Fifth Blogversary and Five Books Everyone Loved But Me

It is my Blog’s Fifth Birthday.

WordPress sent me a ‘5 year anniversary achievement badge’ today and asked me to keep up the ‘good blogging’. Yay! I’m blowing the trumpet and cutting a cake.

So what do I know and what have I learnt about blogging in these five years? Hmm…

• I love to write. It is hard work expressing my thoughts lucidly but I enjoy the exercise.
• I am grateful that people find a way to appreciate my musings, travel logs and photos .
• When they comment or like, I do a dance. (I really do ). Perhaps they only just read but it makes me happy still, that I have an audience.
• I’m clueless as ever about what the readers would like me to write more of. (Suggestions, please!)

For instance my post, ‘Wooing Lady Luck across Italy’ was a wistful travel post on ‘make a wish’ spots across Rome, Florence and Milan. Unfortunately it got no love. By that I mean no comments. So what was missing? (The comments are enabled.) This zero interaction got my brain cells buzzing.

What attracts love or absolute neglect in a piece of writing?

Let us ignore blog posts for now and jump on to published books instead. What if the books you pick, come with rave reviews but never quite live up to their fame?

Anyway, it is a usual fare for me. I am addicted to Google and Goodreads reviews. It makes me almost long for the pre- internet days when spoilers were unknown and want was both a pleasure and an agony.

So for this post I decided to make a list of five famous/ popular books that everyone loved but me. I skimmed or abandoned most of these on the list.

1) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I’ve tried reading this book thrice including an abridged version since it came with such a formidable reputation. A doomed loved story with searing passions that had the setting of a legendary tale. Its hero Heathcliff set the bar for being the Romeo to Catherine’s Juliet fabulously. Yet the story left me completely cold. I haven’t lost hope for I intend to give it a final shot through an audio book. Hopefully I can experience its magic then.

2) One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

With such a poetic name and a fabulous beginning, I was on board for a ride of a lifetime. Unfortunately, I abandoned it early. The plot meandered into too many tracks, the mystisicm confounded me and the writing was ponderous. Also why in the world did the names sound alike or was there only one name in the name pool for every generation to bear? It became nearly impossible to keep a track of all the characters who would walk in and out of the story. After a while, I just gave up. Some books are enigma ciphers, not everybody can figure them out.

3) PS, I Love you by Cecelia Ahern

I adored the film and was madly in love with Gerald Butler and his Irish accent. Actually, Ireland hopped on to my bucket list solely based on that one scene where the heroine meets the hero hiking through Wicklow Mountain National Park . ( Yes, I googled it and made note already.) Anyway, I naturally assumed that the book would be better. Alas! I couldn’t plod through the dull bits, of which there were plenty, fast enough to reach the good part. At the end, I did not finish the book. Give me the movie anyday.

4) Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

I had heard that this book was the romance of the century. How could I resist it! So of course, I had to lay my hands on this slim novel as soon as possible. Meeting your soul mate briefly and rather late in life and then holding on to that memory till your dying days was stuff great romances were made up of. I was blown away by the idea but was flat out bored by its execution. At the end, it moved me as much as the Notebook could and that still had a hell of an ending. Perhaps now that I’m older and wiser, maybe I’d see it in a new light. Or I’ll probably just watch its film adaptation.

5) Eat, Pray and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Considering I’ve read this book multiple times (actually only the Eat part) as research for my Italy trip, I feel terrible saying that I never really liked it . Even the ‘Pray’ part set in India did not ring any cymbal. Yet this book is so well loved around the globe. Honestly, I couldn’t connect with the author’s thought process to travel to Italy , India and Bali; it felt very contrived. Anyway I know I’ll be picking the book again when my travel plans to Bali materialize. Needless to say, it’ll be all ‘love’ then .

Well that’s a wrap.

So what do you think of this list ? Do you agree or disagree with my choices. Would you like to share any other titles? Let’s talk books and posts, folks.

To No 5, cheers!

Image: Pixabay