Loooking forward a state of the blog and 2026 Plans

~ winstonsdad

I have decided to draw a line under the reviews for this year. I just ran out of steam the last month. Part of me is thinking I am actually so excited about next year on the blog and just wanting to say fuck off to 2025, as the queen once said it has been my Annus Horribilis with Amandas heartattack and the changes that have brought to our lives. But I have also felt lost as a reader over the last six months. I think there is so much noise these days that I have felt like I have been doomscrolling for the last while, and my concentration is a lot less than it used to be, and this has impacted my love of reading, I feel. Simon Savidge talks a lot about what he reads. I never used to get it, but now I do. The noise of the book world is louder, but also, for me, feels like a massive cave now where I interact very little with folks. One-to-many pointing out grammatical errors makes me question every tweet these days, so I end up making more errors. (I SPOT my own mistakes so often, but i am used to them, so just forget them )I do wonder how these folks who, over the years, would cope with grammar in my brain, which is full of noise and constant overthinking, and just a lack of self-belief. This has even started to impact me, as I think about why this noise is constantly in my head. So this last month I have turned to Chat gpt to firstly try and work out a few thiunbgs like a weekly routine to blog too which from the new year i will be doing I used to do my weekly planner religously as I need to know how my week looks or it ends up being me just sat watch old crimefilms and you tube and ragin at the state of the country Mr Trump and just so many other things.The impact of what happened to my beloved has had a ripple effect and made me want to kick-start the blog and celebrate my love of reading

Don’t get me started on book creators and having to pay to join folks’ book clubs. So the first part of next year will be building the routine back up. I have a new hourly planner. Then I have set up a Discord, which, if folks want to join, is a place to chat about books, similar to how we did back in the Twitter days. NBo book club, no paying for this and that. I have a blog that has reviewed over 120 countries. I have a depth of reviews I feel is a real achievement. But as I have heard say, there is no standing still; time moves on constantly. I have flirted with the idea of YouTube for the last couple of years,s but I  can’t see myself ever doing it. The blog is where my passion lies: improving as a writer and reader, constantly moving forward, discovering new countries, and continuously adding depth to the places I have read from, building the ultimate world canon. Still, to do this, I need to try and read a little more, get back to a blogging routine, and figure out how to do that well. One of my all-time favourite books about reading is Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, where Nina Sankovich read a book a day after the death of her sister. I know point blank I can’t read a book a day, just beyond me. I averaged 120 books a year and reviewed between 90 and 100 on average. So my plan is to read between 180 and 200 books next year to get off doomscrolling and kick-start my blogging.I said that before but I think it is a loss of routine and the noise of the world these days I love turn the clock back ten year or so but I can’t

I want to play with review styles over the year, try longer posts, shorter posts, different ways of putting over many voices, which I feel I have not so much held back but lost confidence in. Maybe I thought I met people. I am very overenthusiastic about books. In hindsight, this is my neurodivergent mind, which is also the reason I lack confidence in my voice at times, as I am from a generation where being neurodivergent wasn’t picked up on as much. So if you want the Discord, let me know. Another thing I will be doing is trying to tie the blog in with my Instagram and use both more in sync. I will be doing the Japanese literature challenge, then my Hungarian Lit month in February, which I am really looking forward to. I am also swapping the image of Winston slowly to me well a ai painted image of me on the blog and elsewhere and using the name Stu the reader just in case you have seen me and think it is someone else

I am being ambitious next year, but I just want a routine back to the blog when I post what I read and get them in sync, and also be a better member of the blogging community. A lot, but as I said, I have been using the last few weeks as planning for next year and setting things up with plans and also getting things like books for next month, sort of, the new planner, a new guide for how I want to review, sorting a Discord. The latest image on the avitars all building for 2026 and project 200. What are your plans for 2026 ?

Published by winstonsdad

new year new start 2010 ,i m stu j allen i try to review every book i read here at winstonsdad also twitter news and things in the book world

20 thoughts on “Loooking forward a state of the blog and 2026 Plans”

  1. No plans for me in 2026 Stu, just to read at my pace, whatever takes my fancy. I am attending a course at the Melbourne School of Literature on the “verse novel” so that will be the start of the year covered.
    Where do I find your discord channel?
    Best wishes for the Festive Season for Amanda & yourself.

    Reply

    2. I hope you’re going to post about The Verse Novel. I have had Les Murray’s Fredy Neptune on the TBR for ages, but I would like to know what to look out for when I’m reading it. (I’m cowardly about reviewing poetry as you know!)

      Reply

      1. Hi Lisa,

        Unlikely I’ll post anything about them, no longer inspired to share my thoughts. The syllabus is:

        Week 1 – The Golden Gate – Vikram Seth (1986)

        Week 2 – The Monkey’s Mask – Dorothy Porter (1994)

        Week 3 – Ruby Moonlight – Ali Cobby Eckermann (2012)

        Week 4 – Blindness and Rage – Brian Castro (2018)

        Week 5 – The Call-Out: A Novel in Rhyme – Cat Fitzpatrick (2022)

        I’m starting off with Alexander Pushkin’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ as it apparently inspired Vikram Seth’s work. I have read Brian Castro’s a few years ago but will revisit.

  2. Dear Stu, as a latecomer to your pages, if you never wrote another review, you have created a wonderful body of work. If you do no more than the Japanese and the Hungarian challenges along with keeping up with all those translation prizes, that would be enough for most mortals. Don’t be so hard on yourself. If you wrote “I put my book down and went for a gentle walk with Amanda”, we would be happy to read that too. Wishing you both a tranquil and cosy Christmas and New Year

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  3. You are way ahead of me with plans for 2026, I’m just trying to get through to the end of 2025 without ending up back in hospital on a crucial day!
    I do have some vague ideas about this and that, one of which is to read books about pre 1933 Jewish culture in Europe. I did a course recently where I learned that UK students know practically nothing about the Holocaust, not even how many people were murdered, and one of the consequences of that is that they have no idea what was lost when six million people perished. That ignorance is probably true of many young people around the world.
    That means that the books I read will be in translation, of course, and already I have sourced two. The one I will be starting soon is Habima by Raikin Ben-Ari, translated by A H Gross and I Soref and it’s the story of an avant-garde theatre group that was formed in Moscow in 1919. It looks fascinating:)
    All the best to you and Amanda for the festive season!

    Reply

    1. It wouldn’t surprise me that people are taught less about the holocaust I have always felt kids should have to go to the holocaust centre which isn’t far from me to
      Listen to the survivors that are left.I wish you a happy and more importantly a healthy Christmas Lisa

      Reply

      1. Thanks for this Stu. I really appreciate your blog- you’ve introduced me to several Latin American authors I’ve not heard of, which has been a real treat. I have as yet no plans to do anything different in 2026, partly have not had time to think about it- maybe I will in the next few days. Take care, wishing you and Amanda all the best for 2026.

      2. That is the best way, for two reasons: it reduces the tendency to believe Holocaust deniers, but it also shows the kids that they were real people, who are survivors. It was inspiring to me to meet survivors at our Holocaust Museum and see them in a place that told their terrible story where I was expecting it to be sombre and sad, and yet they were laughing and joking and bragging about their grandchildren. Living their beset lives in spite of everything the Nazis tried to do.

  7. Great plans, Stu.
    And don’t be too hard on yourself, the aim is to have fun, to interact with other readers and share our love for books. It’s not a job, it’s a hobby.

    I wish you and Amanda the best for the festive season.

    Reply

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