“Building the Book Fort” is a weekly post where I track my bookish life.

Currently Reading:

• The DOSE Effect by T.J. Power
• Threadneedle by Cari Thomas
• Chaos at the Lazy Bones Bookshop by Emmeline Duncan
• The Haunted Librarian by Auralee Wallace

Finished:

• The Darkness Surrounds Us by Gail Lukasik
• The Graveyard Shift by D.M. Guay
• The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike
• Nimona by N.D. Stevenson
• The Boy in the Cemetery by Sebastian Gregory
• Rewitched by Lucy Jane Wood

Total pages read: 1,768

Total books read: 21 of 75

#ShelfLove Challenge: 12 of 51

It’s been a few weeks since my last post, and that got me wondering (again) if I want to continue this blog. That prompted me to look back at why I began it over a decade ago. I originally started it as a way to get more involved in readathons and challenges that other book bloggers were hosting. It wasn’t long before I started writing reviews. Then I got a NetGalley account and started getting ARCs, and not long after, I started getting review requests from authors and the occasional publisher. I loved what I was doing with the blog, I loved writing reviews, and I was reading more and more books each year. I also began to acquire more and more books, many of which have sat on my TBR for a very long time. I joined several TBR challenges, took over one called “Show Your Shelves Some Love” (#ShelfLove) from the hosts who were no longer interested in continuing it, started participating in “Down the TBR Hole”, and continued reading more than 100 books a year all while going through some significant life events (graduating from college, starting full-time work, moving and starting new jobs several times including across the country twice, grieving the loss of my Dad, and ending a relationship of nearly 12 years). The only significant change to this blog and my reading habits over that time was that I stopped writing reviews and I stopped taking review requests.

This year has been vastly different in terms of the number of books I’ve read and the number of posts I’ve written. Yes, I’ve had several major life events that can be attributed to that, and I wrote about some of those events in my last post, but I’ve dealt with massive changes to my life for years and still kept blogging and reading consistently. So this year has really had me questioning if I still want to be a book blogger and if I’m still an avid reader.

The answer to those questions is yes, but not in the same way I’ve been over the past decade. Writing a couple of update posts a week isn’t satisfying. It never really was. It has often felt like a chore that I had to do to keep the blog going. It was the bare minimum of what I had so much enjoyed doing when I started this blog, and my choice to strip things down to that bare minimum was partly due to time. However, it was also because I had convinced myself that I didn’t deserve to prioritize the activities I love. I filled my time with other things because of that. Things that I thought I was supposed to do. Things that I thought were more important. I’m working to change that because life is meant to be lived and enjoyed, not just something to get through.

I’m going to be making some changes to the Book Fort over the next few months. I want to turn it back into my little happy corner of the internet. Some of the changes will be on a trial basis; not to see how well the content does, but to see if I enjoy creating it. Anything that I’m not having fun with will get the axe. I do know that I’m going to bring back the Shelf Love challenge in some form next year (look for the sign up post soonish), and I would love to bring back book reviews. I’m considering trying short videos, but I’m still not sure if I want to be on camera. I know I’ll be keeping these update posts, and possibly bringing back the Down the TBR Hole posts, but I’m honestly not sure I’ll continue to participate in #FitReaders.

Even though I’m doing this first and foremost for myself, I would love to hear from all of you on what you would like to see. Perhaps your comments will spark some new creative ideas!

What are you reading? Let me know in the comments!