I started blogging on Valentine’s Day of 2008. My second post was a book review. At the time, I’d never heard of book blogs, nor did I know anyone else who blogged about books. Fast forward a couple months, and I came across a group book blog called The Fifty Books Project, where a group of friends all tried to read and post about fifty books per year. I loved the idea, though as a mom of three small children, I doubted I’d be able to read that many in a year. Instead, I got together with a group of friends – also mostly moms with young children – and formed a group book blog called 5-Squared. The intention was similar, except our goal was to read twenty-five books a year, rather than fifty.

It didn’t take long before I discovered that there was a whole world of book blogs out there, with events and challenges and even an annual awards ceremony. It also didn’t take long for me to realize that twenty-five books was absolutely no problem for me to read in a year. Nor was fifty. Nor was a hundred. Oh.

(my only pic with the original design of The Zen Leaf)

Soon, I was dominating 5-Squared and crowding everyone else out, and I didn’t want to do that. In May of 2009, I left the group blog and formed The Zen Leaf, my own personal book blog. I ran the blog for a little over two years, until book blogging had gone from a pleasurable way to connect with fellow book lovers, to something that was a chore and a burden. It was no longer fun when:

• I was reading so many books each year (200+) that I had no time for anything but reading and blogging, and I read so fast I could barely remember most of the books.
• I was reading to fulfill challenge requirements, or to cater to my readership, rather than what I liked or felt like at that moment.
• I no longer felt like I could read at my own pace, which sometimes involves rereading the same book five times in a row, or going several weeks without reading a word. I had to keep going from book to book in order to keep the blog consistent.
• I encountered some strong negativity that made me very unsure about what I wanted to say online.
• I lost focus on my fiction writing and nearly quit writing altogether.

So I shut down The Zen Leaf. Of course, that left me with no place to blog, and in the two years since, my attempts to try to blog again have been halfhearted and fleeting, because really, blogging was all about the books for me. But I’ll tell you guys a secret: I have almost every single one of the 800+ book reviews I wrote from 2008 to present in a private location, to which only I have access. I have also continued reviewing every single book I read, despite not having a public book blog. I like reviewing books. I like having a list of every book I’ve read since I began blogging, and my thoughts about each one. Sure, I can post my thoughts on new books I read on my personal blog, Boston Blooming, but it’s just not the same as having my own little book corner.

(header photo for the second design for The Zen Leaf)

I no longer have any reading angst. I don’t read on a schedule, or to fulfill requirements, or when I don’t feel like it. I don’t finish books that aren’t working for me. I don’t often buy books before I’ve read them from the library first, so my physical TBR books can be counted on two hands. I don’t get ARCs or copies of books from authors, so I don’t feel any worry about how I should approach them. I don’t push to read a certain number of books in a year. I read what I want, when I want, however many times I want. And that feels absolutely wonderful.

Honestly, I wish this was a place I could have gotten to while I was still book-blogging. I wish I hadn’t shut The Zen Leaf down, despite what I was feeling at the time. Even if I didn’t want to post on it anymore, I should have kept it up. Several times over the last few years, I’ve considered making my private book journal public, but I haven’t for one small reason: there are a handful of reviews on there that I would like to remain private, and Blogger (unlike WordPress) doesn’t have an option to have certain posts private or password-protected. I’d have to delete those particular reviews if I made my book journal public, and that’s something I’d rather not do.

So instead, after a lot of deliberation, I’ve decided to simply resurrect The Zen Leaf. No, I can’t get back all the comments and conversations from old posts, and there are some reviews that I managed to lose in the blog-shuffle (grr). Mostly, though, I want to rebuild my book blog from scratch. I’ll use this place to add in reviews and book talk from today forward, while slowly going back to fill in all the old reviews from years past. I don’t expect anyone to follow this blog – new thoughts or old – or anything like that. This is just my self-indulgent way of putting my book thoughts out there publicly again.