Welcome friend. In the month of March 2026, I decided to share something new on the blog. It felt like the right time to launch my new series, Reading with a Slice of Life, where I wrote lots about one book for a month – when it showed up in my life, what happened in that and how I related to it in the moment.
Reading with a Slice of Life is a shift from doing what has always been the way to following my heart and writing about a book as much as I wanted to. Some ideas just can’t be optimized in the traditional sense. As expected, my blog posts gave me warnings – “The Names” is a keyword that has been used in SEOs before. I ignored the warnings and kept adding new posts to my blog about the same book.
Doing something different is arriving at a place of vulnerability. How will this series affect my blog? Will I find readers who loved this book as much as I did? Will this format of reading and everyday life reflection resonate with others?
Letting the Book Take Space
There was only one way to find the answers and that was by showing up.
It meant coming back to one book across multiple posts and weeks but I loved this book and my own space of the Internet was exactly the place where I could shower it with attention authentically.
The days of writing and posting right away are long gone. I can proudly say now that I have spent years practicing separation of reading a book, writing about it and ultimately posting about it to the blog. For The Names, I made a deliberate choice to reflect after each reading pause, which happened to be every 30 or so pages – a manageable chunk of reading and just enough time to write about before moving on. That was back in July 2025. As I read and wrote, I imagined posting about the book all in one week. I liked the sound of March so I decided to return to my notes then.
March arrived and I no longer wanted the self-imposed pressure of posting 7 days a week and then looking for more things to share on the blog for the rest of the month. I decided I would post every couple days. Let this book be the focus. I gave myself permission to spend my writing time with other books and designing interview features while keeping blog scheduling time for reading my notes on The Names and sharing those to the blog.
I found that I really savored this whole process! It was lovely to return to the summer days when I was reading The Names. In the months gone by, I had forgotten so much. I visited the book but also the life when I was reading it. All my reviews have a glimpse of that but Reading with a Slice of Life is deliberate in connecting the book to the everyday. I loved it as the reader.
When the Blog Held
The response to Reading with a Slice of Life’s first iteration was heartwarming. I regularly got likes on the posts. This is more than the typical engagement on my reviews. I got a comment on the final overall thoughts on The Names where the reader agreed with the analysis I had presented and shared how much they love the book too. In emails from authors that month, a few mentioned that they love the detailed pause-and-reflect style of my reviews. They see the thoughtful way in which I engage with the stories.
There is more.
Ariel and I have a monthly ritual of sharing blog stats. I send her the counts for views, visitors, clicks and impressions. I celebrate what I see and make no effort to change from what I am doing.
But, as you know, in March 2026, I made a change. I posted about the same book multiple times and I was curious how this would impact overall views and counts.
I was pleasantly surprised!
Clicks went up! The last time I was this high was back in January 2025.
I reflected that when we do something for a long time, we can get stuck in our patterns. We can fall into a false assumption that the reason the blog is getting the views it is is because of what we post to the blog in the day to day. As we move to the next new book, the next author interview or the next month for new books coming out, the work we have already done can seem inconsequential.
But it is not true.
What I learned by embracing freedom on the blog through Reading with a Slice of Life and sharing more personal, yet still bookish, content, was that it is what I have done that continues to bring people to the blog. Previously on The Blogging Shelf, when I celebrated reaching 500,000 views, I mentioned a few of the most widely read posts of all times. Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life (May 2023) was still a top page in March 2026.
It is amazing to see 8 Beautiful Quotes About Love show up as a top performing page again in March as it was another new thing I tried some months back and to see it continue to resonate with readers tells me I have tapped into the many flavors of what reading looks like. For the first time, Babel: An Arcane History made the list. It is one of my longest and favorite book reviews.
The books and writings I love are starting to be more widely read. What a great feeling! Alongside that, I am sharing how I want to.
I started writing reflective pieces about books and reading in December 2023 through TBR Tales. It’s not that I did not write them before but that series established a place that would hold my reflections. Since, I have branched out to numerous other series, including this one – The Blogging Shelf. These reflections are separate from book reviews and it was only through Reading with a Slice of Life that I changed something that has existed in a certain format forever.
Permission to Write Differently – Creative Freedom
I didn’t know my March stats would answer a question I didn’t have the courage to even articulate: Can I write what I want about a book and still be read?
The answer is yes.
Once I let go of the assumption that each book should be written about once on a blog, I could truly start to show the many ways in which I read and engage with books.
Taking that leap is a big step.
Letting go of the standard SEO practices to be searchable on the web was an action I had to take repeatedly to get comfortable with.
If you are a blogger, looking to try something new on your blog, do it. You built this space for yourself and it is for you to show up as authentically you. It is natural to think about the audience, the social environment, SEO best practices, any number of things and people who will be displeased, question or challenge what you are doing. What helped me was to acknowledge how I was feeling and do what I wanted to do anyway.
I started to think about myself and where my creativity wants to flow. I am the first reader of my writing and my craft. To share it or not share it is upto me and the only way to even arrive at that decision point is to follow my heart and create what I want to.
Read what I want to. However I want to. Write what I want to. Getting to know myself has been key.
Creative freedom comes when you give yourself permission to be, like I did.
And if it feels right, you can choose to show that on the blog that is yours.
Building a Life Around Writing
In May 2025, I created a new list: Writing Log.
In January 2026, I created a new list: Intentional Blogging.
The first holds all the books and ideas I want to write about, am writing, have completed or am no longer planning to. Each time I write something, I note the date in the log. Over the months, the preamble to this log has gone through various addendums but what has remained is: “It’s ok to take days to finish. Messy thoughts are welcome.” Without writing, there would be no blog and this log is all about returning to the creative energy of words.
The second, more recent, list houses all the writings (reviews and bookish) that I can post to the blog – no longer Works in Progress but Words to Spread – interviews in various stages, administrative tasks like monthly stats checks, creating graphics, following up with publicists, etc.
It’s taken years to arrive at a system that nurtures both the writing and the blogging. They were together in the early years but over time, they got decoupled and I love this direction. The Names with its pause and write format gave me the chance to breathe as I read. To notice my life, in all its identities alongside the reader and writer. I don’t know when I will reach for that kind of reading yet. I don’t know if it’s a mood or a book or both. What I know though is that just like there is a place in my reading life to read that deeply, a reader out there reads that deeply too. I don’t know their names. I have not met them. But March 2026 stats showed me that all the ways in which I write about reading matter.
Concluding Thoughts
When I started Armed with A Book, it was simply a way to stay connected to writing. I had always loved reading and it became a reason to write, my blog becoming the place where I wrote. Over time, I realized that it isn’t just books that give me ideas to write about. My observations, my thinking generate ideas too and my Writing Log is proof of the abundance of ideas in my life. The season of reading 10-14 books a month may be past for now. I don’t miss it. The richness in taking the time to write, returning to the craft over and over is really all I want. And I am living it.
Armed with A Book does not have just book reviews and author interviews. It holds conversations. It documents my emotions, reactions, and vulnerability. I am enjoying sharing what I want in the format I want. Whether people read the new content or not, it does not matter. There is a lot that already resonates and over time, other pieces gain traction. I never know which ones they will be. That is what my stats show me. That is what I choose to take away from that beautiful month of gushing about just one book.
Be First to Comment