It has officially been two full years since Mary and I first started Briarbook Lane, and once again a lot of things have happened, both of the planned and unplanned variety.
We acquired a beautiful logo for Briarbook Lane, and have done a few things to spruce up and add to the site here (including the Library where you can see all of the titles we’ve reviewed, and our News section for general site announcements). Mary launched Briarbook Lane Press, publishing her first two titles under our own imprint (and you could win copies of your own – check out our logo giveaway for details!). She also launched her newsletter, which I highly recommend signing up for. I set up a Discord community for us, where anyone is welcome to join and talk all things reading, writing, and fairy-tale with us (here’s the invite link!). We’ve kept up with our Enchanted Garden Fairy-tale Book Club; reading, reviewing, and discussing four more fairy-tale novels.
While I did not keep to my goal of continuing my Chronicling series, I did complete 24 blog posts in the past year. Given the ups and downs I’ve had personally (largely related to my health), I’m pretty pleased to look back and see an average of two posts per month with the year taken as a whole. So, given that none of them were Chronicling segments, what were my blog posts about? They fell into four categories: My Challenged Books series, Enchanted Garden Book Club book pick reviews, Dressing Up Drinks recipes, and other book reviews.
In the year to come, I hope to continue to add more book review content. I might try to get back into my Chronicling project, but that largely depends on my health and energy levels. I loved the Challenged Books project, finding it as rewarding as it was challenging (and it was quite difficult); I would like to at least address more of the latest issues surrounding censorship and the banning of books, including the list of the 10 top challenged books from 2021.
Is there anything you would like to see more of here on my blog in the upcoming year? Do you have any thoughts or feedback regarding what I’ve posted here this past year? Let me know!