It’s curious you know. Whilst I was thinking about how to write this review, I realised that this weblog has all the potential to be a complete flop in my book. It hasn’t got the prettiest template in the world, it is a blogspot blog, it is purely personal, has a lot of stuff about family life and is written by a middle aged woman. I have slated blogs before now for having one of these characteristics, let alone all at the same time.
However, I am not going to slate this blog. Oh no. And here’s why.
Firstly about how it looks. Ok, it’s blogspot, which has almost become a by-word for lazy blogging in my book, but not in this case. Firstly there is no advertising box. Good start. Secondly there is a really cute little weevil (which I think has been designed by one of her friends) which adorns the title bar and the sidebar throughout the blog. Granted, the rest of the blog is a bit drab, but all we ask here at TWR is that people make a bit of an effort, and clearly this has been done. She also only has stuff in her sidebar which should be there, i.e. links, favourite blogs and some more information about her. No javascript gimmicks or flashing things thankfully. So my mood lifted slightly as I perused the site initially.
Spotting that a few of the links were the same as the links on my blog, I thought I might have some stuff in common. So I had a look at the “100 things” and found out that this woman is clearly a happy, bubbly, positive person and also lives in the same home town as me! Blimey. It was weird reading through the blog and here her talk about places and streets which are familiar to me every day. Did this affect my objectivity as a reviewer? Yes, absolutely. I found it very refreshing. However it wasn’t just congruent geographical locations which enabled me to warm to this author.
Like I say, it is mostly personal, day to day things she writes about. She seems to post every day and a lot about her family. Some of the posts are in fact rather pointless. One tip though, is to bear in mind the “who’s who” link at the top – the author uses nicknames for various people she knows and it can occasionally get very confusing – “who’s who” clarifies it all.
However, there are two very important things which this author possesses which make this blog stand out from the crowd. She is funny and she is literate. I can’t express strongly enough how important it is, for a reader, to be able to read a weblog that is fundamentally entertaining. If I can laugh out loud whilst I am reading, it makes so much difference to how much I enjoy a review. Good writing skills are also (obviously) another important facet in a medium which is based almost solely on text. Again, the author excels at this – she is intelligent, knows lots of cool words (I wish I could think of a cool word to describe someone who knows lots of cool words, but I can’t), she is imaginative and she can tell a good story. My only regret is that I wished I had time to read all the entries, not just some of them.
I have scored this blog fairly highly and I think most people will find it as amusing and positive as I did. However, because the author is from my home town, it will be added to my list of favourites too.Weevil Stepmother