Top Ten Tuesday: Blogging Confessions

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic at The Broke and the Bookish is a little scary.  They're looking for my top 10 blogging confessions.  There's some definite dirt behind the scenes here, but hopefully airing my dirty blogging laundry will prove cathartic.  So, here they are, true confessions of the book blogging kind.  Only promise me you won't think less of me, will you?   ;-)

1. I am the the slowest reader.  I know I'm always saying this, and maybe you don't believe me, but I truly am the slowest reader.  I feel like that didn't matter so much when I started book blogging, but now that there are so many book bloggers and they all read vastly more than me, it's something I worry about a lot.  And I shouldn't.  Because it's not about how many you read, right?  It's about how much you enjoy the reading.......right?  *looks nervous*

2. Chunksters started to scare me.  As a book blogger and a slow reader, the prospect of reading a chunkster has been increasingly scary.  Me reading one book for three months = the death of a book blog.  This is a shame, because in my pre-blogging days I really loved chunksters.  I forget sometimes that I can read a really good chunkster way faster than a short, mediocre book, though, so I'm trying to unravel my inclination to avoid the thicker tomes on my shelves.  Progress has been made in this area this very year.

3. I almost quit blogging a lot.  I don't mean the random disappearances that have always been my MO.  I mean, like, write a farewell post kind of quit.  For much of last year, I didn't want to write posts, and so I just didn't write them.  I hate forcing myself and my posts suck when I do.  I figured I should probably write a post and say an official goodbye, except I can't picture myself not blogging again ever, so I just let it languish.  In the end, I'm glad I didn't quit completely.  Makes it easier to come back when I change my mind.  Again, and again, and again....

4. If I don't get a few posts written on the weekend, there will be no posts.  I don't write blog posts on weekdays.  I just don't.  I read blogs and comment on them if the mood strikes, but I never write a whole post on a weeknight.  I spend all day working on a computer, and by the time I get home, I'm not interested in putting my hands on a keyboard.  Plus, there's never enough peace and quiet on a weeknight either.  Ergo, if I have a busy weekend, the blog unfortunately goes dark because it's hard to get ahead when you only write posts one or two days a week.

5. Sometimes I feel like an outsider.  This might not be true, but I often feel like all the bloggers seem to have their extra special buddies and their Twitter conversations that spawn brilliant blogging ideas.  They know who their roommates will be at BEA practically without having to ask.  They've visited each other's hometowns or have quarterly meet-ups with local blogging friends.  I feel like I have some good blogging "acquaintances" and that it's easy to talk to even bloggers I don't know well at events like BEA, but I still feel like I'm missing this whole aspect of blogging that everybody else seems to be plugged into.  Alas, maybe to make better blogging buddies, I need to be a better blogging buddy, but ya know.  Where do you start?

6. I have a conflicted relationship with review copies.  A lot of the time I want to be free of the heap of obligation that comes with them, but I'm addicted to getting shiny new books in the mail.  I want to be one of the first to read that next "big" book.  The new books are a great perk, and I occasionally credit review copies with keeping me from throwing in the book blogging towel long enough to realize I don't want to throw in the book blogging towel, but, you know, with great new shiny books comes great responsibility.  ;-)

7. I hate when people try to lend me books almost as much as I hate lending out my own books.  If you want to borrow books, go to the library.  I'm not lending you a book I haven't read yet.  You might split the spine or lose the dust jacket or spill your coffee on it or something that will cause an irreparable rift in our relationship.  Also, as much as I want to hear about how great the book you just read was and might probably want to read it someday as a result, please don't lend it to me.  I don't want to feel obligated to drop everything I'm reading to blog about to read your pet book, because just because you loved it doesn't mean I will love it, I hate reading on a schedule, and I have about a million of my own books to read. 

8. I have to be in the right kind of mood to write a book review.  Posts like this are easy to type up on a whim.  Writing book reviews is a little more challenging.  When I'm in the right mood, book reviewing is quick, easy, and results in a post that is worth reading and that even *I* might want to read over again someday.  When I'm not, it's almost easier to pluck my teeth out one by one than write a review anybody would want to bother reading.  I hate writing a review that sounds forced and hate even more trying to force myself into that review writing mood.  So, yeah, book reviews?  They're hard!

9. I hate hosting giveaways.  They're a ton of work.  Rigging up a form, packing up/shipping/acting as go-between with the winner and publisher supplying the copy, publicizing it to actually get a few entries, tracking down the winner who doesn't respond to the e-mail, tracking down a different winner when I can't find that first winner.  I hate it when people demand people follow the blog to enter because I don't think those are "real" followers, but it does feel like you should get something for all the trouble. 

10. I'm awful at e-mail.  I'm that person that aggravates you by seeing and reading your e-mail, thinking yes, I'll have to respond to that, and then disregarding it for an unseemly amount of time.  I pretty much only respond to e-mail on Sunday nights when I'm panicking about how my e-mail account is overrun.  Even the juiciest review copy can't tempt me to reform my ways.  I don't respond at all to e-mails pitching me books that don't strike my fancy, most of which the publisher could have saved themselves the time and effort of sending me an un-replied to e-mail by reading my review policy or, you know, looking at the kind of books I review.

What's your deep, dark blogging secret?

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