Digital Gardening: 11 years of Lesestunden.de

A few weeks ago, I read a blog post about digital gardening on Miss Booleana’s blog. In it, she describes the idea of tending and caring for older posts on a blog. I really like that thought, so that’s exactly what I did — I tended and cared for my blog a little like my own small garden. A good moment to look back and write a bit about my own digital gardening.

I’ve never celebrated or even mentioned any blog anniversaries. But eleven years is a really long time for a website. Over all these years, I’ve enjoyed writing here, trying out many different things, programming, analysing, and commenting. I’ve now revised, cleaned up, updated, expanded these posts — in short: I’ve taken extensive care of everything as if it were a digital garden. Because all these posts, even the older ones, are still frequently visited and read.

Back then, my post about the analysis of the book blogging sphere was very popular, as well as my top list of German book blogs. Over the years, I’ve written about the book blogging sphere again and again, but since the scene has shrunk significantly, I’ve now turned to Bookstagram. Accordingly, there is now also a top list for Bookstagram.

My map of public bookcases is also very well visited — and it’s available as an app. The app has been around for almost nine years now, and I think it’s very useful for many people, so not too long ago I revised and modernised it again. I also completely reprogrammed the website for it.

My post with gift ideas for book lovers and avid readers is also very popular. I’ve updated the post again and again over the years, and by now it contains twenty gift ideas. Some are very useful and beautiful, others are rather trashy. But it’s still a collection I really like, and I hope it has helped book lovers receive good gifts over the years.

What I’ve always enjoyed most is writing about beautiful classics. I simply love beautiful books and splendid editions. A real highlight is my deluxe unique edition of The Count of Monte Cristo. Or my leather-bound unique edition of The Lord of the Rings. I restored and upgraded my antiquarian complete edition of Balzac’s La Comédie humaine myself on a small budget. I even designed high‑quality dust jackets myself — something that now works very well with an excellent free tool.

But after all these years, my main focus is still on reviewing classics. And I’ve already introduced a great many. There are countless editions that are beautiful both in content and appearance. For some reviews, I updated and improved the photos afterwards. I also sorted out and removed numerous book reviews. Digital gardening, indeed. Anything that, in hindsight, no longer really fits the blog, I removed. Some reviews I revised and improved again. Posts that were only short updates — I removed them. Years later, nobody cares about those anymore. I also cleared the entire blog of outdated images, checked for dead links, and updated or removed them. It’s truly astonishing how much outdated content accumulates after just a few years — and how much storage space I saved by cleaning it up.

Of course, I’ve also written about the current book culture, the book market, and generally about authors, literature, and related topics. Surprisingly popular is my post The Deceived Reader: How Patrick Rothfuss Misleads His Readers. Apparently, readers are indeed very disappointed here. I also regularly look at the numbers of the book market. Red Alert for Germany’s Book Industry: The Silent Collapse of Our Reading Culture was my latest post on the topic. I also looked into how books are censored in Germany. And I wrote about how publishers censor themselves voluntarily.

Finding good books isn’t that easy. My post On the Art of Finding Good Books is a frequently visited source of inspiration. And 12 Books That Completely Changed My Life and Everyone Should Read is an article that everyone really — truly — should read. If you’re looking for beautiful books, you should also take a look at my guest post series My Most Beautiful Books. In general, it’s worth browsing through the old posts — I’ve introduced many truly worthwhile books there.

As a software developer, the topic of artificial intelligence was naturally very present for me. I experimented with various things and found it exciting to test whether an AI can write a book. Or whether it can help with reading a book. I’m definitely not done with that yet, even though the topic is (understandably) viewed very sceptically and controversially.

Behind the scenes, I cleaned up a lot. I fixed plugins and replaced some with better ones. I checked and resolved all issues using the Google Search Console. My entire blog is now also available in English. The configured language of a visitor is detected automatically and redirected accordingly. I even cleaned up and slimmed down the database. I also improved and expanded my backup script. All of this is very relaxing and soothing for the soul. Like a Zen garden, it feels liberating to let go of old ballast. Or as Edmond Dantès says in The Count of Monte Cristo:

You know that human inventions move from the complex to the simple, and that simplicity is always perfection.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Even after all these years, I still enjoy writing here about books and literature. I know that with this blog I’m still very much in a niche, and the phenomenon of book blogging is largely over and has been replaced by social media. But Lesestunden.de is still a beautiful place for me, where I love to share my passion for beautiful classics and hope to inspire one or two readers to discover good literature. So here’s to the next eleven years — and to a wonderful new reading year.