Well, this is embarrassing.
To my old readers, hello again. Turns out I just couldn’t stay away from oversharing online, after all.
To my new read— who am I kidding? Hello, crickets. 😀
But if you are somehow really a human reader (and not an LLM slobbering all over my tumblr era-esque writing to serve up slop to your users), here’s my story.
Let’s reheat ancient tea
I started blogging in 2016. It was mainly a book blog but I somehow became known for my satirical articles and sense of humor. I also wrote good-ish reviews of books, if I can say so myself.
I used to love my blog and it was my go-to point to bring up before “let’s go around in a circle and introduce ourselves! ✨” used to make me want to swallow spikes.
That is, until I hated it. My blog, that is.
I was pandering too much to my audience at one point, and I was also using words like “audience” instead of friends/a community, which is what I had started blogging for.
And I deleted that blog. To say it was not a relief would be an understatement. I loved the last few years of being blog-less even if I now had to resort to other ways of introducing myself.
I did have this website but let’s face it. I never wrote much and I often forgot it existed.
True story: I keep typing “shruishblog” as my URL instead of shruish.com when I decided to start blogging again. It was that bad.
Why in the world would I come back
As much as I hated what happened the last time around, I was the one who let it happen.
Right now with our robot overlords, Google suppressing Search, people’s attention spans being in the pits… blogs are suffering. And I couldn’t be happier!
I want to write on here for myself primarily — something I haven’t done in a very long time. The sneaky posts I’ve written so far gave me so much joy! And I did not refresh my stats even once to see how many visitors I had, how long did they stay on page, and what not.
Latest review: Out by Natsuo Kirino
At least for now, growing this website into a content marketing engine (bleh) does not interest me. I head a content marketing team at work and all the SEO and metrics will be left at the metaphorical door when I log off work.
On here, I just want to write about what gives me joy, whether that is books, travel, personal essays, or anything else.
Some ground rules for self
Because this B cannot function without lists.
Read (and review) with intention
I read less than 30 books in 2025. That’s an all-time low number for me. But I also had one of the best reading years in 2025.
I accidentally discovered a lot of new favorite books. I DNFed a lot of books and the ones I completed where all 3 stars or above. I want to keep doing this in 2026.
Now that I finally have a life and work keeps me pretty occupied, I don’t want to waste time slogging through books I do not completely enjoy. And I definitely will not be writing reviews unless the book moved me enough to show it love with the limited writing time I have.
Read without multitasking
I love audiobooks and they were my most read format last year. But I am a bit concerned about how I listen to audibooks. It’s always at 2X the speed and always, always while multitasking.
Audiobooks are absolutely valid and great while doing mindless chores but personally, I do not read as critically with audiobooks as I do with words on a page. So I want to do more of the latter in 2026.
Ignore the numbers
I said this already but avoiding stats applies for Bookstagram too. I’ve been more regular on there and I somehow also accumulated several new followers in the last few months.
I even found myself obsessing over not hitting 1K by the end of 2025. But hang on, we don’t do that anymore.
Bookstagram fills me with joy (there’s a statement I never thought I would make!) much like blogging. I like my weird photos and finding creative ways to post about audiobooks. I will keep doing it without focusing on engagement or other puke-worthy influenzaaa keywords.
Go beyond books
I’ve always restricted myself to literature while writing online. But I have so much to say about so many things.
She’s a serial yapper.
I realized this when I (albeit misguidedly) started a Substack where I easily wrote about my hatred for AI, reviewed a favorite Tamil movie, and came up with future post ideas completely removed from books and publishing.
That’s what made me pivot back to this blog (in addition to the middle class concern of having paid for it, welp) instead of Substack. All that writing fits here too so why not dump it here instead?
I already love that I have posts about my travels as well. I am lucky (and privileged) enough to travel frequently and I want to write all those cringey #wanderlust articles here, please.
Don’t be precious about my writing
Easier said than done but I want to stop putting so much pressure on myself to write the perfect review, article, or essay. Sometimes, you just gotta hit Publish and cringe about the typos later.
As my favorite Lorne Michaels quote goes:
The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.
That’s all
I want to close with one final anecdote.
In my first month of blogging, I wrote every single day.
I used to participate in tags, for those of you fossils still around from blogging a decade ago. Top Ten Tuesday, anybody?
We had a massive power outage one Tuesday so I wrote the entire thing on my phone and hit Publish.
That’s the level of don’t-give-a-fuckery that I am manifesting for this new era of blogging. And hey, this post took, like, 20 minutes to throw together so I’m off to great start already!
Thank you for reading, and good luck I guess.