TMST: Blogging Challenges

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the lovely Rainy Day Ramblings, and currently assisted by a team of bloggers, Roberta @ Offbeat YA, Karen @ For What It's Worth, Berls @ Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen @ That's What I'm Talking About, and Linda @ Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

Blogging for the past year or so has been very difficult for me, and I'm working my way slowly back to it. But there have been other moments where I've wondered about the best way to continue. My biggest challenges have been:

Finding my reviewing style difficult to manage

Reading/watching things with no intent to review

So, what have I done to try and circumvent these?

I'm working on changing my reviewing style. I find it hard to accomplish, and it's kind of dry, and not very fun. Sure, it's trying to avoid too much bias...but, if you didn't want my opinion, why are you reading the blog, right? I can still provide some unbiased content, but it's much easier to just be myself and less structured!

I think that reviewing things in smaller chunks, and with the change to my reviewing style, this will sort itself out. But yes, I think about how I have to pay attention to something because it is something I will need to review later, and then lose interest in watching it. But, if I have a shorter, and less structured review, I think this will solve that. We'll see!

I have a lot to work on, and it's a bit of an uphill battle, but I think it will all be for the better in the long run.

TMST: Favourite Blogs

It's been a while since I've participated in a Tell Me Something Tuesday, and I've been meaning to get back into it! Thank you to the lovely Rainy Day Ramblings for this week's topic about some of your favourite blogs. Now, I have some bloggers that I enjoy that aren't related to books at all...but this time I'm just going to focus on my bookish buddies. This isn't a comprehensive list of course, but these ones deserve some extra special attention.

In no particular order...

TTT: First Ten Books I Reviewed

A quick topic this week for That Artsy Reader Girl's Top Ten Tuesday, and that is about the first ten books that you reviewed. Although we could include Goodreads reviews, I decided to just focus directly on my blog this time. I knew some of these were my first reviews, but there were a couple I had forgotten were near the beginning! I've included links to them in case you want to check them out, but let's be honest, some aspects of my style have completely changed!

Happy Blogiversary!

Clockwork Bibliotheca is officially 2 years old!

It's been quite the ride, but here we are! I'm so happy and proud that I've hit this milestone, and I look forward to the next one. Although the next couple of months might be a bit slow for me because of school and work, I have some really fun content planned for later on in the year.

I'd especially like to know if there is any content you guys specifically like. Let me know if any of these are types of posts you'd like to see more of (or anything else you can think of):

TMST: Blogging Misconceptions

Super quick post from me today! Thanks to Rainy Day Ramblings for this week's Tell Me Something Tuesday, which is all about misconceptions you had when starting book blogging. Here's my list:

TMST: Change in Reading/Watching Habits

Things have been so busy that I unfortunately haven't been able to participate in a few weeks, but here I am back again with another Tell Me Something Tuesday.

This week's topic from Rainy Day Ramblings is "how have you reading habits changed since you started blogging?" I definitely think this is an interesting one, because although I knew things had changed for me a little, I could really only identify it in terms of the movies and shows I was watching. So, I'm going to look at both.

Summer 2018 Comment Challenge

You know those things that you keep meaning to get around to, and then just never end up doing? That's sort of been me the past few months. Now, if you don't know anything about my job, I work with children and teenagers. This means that during the summer school is out, and it is essentially non-stop chaos for me at work (which also makes it my favourite time). So while for most people the summer is a time to relax and catch up on all of their projects...that is definitely not the case for me. Anyway, I digress.

TMST: Midyear Update

Thanks to the work of Rainy Day Ramblings again, this week's TMST topic is a Midyear Update.

So, I guess the first place to start is that I have now been running this blog for nearly a year and a half (I guess closer to a year and a third?), so I am looking forward to how things go over the next while. Life is general is getting busier, so I don't know what I will have time for, but I am trying to commit to at least one post a week, although lately I am generally doing more than that. My original date for posting was Tuesdays, but since I often like to do Top Ten Tuesday or Tell Me Something Tuesday, I have currently flipped it on over to Fridays. We'll see how that goes.

Alright, now onto the proper mid-year update. My two main goals for this year are my Goodreads Goal and my TBR Challenge, although there are a few other things I do hope to achieve by the end of the year. For Goodreads, I decided for this year to try and get through 35 books. I'm currently at 13, and not far away from finishing two more, so I'm on good track (even though according to where Goodreads thinks I should be I am two behind). Where my TBR Challenge is concerned, well, I'm not doing the greatest (aka failing miserably). I'm supposed to complete 12 books that I chose for this year, and I have completed 2. I am a good chunk of the way through the third one, and I have a few that I think I should be able to finish quickly, so I'm not officially worried, but I really need to pick up the pace. Unfortunately with my schooling at the moment I have weekly assignments, so that is really cutting into my reading and blogging time. My other goals for the year (although unofficial), are these:

All About Me

This is a follow-up to my recent post about Clockwork Bibliotheca turning one year old, which you can see here. Thanks so much to everyone who sent me questions - I really appreciate them all! Apparently some people are having problems posting anonymous comments, so if you have noticed that issue I recommend trying out another browser (specifically try Chrome perhaps) and see if that helps. I have taken a look at things on my end and it says that they should be allowed, so fingers crossed. Otherwise, the comment form on the right side of the page doesn't seem to be having any problems.

Now that all of the business stuff is out of the way, on to the questions!

Blog Questions

What made you think of starting this blog?
The library that I work at once had a series of blogs regarding different topics, and I was hoping to be able to become a writer for those. They ended up shutting them down (for a variety of reasons), but I still had the desire to blog. So eventually I just took it upon myself to start the Clockwork Bibliotheca.

Where did the name Clockwork Bibliotheca come from?
Well, there are a few reasons for it. First off, I really like Latin, so that was definitely a big influence for me. I also really enjoy the Steampunk aesthetic, and gears and clocks and that sort of thing. So, not only was I able to combine these elements together, but I also wanted something that to me really exemplified the feeling of a library, which is this multitude of little pieces that work together to make something function quite beautifully. There were a few other little influences here and there, but essentially, that was it.

How often do you spend working on the blog?
It definitely varies from day to day, but I spend at least a few minutes on here at minimum every day just to check comments and such. Usually every few days I spend an hour or so on here either starting a new post, or slowly plugging away at posts I am stuck on. I also spend time on Goodreads and looking up posts from bloggers that I follow at least once a week.

How long do you think you'll keep at blogging?
I'm hoping for a few years at least! I don't entirely know what direction this blog will take, or what the frequency of posts will be like, but I do hope to maintain it. As I am making my work in libraries into my career, it should be something not too difficult for me to keep up with for several years...fingers crossed.

Happy 1st Birthday to Clockwork Bibliotheca!

We made it! The first post on Clockwork Bibliotheca was officially one year ago, and man has the time ever flown by! In all honesty I didn't know the exact date that I started this blog, but I knew it was coming up soon. So when I checked today, it was a nice surprise to find out that the milestone day was already here!