September has been a great month for my blog setting the second-highest amount of views in a month I’ve had (the first was July when the Goodreads vs StoryGraph article went a little viral). This is good news as it inevitably means the blog is growing slowly but surely. Here’s to October being the biggest month I ever have!
Do note, the list below are the articles that have been most successful for me that I posted in September. Oddly, The SIlent Patient review got the most amount of views this month, though based on the large number of spammy comments it gets, I feel this is because it may have fallen onto some spam radar, unfortunately.
Please note that this article contains affiliate links. This means if you choose to purchase a product via the links, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you to support the blog. These affiliate links do not affect my final opinion of the products.
5. Book review: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
So the fifth most-read article published in September was my review of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. This is widely considered one of the only series that can come anywhere close to the Harry Potter series in terms of depth, friendships and the imagination the author has.
I summarised Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by writing: “Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief is a solid first book in the series. It didn’t quite grab me by the collar like many first books have, however, I can see the potential here and I have a soft spot for Greek mythology ad everything that encompasses. Rick Riordan writes in a really approachable and open way, making it easy to stay on top of the plot and he’s also creating some genuinely likeable characters here and a slight love interest that, despite their age and the book’s demographic, is actually quite interesting to read.”
- Read my full review of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.
- Pick up your own copy of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.
4. Blogger Spotlight: Weird & Liberated
In a new series that I’ve started on this channel, I decided I wanted to speak to some newer bloggers who wanted to speak about their blogs and what they do. I don’t have the largest following but I thought it never hurts to engage with other bloggers and help promote their work too. Weird & Liberated was the first blog I decided to do (simply because they were the first to email me).
Weird & Liberated is an all-encompassing blog where the author blogs about everything and anything around them. They interview podcasters, talk about personal matters and even do reviews of products.
3. Book review: All The Light We Cannot See
All The Light We Cannot see was recommended to me a lot over on my Instagram. Whenever I put up polls of my next read, it was often at the top, so I decided to finally pick it up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t overly impressed.
I know this post did well because it’s a much-loved book on a lot of the platforms that I post to. Interestingly, I did think it would actually do better than it has done. This may be because on my social media posts – where I get most of my traffic from – I noted that I wasn’t a huge fan so if people liked it, they may not have been keen on reading my negative thoughts.
I summarised All The Light We Cannot See by saying: “I feel like I should have liked All The Light We Cannot See more – I’ve seen universally good things about this before I had read it. However, after putting up a post on my Instagram letting people know that I just wasn’t getting on with it, I can see I’m not the only one who struggled with the writing style and the unengaging way this was written.”
2. 22 Blog Post Ideas for Book Bloggers
This blog isn’t all about book reviews – as much as I enjoy reading and sharing my thoughts on the books I read with you – I’m also a huge nerd when it comes to the actual blogging aspect too. Therefore, I want to offer new bloggers some quick and easy blogging categories and options – hence this month’s article featuring 22 Blog Post Ideas for Book Bloggers.
A few examples from the list include: “The Scariest Books I’ve Ever Read”, “If You Like (insert book here) Then you’ll like These” and “Tips to Monetise Your Book Blog”. With a lot of the blog titles, I’ve also tried. to make them quite open-ended too so they can be used in different genres or in slightly different ways to keep your content engaging.
Find out the other 19 blog title ideas here.
1. My honest reaction to the Wheel of Time trailer
As you all know, I’m a huge fantasy fan and the Wheel fo Time series is arguably the biggest series you can get in fantasy when it comes to influencing the genre. Therefore when it was announced there was going to be an Amazon Prime series, I got very excited! When the trailer was released on Amazon’s YouTube channel, I, therefore, thought it appropriate to discuss my initial reaction to the trailer.
In short: I’m still very excited, the CGI looks amazing and even if it’s a bit naff, I’m just looking forward to seeing how they’ve tried to visualise some of these incredible places that I’ve read about.
So to summarise…
As you’ll see – there are only two book reviews on here this month, why this is, I’m not too sure. Maybe it’s because I didn’t do many book reviews at the start of the month, or it may be more due to the fact that I’ve grown a larger Twitter following and they may be more interested in my blog advice content – we’ll have to wait it out and see.
Let me know which of these articles you most enjoyed reading this month and be sure to comment below with your most popular blog posts as well – always up for seeing what works best for others.
