My favourite blogging memories tag

Hello bookworms!! Welcome to today’s post: the My Favourite Blogging Memories tag. It’s tag central over heer at the moment while I try and lower the insane amount of tags I haven’t done yet. But, good news!! We’re officially under 50 now*, so that’s nice!! 😅

Huge thanks to the gorgeous Laura at The Book Corps for creating this tag, and tagging me in it… two years ago. (Sorry Laura!! I did promise I was getting to it…)

*Official count is at 47. Still room for improvement!! 😆

My favourite blogging memories tag

I really like this tag though because it’s about celebrating blogging, and although I didn’t do a post announcement, I hit my FIVE year blogiversary last month. And while I was supposed to do this based on 2019 (and probably each year after), I’m going to cheat slightly. I’m going to answer for the past 5 years (except where it says “this year”, so I have a lot of content to draw on for this one!!

Rules:

• All the answers must be about your blog posts
• Please link the original creator of the tag so I can see all your posts!
• You don’t have to provide just one post for each question, you can provide as many as you want so long as they were written in 2019
• If you haven’t written a post that matches one of the questions, choose one that relates to it as close as possible
• Tag 5+ bloggers to they can share their accomplishments too! And make sure you read the posts they share!

What’s your favourite book review?

Oh wow… you know that saying “You are your own worst critic”? Yeah, I feel like that will apply very heavily here!! If I was just doing 2021, that would be easy as I’ve only written one review this year… 👀😅 However, let’s look a bit further afield!

• 2016: The Undead Series by MaryJanice Davidson
• 2017: The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
• 2018: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
• 2019: Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff (I mean, we all love a bit of a rant every now and then!!)
• 2020: Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts) by L. C. Rosen
• 2021: Lakesegde by Lyndall Clipstone

What’s your favourite discussion post?

Hilariously, my all-time fave discussion post IS from 2019. And it’s basically me being annoyed at J.K. Rowling (15 months before the TERF/transphobic comments) for pretending there is diversity in the HP series. The post was originally called: Why I’m annoyed at J.K. Rowling, but was later renamed: Rowling is appeasing fans by shoehorning diversity into HP. Both of which are accurate titles. 😂

What’s your favourite fun post?

Honestly, I always have fun writing the Top 5 Tuesday posts. It’s part of the reason that I was so chuffed when Shanah asked if I’d like to take over. Unbelievably (because I complain about them so much), my secret faves are the ones where I get to call myself out for poor bookish behaviours. However, some of my all-time fave ones are:

• Villains more interesting than the hero (I really want to revisit this one!!)
• Books I’ve kind of, almost, DNF’ed
• Couples I don’t think stayed together
• Hyped books I didn’t like

What’s your favourite book recommendation post?

Ok, so I have two of these over the last five years that are recommendation posts that I am just so proud of.

The first one is 10 amazing fantasy classics you should read (one day). They’re primarily “classic fantasy” books that I read when I was younger, and I still stand by every book on the list.

The second is a much more recent one: Books inspired by Slavic lore. I had so much fun writing this list, and talking about Slavic lore and mythology in general. It’s definitely one of my most shared posts of the year (outside of Top 5 Tuesday ones), and I really want to write more of these in the future.

What’s your favourite book/bookish photo?

It’s a bit of an oldie, but a goodie. This photo is from when I did rainbow shelves for the very first time. I was so proud of myself — and it looks great!! These days I have an extra two shelves per bookscase, and while it still looks good in person, it’s very crowded!!

What’s your favourite original idea/blog post?

This is so hard for me, because I have written a bunch of original tags and things over the years. They started off when I was doing the Bookending events, but then I kept doing them. Also, sometimes I think I just come up with hilarious blog titles, and where else am I going to get recognition for them?! These are some of my fave original tags and Bookending posts:

• Spicy Pumpkin Latte tag
• Julie and the Phantoms bookish tag
• The Lion, the Witch and the Low Wardrobe Choices
• 50 Shades of Green
• It’s Mandrake Potting Time

What’s your absolute favourite blog post you wrote this year?

Without a doubt, my favourite post not mentioned above was the interview I did with Lyndall Clipstone, author of Lakesedge. It’s funny — I can create all the original tags in the world and be tagged in others’ posts, but there’s nothing quite like having an author validate the thing you spend time on, and want to be part of it. That’s something really special, and a level of trust that you can’t replicate.

Have you reached any blogging achievements this year?

My blog turning five years old was certainly the biggest achievement of 2021. In the last couple of years though, I would definitely say that going self-hosted and rebranding everything with images designed by Kat have made my blog one of the happiest places I know of. Which is something that I absolutely love about it.

Tagging

Sophie @ Beware of the Reader
Kayla @ Books and Blends
Noura @ The Perks of Being Noura
Marie and Nyx @ Drizzle and Hurricane Books
Bron @ Bookish Bron
Evelyn @ Evelyn Reads

Questions