It's been a couple of weeks since "Read It, Daddy" closed its doors for the last time, and it was lovely to see so many people joining in with the celebrations and praise on our last day. I've thought about the blog a lot, but this post is about "Whether you miss book blogging" rather than "Whether I miss writing children's book reviews for ReadItDaddy" so the real answer is "of course I miss writing about books".
The main gain has been time. It probably still sounds ridiculous to a lot of people that bloggers put in some serious hours. If you're publishing a blog with a new post every single day of the working week, that's a hell of a lot of posts. I estimated that in one of our busiest years (2017) that added up to nearly a thousand posts (bearing in mind that articles, reviews and on a busy friday, multiple "Book of the Week" reviews stacked up meaning that it wasn't just a case of writing 5 reviews and calling it a day.
For the first couple of years I worked without any kind of plan or schedule and that worked OK when we were just writing from our library loans, but once review copies started arriving in the mix, I had to set up a spreadsheet which grew ever more complex every year, with multiple tabs for picture book reviews, chapter book reviews, seasonal reviews (such as the Christmas "Booky Advent Calendar" reviews) and ReadItTorial ideas. In addition I had to make physical and mental notes on what my daughter actually thought of the books, and later on with chapter book stuff, had to corral her a bit to get an opinion on a book she'd buried her nose in.
Time - so time is the main gain for sure, with more time to take it easy, not feel the pressure to stick an article on here every day (yay!) and time to write, draw and do all the other things that serve as a distraction from the mundane working day or boring adult stuff.
The other gains are that our letterbox doesn't clatter quite as much every morning. Books are sent through very rarely, usually from publishers or PRs who still thoughtfully consider us when sending out their latest releases (which is very nice indeed, thank you!) Again, with no pressure to review, it means I can pick and choose the stuff we talk about either on here or on Twitter.
My daughter is also feeling a bit more relaxed about reading for pleasure rather than reading to form an opinion. She's been rattling through the back catalogue of stuff we never got round to reviewing, voraciously devouring chapter books and graphic novels at a rate of knots. We've also been lucky enough to be able to visit the local library again to scour the bookshelves for stuff we've missed, which in this COVID era, is still something we definitely no longer take for granted, though we've become really twitchy about 'sanitising' library books (no problem with the plastic covers but huge problems for the insides - though we're following all the sensible advice about leaving books alone for 48 hours to (hopefully) see off any traces of the virus that might be lingering on pages.
I think the only other thing I personally miss is the sense of being involved. Even right out there on the periphery of it all, it's good to still keep an ear to the ground with what's going on in children's books, comics and graphic novels but it's also quite nice to be distant enough from it all to silently observe how others do their thing with their blogs and reviews. When you're not wrapped up in your own blogging efforts you get a good chance to look at other people's work and admire the directions they're going in. Definitely a huge plus.
I'll probably follow this article up, maybe a year from now when ReadItDaddy is nought but a distant memory (or more likely, a constant pestilence appearing in art challenge threads on Twitter which I'm still horribly addicted to joining in with).
Would I come back to it all one day, just me? Naw, as I said in our goodbye article, there are so many others out there who do it all far better than I ever could. What would be the point?
Additional thoughts since this was first written:
There's a real "thing" going on at the moment with a lot of long-standing book bloggers quitting after being 'in the game' for a considerable amount of time. It's difficult to cite just one reason why this is happening a lot lately. Perhaps it's the nature of the beast that it's a cyclic thing and as one set of bloggers disappears another army of bloggers are already there to take their place. Was very sad to hear that Library Mice (a brilliant thoughtful reviews blog that has been going as long as we had) are also giving up reviewing children's books.
It's understandable, for the reasons I cited above but many, many more that can range from personal reasons to just a general fug with the way that writing is (to a large extent) still treated like anything creative. Always seen as 'secondary' in worth compared to anything else productive but personally I think if this trend continues, and most of the major book bloggers do the same, it'll be a massive shame - and could also be a massive blow to an industry that (silently) has relied on this source of free promotion and advertising for so long now.
There's no magic bullet to reverse the trend, and I dearly hope that those big names in book blogging and kidlit journalism stay in the game to see some changes happen. Publishers and PRs could definitely start by better acknowledging the important work bloggers put in. It might help, you never know!
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