The thing that I haven't done is create many long posts about the books that I've read. I always intend to write more about the books I read but, with the exception of Stone Yard Devotional, I did not manage to do that in 2025. Part of the problem is that I find I have little interest in spending time writing about a book unless there is something about that book that really captures my attention, even if I enjoyed it. (I could never be a professional book reviewer!) I found 2025 so distracting that most books didn't capture my attention enough to make me want to write a long post about them.
Of course the other thing is that this is a little blog I mostly keep for myself. I don't have a lot of readers, which is fine. But writing a long analysis of a book takes time. If I'm not excited about a book (or puzzled by a book) I don't have any incentive to write about it when I know few people will read what I write. (This isn't a complaint, I've never had any desire to do the things required to gain a large readership.)
On the other hand, back when I used to write more long book posts I found that I retained what I read better. And sometimes I found things to think about that didn't automatically occur to me when I was reading. So I'd like to write more about books for those reasons. What I don't want to do is post a long summary of the plot of a book and conclude with a short statement of why I did or didn't like it. That seems more like a book report of the type I had to write in Elementary School to prove I read the book.
I've been giving it some thought. One blogger that I follow is Jan Simpson, a theater critic who publishes the Broadway and Me blog. At some point last year she recognized that she was seeing a lot of shows that she didn't have time to fully blog about, or that people weren't interested in enough to read a long blog post about, and so she started a separate blog called Broadway & Me Quickies. These are, in her words, short takes on shows currently playing in New York for people too busy for longer reviews. The idea was that it would give the reader a quick sense of the show without having to write a full review.
I've enjoyed her short takes and it occurred to me that I could do something similar for books that I read. Her short takes always follow the same format: First a summary of what the play is about, then identification of the playwright and director and then, most importantly, "One Good Thing" about the play and "One Not So Great Thing" about the play.
I'm thinking of borrowing this format (with full credit to Jan) for some of the books that I read in 2026 and seeing how it goes. Part of me wonders how it will really differ from my end-of-the-month summaries (which I will continue). But having to think specifically of a good thing and a not-so-great thing might be helpful. I'm also thinking that I might be able to incorporate Nancy Pearl's "Four Doorways" concept into the quick takes. I can't guaranty that I will stick with it, but it seems like something I could try out for 2026.
By the way, if you like Broadway you should follow Jan who also appears regularly on the Broadway Radio podcasts with a podcast that looks in depth at Pulitzer Prize winning plays (called All The Drama) and a podcast in which she does interviews with playwrights (called Stagecraft). She is also on BlueSky under Broadway and Me.
