Author: Laura Booz
Publication Date: October 23, 2011
Price: $4.99
Place Acquired: Homemaking Bundle
About the author: When Laura was younger, she dreamt of buying an old Volvo, filling it with gas, and traveling across the country. Who could have guessed that blogging would be that Volvo and her travels would be the excitement of writing and living on a farm in Pennsylvania?
These days, she has discovered that her favorite place so far is home-sweet-home. She and her family enjoy homesteading, homeschooling, and ministering to their community. It’s a small life, and it’s a good one. (Not to mention, the adorable people in her life certainly inspire some good bloggy behavior.)
Describe: The subtitle of this book is “Make your blog benefit your life so you can love both.” Laura’s purpose with this book was to show how your blog shouldn’t be a chore that is detracting from your quality of life. She wants to prove that writing a blog should not only benefit and enrich the lives of your readers, but that you should be enriched by it as well.
Analyze: Laura made some great claims in the introduction and it really propelled me forward in reading this book. The book was very easy to read and, because Laura is a blogger, she understands the importance of delivering content instead of fluff. Page after page had meat and potatoes to get you thinking about your writing and it’s place in your life. She shared information about developing a vision statement, the importance of blogging about convictions instead of theories, budgeting your time in a way that suits your specific life situation, and how to allow God to restructure your life in a way that is honoring to Him.
Evaluate: I originally read this book over a month ago. I read all the other blog-related books in the Homemaking Bundle that I bought but, for some reason, fought against reading this one until then. To be honest, I mostly started reading it because I was bored and wanted something to occupy my mind. I’m glad that I finally listened to God’s quiet prompting to read this book. In fact, I read it again last week! I enjoyed it so much the first time around that I wanted to share it with my readers as my first book review but, somewhere over the last month, I had misplaced the notes I took. Even reading it a second time was enlightening. It was the exact same information I read the first time around but, this time around, I was reading it after I had applied some of the information in it. Probably my biggest blogging take-away from this book is that God cares about each post I write. She talks about how “God is interested in the work of your hands and the thoughts of your heart.” Not only does God want to be involved in every facet of your life, your life will make so much more sense if those facets are all based of a structure with Christ at the center.
Recommendation: Even though this book was written by a blogger and for bloggers, the wisdom in it can apply to anyone’s day-to-day life. We can all use guidance on how to restructure our lives in such a way as to place God at the center. It is far to easy to get distracted by to-do lists and children’s schedules, to the point that I spend more time looking at my day planner than in God’s Word. This book is not about pursuing excellence in your skill or craft, it is about pursuing excellence in your life and character. I was convicted to make and continue with some changes in my life (exciting and scary!) and I think that others who read this book will walk away with the tools to redirect (or renew) their daily life’s journey so they can head toward the goals that God has in mind for them.
