april book report.

Blogging for Creatives: I got this book from a friend for my birthday in March, and I was so excited to finish up my March reads so that I could dig into this book and learn a bunch of new things that I don't already know about blogging. Welp, I honestly didn't learn a thing. I brought the book and a notepad to Barnes & Noble one afternoon with R, all ready to take notes and be filled to the brim with new ideas and concepts, but I was so utterly disappointed that I considered just leaving the book at the table when I was finished. I read through the whole book in less than two hours, took about three lines of notes that were really just reminders to myself to do a couple of things, and looked up from it at R and laughed. I had high expectations that this book was really going to go into a creative type of blogging experience, tips, tricks, and more, but with each page I was more and more disappointed. The only reason I stuck with it was because I was postive that it had to get even the least bit better, but I was wrong. On every single page there were advertisements for blogs that usually had nothing to do with the section of the book they were contained in, and the information was so basic. I had gotten through more than half the book and all it had explained was how to set up a blogging account, which was obviously useless (like literally, they write down the fact that you'll have to create a blog name and a password to protect your account). It was just kind of a joke and the only reason I'm ranting on for so long is so that no one else believes it to be what I did, an actual guide/informational book on blogging for creative people. It should be called "Setting Up A Blog On The Interweb If You Have Never Seen Or Heard Of A Computer Before (Super Grammatically Incorrect Edition)". Whomp. Even if you are interested in a step by step guide on how to create a blog and find your niche, I suggest Blog, Inc., or literally anything else that may do that job.
Quite possibly the only great nugget in this book (not even said by the author but by Amy Ng of Pikaland, "Blogging is a slow jog, not a short sprint."

Wild: Thank God for this book. The reason I only have two reads (one really, I can barely count the book above as a book) is because I was most of the way through the Goldfinch but had to give it back to the library. So I picked up Wild while I was waiting my turn on the request list at the library again, and I'm so glad I did. For a while I dismissed this book as a cult book that a lot of women read and claimed was great. I never thought I would be the type of person who would be into a nonfiction story about a woman hiking for a few months, but I stand corrected. This book reads like fiction (half of the time I forget it was real because it's so crazy!) and Cheryl's voice is so amazing - I cried, I laughed, I felt her pain, and I felt her journey within me. In a way, I am glad that I judged this book harshly before knowing much about it, because my drastic change in opinion has made me love it that much more. I'm not sure what finally swayed me - maybe it was the 20% off sale at B&N, or the fact that my girl Reese is staring in the movie adaptation of the book later this year, but I am so glad that I finally picked this one up. Cheryl's journey as a woman who felt broken and lost is so inspiring, and the way she writes makes you feel so connected to her and that journey. I found myself agreeing with her more often than not, because though I've never hiked the PCT, her battles are so comparable to things felt by all people in the everyday world. As a result of reading Wild I feel empowered as a woman, a lover of writing, and just as a human enveloped in this great world that we all so easily overlook sometimes.
"I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me." Amazing.

10/25 of my 2014 reading goal complete. Wild was the fifth book off of my paperback lust list for this year.