I began this blog a couple years ago when I was still living with my parents, in the house I had grown up in. While I’ve never been the neatest person, one of the things preventing me from ever having a truly clean room was the veritable library of books spread throughout the house. But I loved all of them so much, even the ones that I hadn’t read in years, or the ones I was likely never going to read. Choosing which ones to part with would be an impossible decision. This is, until I made a friend who had been going through all of her old childhood books, reading them again and deciding what to keep at what to get rid of. She talked about things she’d never noticed in her books before, some of which were my favorites when I was younger. But when she mentioned racism in Madelin L’Engle’s works, I was surprised. That was something I’d never picked up on when I was younger, and I wanted to see if it was something I’d missed as a kid.

I thought blogging about my re-reads would be fun to do, and I could see and share the ways that I had grown. I also thought that this project – and it would be a long project – could help me decide which books were worth keeping, and which should find new homes. I set out some ground rules for myself, and got to work.

Then things changed. I pared down, moved to another state. I pared down again, moved to a different state. I took some books from my large collection at home, still in my parents’ house, along with most of my favorites (the Harry Potter and Fables series were too heavy to bring with me).

But I’m winding down to the end of that pile. I’ve got one manga left, which will follow Tithe, and a couple more novels, though not many.

So, as Guns N’ Rose’s once asked, “where do we go now?”

I want to continue working on this blog, but I’m not sure in what capacity. Traditional book reviews is an obvious route I could take, rather than in-depth, chapter-by-chapter reviews. I’m considering doing more YA fiction (like An Ember in the Ashes and Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge), Newbery Medal winners, and #1000BlackGirlBooks.

I’m dedicated to finishing my long-form review of Tithe and the next manga in question, but I would need to get the jump on another project now to keep a steady stream of updates. So if there’s something that you would like to see from this blog or an idea that sounds intriguing, let me know!