Recently, I started a separate blog exclusively for my book reviews. It’s called Lyssa’s Book Reviews. I posted my first review there late last week and I’m working on another now. Please feel free to check it out!
Here is a link to my review of Kanae Minato’s “Confessions”. Enjoy!
My first foray to the local library in a long time yielded a thoroughly dark, thoroughly enjoyable Japanese school thriller (translated into English).
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Mr. K. investigates some moss
Spring is slowly arriving. I actually saw a couple of cherry blossoms finally starting to flower at the park yesterday and there are days, at least, where the weather warms up. We’re getting there.
If spring is creeping in, maybe it’s time to start creeping back into blogging too. I’ve made a couple of changes here, the most notable being the name of my blog and username. I’ve gone from “Wisps and Whatnot” to “Lyssays”. It’s basically a play on words. I’ve used Lyssa, in various ways, as one of my online names for years and I will continue to do so as my user name here! The rest comes from my long-held dream of writing intelligible enough posts that they might be called essays, plus the fact that “Lyssays” looks a bit like Lyssa Says. See, I’m very pleased with my wittiness on this one.
It’s been a very long winter. We kept getting sick, often all at once. I’ll definitely be getting my flu shot next winter just to try and avoid that nightmare again. When I wasn’t getting sick, I was swamped with work. That’s a situation that’s bound to arise again, but I’ll try to work getting more blog posts up anyway? I get all these ideas in my head for them, after all. It’s just the finding of time and space to spit them out! Wish me luck with that!
For the last month or two, I know I’ve been grossly neglecting this blog, and I’ve been pretty much posting less than I’d like to for close to six months now anyway. I don’t think anyone really sits around with bated breath waiting for my next post, but I am sorry nonetheless.
Knowing I’ve been neglecting this blog and trying to think about what to do to change that has led me to make a couple of changes.
The first, and perhaps more noticeable change, is that not just the chocolates posts but anything about Japanese cakes, cafes and sweets will go over on my Chocolates of Japan blog. This content has always sat a bit at odds with the other things I post about and it just seems easier for both me and my readers to group these things together instead. I’ll be working on broadening my other blog over the next week to cater for that; if any readers are only interested in Japanese food-ish things, I’m happy to redirect you over there instead.
The second change is a bit more subtle but still important to me. While the main reason behind my dearth of posts is just that I’m very busy, another issue is that I feel this pressure to not just write posts, but write especially meaningful, high-quality ones. The pressure comes completely from me, but knowing that hasn’t really stopped me from imposing it on myself anyhow. I end up with ideas for things I wouldn’t mind posting about, but I don’t feel as though they would be worth reading. Instead, I keep this idea of the ideal post in my head but, rather than somehow getting it out, I either end up too daunted and/or overwhelmed to post at all, or I just throw up a few photos and hope for the best.
So, after pondering things for a couple of weeks, I’ve come up with something of a new plan. Instead of trying to create the long, important essays I imagine for this blog, I’m going to stick with posting the things I just feel like writing about instead.
The topics won’t be hugely different to what I was trying to write about anyhow – I imagine things about Japan and the oddness of living here, being a mother, a woman, family and all the complications that brings, work, Australia and being an expat, life generally, oh my god I hope books, probably the cats, and yeah, photos.
It might be a bit more informal, though, and a little more personal. Chattier? Something like that. The effort will be there, anyway!
Lyssays 