The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) Maggie Stiefvater April 26th 2016 Scholastic ******Will probably contain spoilers for this book and the whole series just as a heads up****** I'm not going to try and write a normal review for The Raven King, because quite frankly I don't even know if I'm capable of doing proper reviews any more, and this is not the book or the series where I want to figure that out. That, and my love for this series transcends that of something which I can properly review, as I am completely biased and I *will* fight people about these books. On that note, this is also won't even entirely be about The Raven King on its own. Rather, it's a chance for me to go on and on and on and on and on about how much I love these books and Blue and those darn boys. My biggest fear about The Raven King, as is always the case with final books in a beloved series, was that it wouldn't be a good or fitting ending. I did not need to be worried. Rather than reac...
Okay, so that title sounds really pretentious. But I've just been thinking a lot about blogging and the impact it's had on my life over the past couple of years and I kind of just wanted to write about it? Well actually I talk about blogging quite a lot, so I guess it's not really anything too different.
I have a turbulent relationship with blogging, as I think most bloggers do, really. I love it a lot, but it's hard to love it all the time, and I go through a cycle of being really happy about blogging regardless of things like comments and views and I just do it for the reason that I started doing it - because I love talking about books and various other shit and now I can do that in real life AND on the internet. But other times I go through that annoying thing where you feel like you aren't getting any where and that your output just doesn't matter and that there's no growth and you feel stifled, and think that your content is boring because you're not as creative or as thoughtful or as interesting as other bloggers. But that doesn't usually last too long (thank god), and you find a book or something that you love, or you just remember again that you do this for YOU and that you're really happy with where you are.
I think I'm sort of in the transition phase between Happy and Annoyed & Frustrated, which is probably why I'm writing this. So I can remind myself of all the good and being in the Happy phase again.
One of the most important things about blogging, for me personally, was that it was something that I actively chose to do, purely for me. I am the kind of passive person that always does that thing where you complain about something you want to do, or about the state that you're in, and then proceeds to do literally nothing about it. I love to do nothing. Which is why it continually surprises me that I started this blog, and that I am still writing it three and a half years later. It's not that long a time for some, but it feels like a long time for me because I usually give up on stuff pretty quickly. This blog has carried me through my GCSEs and now my A Levels and the uni application process, and you'd think that it would add more stress to my already kind of stressful life, and it can sometimes feel like a burden, but most of the time it's a comfort. It's nice to have a place where I feel like I fit it and can be myself, and where I feel like I'm good at something when I'm having a bad time at school or college and need to somehow escape from that. And I feel like I balance the two pretty well.
Though obviously I feel like at times it's not worth it and that I should just throw in the towel. It's easy to get frustrated and jealous when you see your friends and other bloggers doing interesting things and working hard and being successful, and it's easy to feel like their success somehow makes you less important, or less successful. And sometimes I do get jealous. I'm human, after all. But then I try to remind myself that this is not a competition. Page views and comments and attention are not the reason I started doing this, and they sure as hell aren't going to be the reason that I stop. It's just sometimes really hard to remember this.
And so we kind of get back to one of the other things that I have found I love about blogging - the community around it. Book bloggers, or at least the ones that I know, are probably some the loveliest people I know. They are so friendly and easy to talk to, and it's so great to be part of a group of people who are all kind of into the same stuff as you and do the same things as you, and the blogging community is not something I would want to leave. And I guess there can be drama, but I feel like this doesn't really happen in the UK book blogger community. Which is nice.
So yeah, sometimes I wish that I was more creative, or better at blog design, or that I had a different style or just plain had more ideas. I sometimes wish I put myself out there more. But I'm just me, and at the end of the day, I like my blog. I like how I run it. Sure, there could be improvements, I could change it up a bit, but this is kind of how I like it. Blogging makes me happy, and I don't want to constantly let it turn into something that I feel is an obligation more than a pleasure.
This was good. It's nice to be positive about something for once in a while!
I have a turbulent relationship with blogging, as I think most bloggers do, really. I love it a lot, but it's hard to love it all the time, and I go through a cycle of being really happy about blogging regardless of things like comments and views and I just do it for the reason that I started doing it - because I love talking about books and various other shit and now I can do that in real life AND on the internet. But other times I go through that annoying thing where you feel like you aren't getting any where and that your output just doesn't matter and that there's no growth and you feel stifled, and think that your content is boring because you're not as creative or as thoughtful or as interesting as other bloggers. But that doesn't usually last too long (thank god), and you find a book or something that you love, or you just remember again that you do this for YOU and that you're really happy with where you are.
I think I'm sort of in the transition phase between Happy and Annoyed & Frustrated, which is probably why I'm writing this. So I can remind myself of all the good and being in the Happy phase again.
One of the most important things about blogging, for me personally, was that it was something that I actively chose to do, purely for me. I am the kind of passive person that always does that thing where you complain about something you want to do, or about the state that you're in, and then proceeds to do literally nothing about it. I love to do nothing. Which is why it continually surprises me that I started this blog, and that I am still writing it three and a half years later. It's not that long a time for some, but it feels like a long time for me because I usually give up on stuff pretty quickly. This blog has carried me through my GCSEs and now my A Levels and the uni application process, and you'd think that it would add more stress to my already kind of stressful life, and it can sometimes feel like a burden, but most of the time it's a comfort. It's nice to have a place where I feel like I fit it and can be myself, and where I feel like I'm good at something when I'm having a bad time at school or college and need to somehow escape from that. And I feel like I balance the two pretty well.
Though obviously I feel like at times it's not worth it and that I should just throw in the towel. It's easy to get frustrated and jealous when you see your friends and other bloggers doing interesting things and working hard and being successful, and it's easy to feel like their success somehow makes you less important, or less successful. And sometimes I do get jealous. I'm human, after all. But then I try to remind myself that this is not a competition. Page views and comments and attention are not the reason I started doing this, and they sure as hell aren't going to be the reason that I stop. It's just sometimes really hard to remember this.
And so we kind of get back to one of the other things that I have found I love about blogging - the community around it. Book bloggers, or at least the ones that I know, are probably some the loveliest people I know. They are so friendly and easy to talk to, and it's so great to be part of a group of people who are all kind of into the same stuff as you and do the same things as you, and the blogging community is not something I would want to leave. And I guess there can be drama, but I feel like this doesn't really happen in the UK book blogger community. Which is nice.
So yeah, sometimes I wish that I was more creative, or better at blog design, or that I had a different style or just plain had more ideas. I sometimes wish I put myself out there more. But I'm just me, and at the end of the day, I like my blog. I like how I run it. Sure, there could be improvements, I could change it up a bit, but this is kind of how I like it. Blogging makes me happy, and I don't want to constantly let it turn into something that I feel is an obligation more than a pleasure.
This was good. It's nice to be positive about something for once in a while!
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