Ready? Steady? Go!

Why a bookblog?

There are actually many different reasons why I decided to set up a new blog, and especially a bookblog.
I have to admit that I got a bit bored with my other blog and the motivation to blog was almost gone, even though at the same time I knew I’d want to continue blogging there. I don’t know, maybe I have to change the focus a bit. I’ll have to think about a direction for my Armenian Odar blog.

Living in Armenia is in many ways great. I love life here and it is really the place where I want to be in my life at this moment. I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now. The biggest thing I miss in Armenia, though, is books, news about new books and good bookstores where one can browse for hours and get many new ideas about books to read, new writers to try etc. I love books and I love reading (and …uh…yes, I love buying new books!) so this lack started to slowly creep up on me. Fortunately, my parents are book-lovers themselves and fully understand my love and need for books. So they don’t mind buying my wishlist and hauling it over here once or twice a year when they come visit (or I haul it back myself, when I am in Holland). For that, I am eternally grateful to my parents, because I would be brain-dead soon without this supply of books. My parents are here now and this is what they hauled over here for me:

Click on the image to see the titles. I am still figuring out if and how I can show the pictures bigger without them getting fuzzy and unclear.

For clarification: I don’t trust the Armenian mail that much, packages from abroad are known to get lost somewhere along the way, so I am rather apprehensive to order from Amazon or something like that. Though I have heard of people in Armenia doing that successfully and also, the mailsystem seems to be improving. So maybe I’ll give it a try someday.

Because I missed reading the newspapers and magazines for new releases and other reviews and I just generally miss books, I started reading bookblogs to fill the hole. Slowly, slowly, the idea grew that maybe it’d be a good idea to start a bookblog myself. Not just for the reasons already mentioned, but also as some sort of reading journal for myself. I have opinions about the books I read, but I have never written them down and don’t get to discuss books a lot. Also I tend to forget things about the books I read, why did I love it, why did I hate it. Eventually, I just tend to remember that once upon a time I read the book and that I liked it or not. But that’s all I’d be able to give as a recommendation. So writing about the books I read is also going to be a completely new experience for me, something I hope to learn from and something I hope to get better in over time as I develop my own style and ways. I hope you’ll join me on my reading-journey and my writing-about-reading-journey.

I will be updating and expanding the blogroll, my About-page and the sidebar in general in the near future. If you don’t see your bookblog included, leave a comment here and I’ll add it.