Thursday is RobAroundBookBlogs day where I take an informal and unqualified look around a book related blog and speak about some of its ‘best bits’. This week is the turn of Ex Libris, the personal book blog of Sharon Goforth.
When you first arrive at her blog you can’t help but notice the apt Maugham quote that Sharon has positioned into her header – “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.“, and judging by the amount of books that Sharon appears to get through, she must never be unhappy.
Blog aesthetics
Ex Libris is both simple in design and simple in presentation, which is always a refreshing thing to find. The blog’s predominant burgundy colour scheme reminds me of an old gentleman’s library, but its leafy graphics, and ‘cat on a book stack’ illustration offsets any male dominance, bringing a feminine touch to the place, wholly denoting that the blog is one run by a female reader.
The sidebars of Ex Libris are packed with ‘stuff’ but not really in a crowded kind of way. I love the ‘Beside the Bed’ and ‘In the Kitchen’ areas showing Sharon’s current reads, her LibraryThing ‘badge’ (essential addition for a bibliophile, but I prefer GoodReads – probably because it’s free…[blushes]..), and her ‘recent additions’ list, complete with book cover graphics.
Quality of posts
Sharon’s posts are of the highest quality (I wish I could write so well), with her best and most comprehensive being her posts for the Sunday Salon. Her reviews i.e. The Sea by John Banville are both well-structured and deeply intelligent (although sadly she doesn’t seem to have provided any reviews to such depth since May). My favourite post, aside from any of her Sunday Salon ones, has to be ‘Book Traveling‘ – a post on Sharon’s virtual journey around the world through her books.
Book Challenges: the highlight of Ex Libris
You can tell from the sheer quantity of books she ‘ticks off’, that Sharon is one serious reader, and she’s one who’s seriously big on book challenges (I’m glad to see I’m not the only one so driven to launch ‘wildcat’ personal challenges 
)), and these are definitely the highlight of Ex Libris. Notable (because I’m into the same thing) is her Russian Challenge 2008 – a challenge to read a minimum of 4 books by Russian authors or about Russia (Sharon, not surprisingly has set herself of 14 to read! )), but Sharon’s most interesting reading challenge by far is something she calls ‘Author Projects’
‘Author Projects’ is an excellent idea! It’s a challenge based around reading a number of collected works from the same author. Sharon’s criteria for choosing authors depends on a number of things – the amounts of books she has in her collection by a certain author, authors she’s read before but feels compelled to read more of, and most interesting of all – authors who have received literary acclaim in the past but have dropped into obscurity. This is an awesome project, and one that I’ll certainly be paying close attention to. It ties in nicely with my ‘still to be started’ Saturday daily feature – RobAroundAuthors, where I spend time exploring a particular author.
Room for improvement?
It’s never my place to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t do with their blog, particularly when it’s one as good as this. However I would like to have seen more of an extended bio section from Sharon. From her reading I can tell she’s a fascinating individual, and it would be nice to know a bit more about her.
I would also have liked to have seen Sharon keeping up with her more in-depth book reviews. I know from experience this is a timely thing to do, and it’s often hard finding the time. However Sharon has a real talent for review writing so I think she should keep it up.
All in all then Ex Libris is an excellent book blog and a real treat to visit. Sharon is quite obviously an intelligent and valuable member of the book-blogging community, with a passion that seems to border on infectious (judging by some of the posts comments she gets). if you’re especially looking for a bit of book challenge inspiration then I can’t think of many better places than Ex Libris to get it.
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