 4 girls about their “little brother’, but believe you me, that little guy has gotten me through a lot of weekends when I was wide awake all night long from being a 3rd shift worker and having the weekend off.

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I made the decision to leave my Supervision position with my company and go back to a Materials Coordinator position that I had previously worked in for almost 5 years. I have worked for my company for over 18 years, and am so thankful to have such a wonderful employer.

I joined the Editorial Freelancers Association, and am currently working on getting myself set to begin editing and proofreading books for new and current authors. I have a love for books and the English language that I would probably have a very difficult time putting into words in order to get anyone to understand. (Now that is ironic, right?)

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I would personally like to thank each and every single one of you for liking, following, or just commenting on a random blog post. I could not begin to tell you the excitement I have when I see that someone liked a post I made, and even better yet, left a comment, or followed my blog!

I will be setting some goals for myself for 2015, and there will be more to come on that!

What To Do With That Horrible Book Review You Wrote

Angela13 Comments

Oh. Hello there. I hope you were not coming here to find the answer to what you should do with a horrible book review you wrote, because I have no idea. I actually was hoping someone could tell me.

As I have stated many times, it is not my intention to destroy anyone’s writing career, or write horrible things about their writing abilities. But when you pick up a book, and it was very poorly constructed, how do you avoid that huge problem while focusing your review on the underlying story that was actually pretty good?

If I post a review that I loved it, or even liked it, I destroy my reputation immediately. Trust me, if you saw this book and I gave it a top review and rating, you would think I was off my rocker. Now, the fact that this story had a few top ratings on Amazon also tells me that someone had their family members post reviews for their story. There were no ‘bad’ reviews for this particular story, or even reviews with much needed and deserved constructive criticism.

Book reviews are a touchy subject, especially to the writers who have no control over how the reader is going to interpret what they wrote. Did they understand the point you were trying to make? Did they misunderstand the dialect? Did they not realize the story was intentionally written like that? and on and on and on again…

One of my favorite quotes is about the fact that no two people will ever read the same story. I find it amazing that no one else read Harry Potter and got the same, identical things from it that I did. That is the beauty of books!

As a footnote, I do not want any of my recent authors who have sent me books or whose books I have purchased to panic. This post is NOT about you. I have had a couple people contact me within the last couple of days and I do not want them to think I am talking about their story 🙂 This is a story that I found on my own while I was looking for someone else’s book.

So at this point I am going to hold unto this review. This book is not a new release and I do not believe that more people will purchase this story, and that I did not prevent that from happening by holding unto this review. I want to do some more digging to see if I can find more ‘true’ reviews of this story and then go from there.