Mission Statement

Lately I've been thinking about my blog a lot-changes/improvements I'd like to make such as a new design and maybe even a hosting change. But also minor changes or changes of clarification such as framing my blog. What is my purpose? How do I view my blog and what are my intentions? This led to a long post that I spent a lot of time writing and editing so that everything is as clear as possible.

To start, I recently reworked my heading to say "Bookworm1858: No-frills book blogging" and I feel like that goes part of the way to capturing how I feel about my blog. I don't really participate in memes or feature guest posts from authors or host many giveaways (although I am kicking around ideas for at least one later this year because who doesn't love the pleasure of winning a book?) But mostly I just want to talk about the books I have read. The other information can be good and I enjoy reading it on other blogs but it does not interest me the way that books on their own do. It's not a perfect description-I'm not sure that "frills" is the best word to describe extra content like memes and author posts but I haven't decided on a better description. I believe this will always be a work-in-progress but I am content with it for now.

I also hope this shows my lack of tolerance for drama. I've seen stuff about imprudent behavior from a blogger or from an author and I really don't want to get involved. I want to focus on the lovely books that we are so fortunate to have available to us. Is this hard? Yes, sometimes for I am not immune to blogger jealousy and other issues but I don't want it to infect my blog. In general I think of this as a place of positivity because I am so happy when reading. I want to champion the best in us.

I also hope to be relevant, to provide reviews of the buzzed about YA books for people who haven't read them yet and to spark conversation.  I also want to talk about lesser-known YA books, either because they're older or received less promotion. I hope that some people have discovered that we have similar taste while others may find me useful for the opposite purpose-perhaps me hating a book generally signals that you'll like it. And while my focus is YA, I still like sprinkling in some adult and MG books (MG books have been pretty awesome lately!) as they represent where my taste also lies.

Mission Statement: To present an honest book assessment, ideally providing positive aspects as well as negative if relevant that may aid you in determining if a book would please you. To spotlight the books I love and to be polite about the books I don't. To welcome people, new to the community as well as new to my blog and provide assistance if possible; to encourage new bloggers and to form bookish friendships with bloggers and non-bloggers alike.

These are items I'm still working on; I know my reviews have improved since the beginning of the blog (seriously-check out my archives and see how I had little idea of what I was doing) but they can still use more work. As for spotlighting my favorite books, I am planning to do some additional promotion of those books that are really powerful for me just so that I can say I'm doing my best to promote what I feel are some of the best books out there. And socializing isn't my strong point, either in blogging or in real-life. But I've gotten a lot better at checking out more blogs and commenting and I want to continue my growth in that area. I am also an older blog (since November 2009) so I do have some experience and am happy to share what I know.

So what do you think? Have you written a mission statement for your blog, if you blog?

One last addition to the mission statement: to provide super-cute pictures whenever possible. This is of my cat Aragorn who is also of a literary bent-look at his stack of books here!