Cleopatra Loves Books is Three Today

Yes that’s right, three whole candles on my birthday cake to celebrate Cleopatra Loves Books birth three whole years ago!

Who could have predicted that when I started uploading my reviews onto this blog that it, and of course all you lovely readers, would become such a huge part of my life. It is no exaggeration to state that blogging has been a focus during difficult times, and the enjoyment I get from the interaction with other book bloggers is enormous. So this post is my thanks to all of you – your support, encouragement, warm wishes and of course all those lovely book recommendations has been outstanding.

Blogging has also allowed me to ‘meet’ some of my favourite authors on social media and I would like to thank them, and the PR companies that write me emails offering me books to read which I might never have discovered. My reading has been truly enriched by blogging and I have a TBR mountain to show for it!

Please all help yourself to a virtual slice of cake!!

When I wrote my post to celebrate my first birthday I listed seven bloggers who I particularly enjoyed interacting with and I’m delighted to say all except one blog, are still going strong and still providing wonderful posts to delight me. Were you on the list?

Of course there are many more blogs that I follow and love to read, these range from long-established blogs to newer additions and boy do you all test my willpower!

So now to the facts and figures:

This is my 1,016th post over the three-year, although it should be said that the posts that go back to the beginning of 2013 were those I’d previously posted on Amazon for that year having been reviewing on there since 2010. So I should by now, know what a good review consists of – I’m not sure that I do, but I have a lot of fun writing them and I do hope you enjoy reading them.

The top five reviews on my blog over its entire life are… dum dum dum… in reverse order:

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins from January 2015
Burnt Paper Sky Gillian Macmillan from August 2015
Disclaimer by Renee Knight from April 2015
Sleep Tight by Rachel Abbott from March 2014
The Book of You Claire Kendal from February 2014

The Book of You continues to get almost daily views and has clocked up nearly 850 in its  lifetime as can be seen in the next list

The top five reviews on my blog over the last year, again in reverse order are:

Distress Signals by Catherine Ryan Howard from April 2016
My Husband’s Son by Deborah O’Connor from June 2016
The Swimming Pool by Louise Candlish from April 2016
Burnt Paper Sky by Gillian Macmillan from August 2015
The Book of You by Claire Kendal from February 2014

Of course I don’t just write reviews I participate in memes, tags and the yearly Reading Bingo in December where I look back over my books that have made an impact (or merely just fill one of the squares) which fear not, will be back again later this year.

One of the cleverest tags this year was the Book Spine Poetry which I found fiendishly difficult but I decided to have another stab at it. So I present a birthday poem for you all – thank you for being simply fabulous!

 

 

Year of Wonders

White Nights, plain truth,

Atonement

A fatal inversion

In the dark, raven black

Monday mourning

Hidden lives, bad blood.

Thank you all for making the decision to start this blog such a rewarding experience.