I never in a million years thought I’d still be blogging fifteen years after I started this blog on a whim! Yet here I am, still plugging away. I thought “15” would be a good time to stop and take a look back, share the good and the bad, and especially, say “thank you” to everyone who has visited at one time or another, especially to my many long time blogging friends:-)
I’m breaking this post up into three sections:
1. Favorite book for each year of blogging. This was HARD. Picking one favorite book for the entire year is one of the toughest things I’ve done on this blog! For some reason, 2020 was the worst year. I had a top 5 like I do every year, but I loved all five books equally.
2. Things I don’t do on the blog anymore. It was surprisingly easy to come up with these, and I think it just shows how normal it is to change and grow your blog when things aren’t working.
3. Random observations about blogging. I don’t want this post to get overly long, so here’s a few things I’ve been thinking about!
Favorite book for each year of blogging:
(my reviews are linked below. You can see how my review style has changed over the years!)
2011
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
no likes:-(
2012
11/22/63 by Stephen King
(WTH I never reviewed this!)
2013
Vicious by V.E. Schwab
(LOL at this time I was giving out my coveted Crystal Chandelier Award of Awesome!)
2014
The Martian by Andy Weir
(I can’t believe I used to make 3D covers for all my reviews!)
2015
Afterparty by Daryl Gregory
(still working on my review format)
2016
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
(finally, I got the Ultimate Book Blogger plug in and my reviews have looked like this since!)
2017
Borne by Jeff Vandermeer
2018
We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix
2019
Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton
2020
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
2021
Come With Me by Ronald Malfi
2022
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
2023
The September House by Carissa Orlando
2024
The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
(sorry Barb!)
2025
My Ex, the Antichrist by Craig DiLouie
Let me know if we share any favorites!
Things I don’t do on the blog anymore:
Of course over the course of fifteen years, you’re going to change things up. Here are five things I don’t do anymore (and remember these are just things that don’t work for me, I am not criticizing bloggers who do them!)
1. Giveaways. I used to do a monthly giveaway I called my Book Review Giveaway, where the winner could pick any book I reviewed that month. That went on for a long time, and I finally stopped doing it because I realized a couple of things: it was getting too expensive, and it was attracting what I called “giveaway junkies,” people I didn’t know who came out of the woodwork every time I ran a giveaway. I really wanted to reward my followers, not random people who didn’t follow my blog. So I stopped.
2. Blog Tours. A lot of the types of posts I did in the early days were to attract more followers. I thought being on blog tours would be a sure fire way of getting more views. Well, that never really happened, lol, and it was a blog tour post that got me kicked off my free Word Press blog and forced me to switch to self hosted—which turned out to be a good thing! Blog tours are too structured, you have to promise to post on a certain date, and they take forever to put together.
3. Book Promos & Blitzes. Along the same lines as blog tours, these are copy and paste posts that don’t reflect the blogger’s thoughts or opinions, so it never made sense to me.
4. Author Interviews. Man, every time I agreed to do an author interview (and I’ve done a ton of them!), I stressed out big time. I was always worried that I would ask the wrong questions, or forget to ask an obvious or important question, or end up just looking dumb, lol. I finally realized something—I could just say “no” to interviews!
5. Read self published books. This is a touchy subject. I know lots of readers who love them. But I read mostly self published books for the first few years of my blog, and for the most part they were awful. It nearly made me stop blogging, so I simply stopped. It was about that time that I joined NetGalley and made my first traditional publisher contacts, and everything changed from there on.
Random observations about blogging:
1. My favorite thing about blogging over the years isn’t getting ARCs or growing my stats or followers—my favorite thing is when people leave comments! In real life I’m sort of a hermit and an introvert, but I love the blogging community, and I love the friends I’ve made over the years. I get so excited with every comment, and I try to leave as many comments as I can on other blogs too. Isn’t the reason we’re all doing this to talk about books? 😉 I’m not perfect at it. Sometimes I run out of time and can’t respond to comments, or I forget to visit someone whose blog I don’t normally follow but who left me a comment, but I try.
2. I feel like the absolutely height of blogging might have been during COVID in 2020. My blog stats exploded during that time, because people were at home and had nothing else to do. I do miss those days sometimes! Everyone is so busy now, I know it’s hard to devote time to blog hopping and commenting.
3. My reading tastes have changed dramatically in fifteen years. When I started blogging, I was mostly reading literary fiction, can you believe it? I think my early review posts were probably all over the place, genre wise. My first published review was a book written by my good friend Brett Battles. (also you can see how different my review posts looked at that timel) I didn’t get any “likes” on that post and only one comment, lol. Gradually I started reading what other bloggers were reading, and when I made contact with publishers, I started reading what they were offering. It took me years to realize I wasn’t a fan of epic fantasy, even though it’s such a popular genre on blogging platforms. Now I don’t read it at all. In fact if a book has a sword on the cover, it’s almost always a “no” for me. I’ve always loved Stephen King, but I haven’t always read a lot of horror. It’s only in recent years I discovered how much I love it.
4. I miss so many bloggers who aren’t blogging anymore. This is a sad one. I understand, people move on, blogging takes up too much time, kids and spouses and travel and jobs become more important. Still, each time I notice a blogging friend leave the fold, it’s very disappointing. Sometimes I wonder if I’m still blogging because I just don’t have a life, lol.
5. Technology sucks. I know everyone has been in this boat before, but it always amazes me that we have made it to 2026 without completely figuring stuff out. Like when your blog is down and doesn’t work. Especially when you can’t get straight answers from tech support. I’ve been through a lot of technological mishaps, including having my blog taken down by WordPress because their policy says “no blog tours.” WHAT? Trying to move hosts because my blog wasn’t working right for months, only for the new host to have trouble connecting me with Jetpack, and then having to go back to the old host:-( Then there’s the recent influx of bots that ruin your stats, plugins that mess up your blog, and why the heck don’t I get notification emails from other bloggers when they have a new blog post?? And yet, here I am, lol.
6. Finally, let’s talk about the name of my blog. So when I started the blog, I didn’t think about the name, I didn’t consider what other bloggers were naming their blogs and decide to kind of go with the flow. I literally came up with “Books, Bones & Buffy” in a couple of seconds: at the time I was really into the TV shows Buffy and Bones, and of course I loved books, hence the name. I can’t tell you how many time over the years I’ve wanted to change it! I mean, no publisher is going to quote one of my reviews for marketing purposes with that name, lol. In the end, I was afraid I’d lose followers over a big change like that, so here we are.
Congratulations, Tammy. Here’s to the next 15 years!
Fifteen uears! Congratulations.