Review 1638

“Mixed up musings on real life and fantasy from within the Hall of Mirrors” is the byline that greets a reader at the journal, Hall of Mirrors. The site itself is pretty plain – it’s gray. The site has an organized look to it, and it reminded me more of a very serious news site than a personal blog.

Deb Atwood, the writer of this blog, keep this blog as a sort of daily writing exercise. She writes small scenes from her life, sometimes like little vignettes. Other times her entries are more like personal journal entries that seem more like Deb just wants to capture what she did that day for posterity. She writes a lot about her kids, and there are also entries on role-playing and quiz entries. There are occasional book reviews. Deb is a good writer.

The design of the blog doesn’t quite match up with Deb’s writing. As mentioned, the site is very plain with not a lot of personality. Perhaps the writing would be better served by a design that reflects the interests of Deb. But the design is functional and organized, and all of her links work, and that’s important.

Hall of Mirrors links to several of Deb’s writing projects. There is what seems to be two novels-in-progress, a weight loss journal, a journal devoted entirely to role-playing games, and a journal written in the voice of Deb’s young daughter. If you’re into reading comic strips, Deb has a pretty big section of links devoted to comics. One of the superior things about Moveable Type [which Deb uses to run her blog] is the ability to list your entries by subject category – it’s one of my favorite things to find in a blog. It makes it very easy to read all of Deb’s book review entries, for instance. Hall of Mirrors does not have an About the Writer page [that I could find]. I would suggest adding one. I’d like to make one other suggestion – make a separate area for quiz/meme entries. Reading quiz/meme entries breaks up the flow of regular entries.

If you like children and are interested in their development, or you like role-playing games, or you know Deb and want to keep up on what’s going on her life, Hall of Mirrors will likely be a journal you enjoy. I wasn’t particularly excited by this blog, but it is worth a visit.

The Hall of Mirrors