the art of reviewing.

One skill I've always wanted to learn: writing good reviews. Writing reviews is quite easy, you just tell what you like and don't like about something. Writing a good review is a whole different story, though. There are tonnes of bloggers who write book reviews, but most of them are mediocre. They just contain a couple of sentences about whether the reader liked it or not. There is nothing wrong with that, but I have noticed that reviews of that calibre don't help me. If I read a review about a novel, I want to see how the writer used literary devices to get the point across. I want to read what interested the reader and whether or not it made them think.
The problem with writing good reviews is that it takes a lot of skill and time. The best reviews, in my opinion, are the ones that are more of a discussion than a review. To be honest, I don't care if the reviewer enjoyed the novel, I just want to know what they thought while reading it.
An example: I am currently reading A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and although I don't really enjoy the writing and story an sich, the themes of the novel make me think about our current society and possible future ones. I read reviews to find novels I want to read, just a simple sentence like: "I really enjoyed it", doesn't convince me at all. I want to hear about the use of language, the different themes, and some core points of the plot. Of course, I can understand that writing a good review takes time, but that's okay.

For now, I will not be posting a lot of reviews. The perfectionist in me just wants to write good ones, but I don't know how yet. So first, I'll focus on the art of reviewing instead of actually reviewing. How weird it may sound.

hello again.

To be completely honest, I am probably one of the most boring people on earth. My room is filled with books, vinyl records, and tacky art posters: the three things I like most. Over the last couple of years, I have tried maintaining a blog on more than one occasion. All those attempts resulted in me giving up after a week or two, and deleting all the posts. As this will probably happen again, I have set the goal of not deleting any posts: no matter how often or how little I post.

Frankly, I have no idea what I will post. It could be short essays about movies or books, it could be long posts about my life. It could just be a song I like at that moment. Who knows, but I want to treat this blog as a sort of journal: everything is possible and everything is fine. Just so I could look back one day, get embarrassed at what I've written, and smile because it shows me the journey I've made. God, that sounds awfully pretentious, but that's okay.

I don't want to be a blogger, I just want a place where I can share my thoughts. So I hope that's fine.

So, my name is Anna. I'm not a blogger. I'm just a confused person who tries to figure out what life entails, and this blog happens to be the place I share some parts of that journey.