Blog Post Ideas That I Discarded

Hi there, it’s Sabrina again, and I’m here to talk to you about some post ideas that I’ve decided to discard!  I did this once last year and it was fun to put together and a good way to ensure my half-baked posts didn’t go to waste, in my opinion.  There have been several posts I’ve scrapped over the year and a bit since then, and some of them I actually put a fair amount of effort and commitment into, so I am even more happy to be sharing them with you today!  I have seven potential posts here to talk about, so let’s get into it.

SABRINA’S AUGUST READATHON

The Idea: A few months ago, I decided I needed to incentivise myself to read my unread owned books and that August would be a great time to do it.  I was going to pick several books I own and then create prompts based on them, plus pick a “group read” which I would write a review for.

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What Went Wrong:  I simply can’t stick to strict TBRs or read my unread owned books.  It just doesn’t happen, lol.  I thought this idea would work because of the prompts, but when you pick a book first and then choose a prompt for it, it doesn’t produce the same excitement – which I’m sure anyone else would recognise immediately, but not me.  I also had books out from the library at the time, and I really had to prioritise those, as I always do.   I have at least completed my 2021 goal of reading five of my unread owned books though!

THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM MINI REVIEWS

The Idea:  This was an idea taken from BooksandLala’s “3rd Time’s the Charm” reading vlogs – where she reads books from authors that she has only read from twice before.  I wanted to try it out, specifically with authors whose books I’d had either neutral or negative opinions on – for example, I was considering reading Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire, after feeling neutral about both Middlegame and Every Heart a Doorway.

What Went Wrong: Well, to start with, I couldn’t get access to Into the Drowning Deep from my library.  Second, there’s not actually many authors that fit the bill for me – though there are several authors that I’ve enjoyed two books from.  Maybe I need to revisit this idea in the future with an expanded concept.

MY FAVOURITE PURPLE BOOKS

The Idea:  I published a post last year about all my favourite books with blue covers.  I loved putting it together and highlighting the cover designs.  My favourite colours are blue, green and purple, and I thought green was too close to blue so I would try this post again with purple book covers.

3/5 stars

3/5 stars

2/5 stars 😦

What Went Wrong:  Turns out, I haven’t read and enjoyed many purple books at all, and almost all of them are debatably purple – some are much closer to either pink or blue.  I was a bit surprised by this, considering I had only foreseen the issue with green books.  So, I switched the idea to creating a purple TBR, but as I have previously mentioned in this post, I have a lot of trouble sticking to TBRs, so I did not to follow through.  I did, however, end up writing a similar post – My Favourite Pink Books – and of course, I may come back to purple one day if I ever read more purple books that I love.

MORE BOOKISH COINCIDENCES

The Idea:  Once again, this was based off a post I’d already written – Bookish Coincidences.  These strange things kept happening to me, so I kept a record of them for a little while longer.  I read several books in a row that took me by surprise by dealing with cancer; my brother came home from a D&D meetup where he won a harmonica just as I was reading about the main character in The Memory Police finding a secret harmonica; my mum got a text asking if she remembered the name of “chunky fair isle jumpers that were popular in the 80s” two days after I finished reading The Sun Down Motel which mentioned the same thing; I started reading Headliners on my great grandmother Henrietta’s 101st birthday, which is about a character named Sabrina who has a grandmother named Henrietta.

What Went Wrong:  Honestly, I was starting to get annoyed by these coincidences, lol.  They were freaking me out, especially as they seemed to be more frequently occurring now that I was recording them.  I also thought they wouldn’t be as interesting to make a post out of because most of them were between one book and my own life, rather than between multiple books, so no one else could even possibly relate to what I was sharing.

READING YOUR SUGGESTIONS

The Idea:  I often get suggestions for books to read in the comments on my blog posts (thank you to everyone who does this!) and there was one post in particular that I asked for recommendations for books with specific attributes.  I thought it would be fun to read the books suggested to me and review them.

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What Went Wrong:  First of all, I’ve used the word “suggestion”, because a lot of the commenters knew books that fit the attributes I was looking for, but didn’t enjoy the books themselves so didn’t “recommend” them, exactly.  Second, I picked up three of the books suggested to me, strongly disliked one of them and DNFed the other two.  I definitely didn’t want to post reviews of those, especially within this context!

FOUR BOOKS THAT WERE ALMOST FAVOURITES

The Idea:  I’ve read a few books over the years that had so much potential to be favourite books of mine, but didn’t make it there.  Of course, this is not to say the books were bad, they just didn’t end up matching my highly specific personal taste like I hoped they would and felt that they could have.  The books I listed for this post were Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia, The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi and Middlegame by Seanan McGuire.

What Went Wrong:  I read these books quite far apart from each other and by the time I thought of making the post, I couldn’t remember enough details to write full mini reviews for each of the books. Additionally, I was finding it really hard to explain exactly why these books didn’t become favourites of mine without sounding too unreasonable, entitled and negative. Obviously I don’t expect every book to cater specifically to me, but that’s how the post was coming across.

READING BOOKS FROM A RECOMMENDATION SERVICE

The Idea:  Last year in lockdown, one of my friends outside of the book community sent me a link to a bookstore from my city that was doing personalised recommendations in the hopes that people would buy the books from them.  She had filled out their form and was interested in the options they sent her, so I thought I would try it out too, and then review the books on the blog.

What Went Wrong:  I wasn’t all that interested in the books they recommended me, to be honest, so I didn’t want to buy them and two of them weren’t available from my library.  I did try reading the first book though – Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler.  I DNFed it after part two, I think.  It was much too long for what it was, in my opinion.  And what it was, was a rambling book about nothing all that much, lol – this girl moves to New York, works as a waitress and gets caught up in a love triangle and drugs.  It was fine for a little while, but I got bored quickly.  The other two books were Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (Aj’s review was more than enough to tell me this book was not for me) and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart which I also do not believe would be enjoyable to me.  And so this post was trashed along with the rest!

What do you think?

Do you think I was right to reject these post ideas?  Have you ever used a recommendation service?  How often do you change your mind about post ideas you have?  Let me know!

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