No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog by Margaret Mason

No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog Reviews

• 
  Becky

  It gave some good ideas (and divided them by time you have avaliable) to blog about, but mostly listed websites to look at and put your own spin on.
  
  So you don't have to bother: some of the best and worst ideas in this book are:
  #1 If you ruled the world, things would be better, at least in a few small ways.
  www.hchap.com talks about how she thinks you should hang your toilet paper.
  #3 Tell readers about presents you'll remember forever.
  #6 Count your blessings
  #9 what are some of your bad habits that you would like to wish away? are there any good habits you'd like to magically adopt?
  #13 what are the family traditions or personal rituals you practice? how have they evolved over the years? are there any new traditions you've always wanted to introduce?
  #18 Catalog the contents of a space of yours that isn't usually open to the public.
  www.flickr.com search whatsinmybag
  #25 write up a classified ad, the kind people used to run when they had to pay by the word, seeking something you could use. or reverse the process & offer up something you'd be glad to give up
  #27 tell a little bit about your friends: who they are and why you picked them to be part of your life
  #28 how you'd spend $10,000,000
  #31 tell about your perfect meal: whom you'd invite, where you'd land, and whether you'd choose breakfast, lunch, or dinner
  #34 tell about where you live: best places to eat, etc.
  #35 tell about your scars "your scars indicate what type of life you've lived. Whether you're athletic, fighting for your health, or just occasionally clumsy, let each scar remind you of the story behind it."
  www.blogjam.com/name_my_scars
  #36 show off your old school photos
  #37 objects of your affection: in a fire, after all the people & pets are out of your house what would you grab?
  #38 use your blog to start your novel
  www.nanowrimo.org
  #39 or write a short story
  #40 what are you irrational fears and where did they come from **ok I can just see my blog stalker using this to really freak me out GREAT**
  #41 do a tribute for a living loved one
  www.dooce.com
  #42 make a personal timeline of your past. describe what was happening at each stage of your life, and how those memories fit together. you can make a forthright list of major events, or talk about how you were feeling and what mattered to you at a particular age.
  #33 what do you collect?
  www.grocerylists.org
  #48 write about your gravest humiliation
  #49 try your hand at satire ** really? what's that?**
  #50 empty your closets and fill up your blog by posting about the things you need to let go
  #52 tell what you're wearing right now, open you closet and show us what's inside, or describe your perfect interview outfit, the fasion disasters that have haunted you, the items you've bought and never worn (or will never wear again)
  #54 get defensive: what do you love that no one else loves? defent the indefensible
  #57 say thanks
  #58 think back to major historical events of your lifetime & tell readers what you were doing at that time
  #59 tell about your roomate horror stories
  #60 answer the questions that keep you up at night by conducting experiments
  www.michaelbuffington.com/cc2k1
  www.cockeyed.com "how much is inside"
  #67 give readers a day in your life. record everything you did in a typical day
  #68 post amusing experts from your emails of yore
  #71 turn your interest into a passion: start pulling together links, studying up, and try to turn your blog into the go to resource for people who share one of your passions
  #75 "start a blog or regular feature of storeis about living in your neighborhood or town."
  #76 what would the soundtrack of your life include?
  #77 start a family history blog: give everyone a login & post a new question every week (memories, fondest moments with family, or how everyone made it through difficult times)
  #81 seek out unusual opportunities & blog about them **my problem is that I'm half cynical & might hurt someones feelings with this one**
  #87 create a blog entirely devoted to your passion
  www.mightygoods.com
  #91 take up stalking - "make conjectures about passersby, or just recount the highlights of what you observe"
  #93 share a joke
  #96 eavesdrop on other peoples conversations and write about them - the author writes about "Hat guy" 's view of poverty & marriage
  #98 gripe **me? never!**
  
  
  all I can say is that some people have WAY too much time on their hands! that & I'm sure my mom (one of my only blog readers) couldn't care less about most of these things - she probably would care more about what I had for lunch.
• 
  Rekha

  I've come to the conclusion that writing-prompt books are crap. This one didn't change my mind.
• 
  Jon

  Pretty scatter-shot in its attempt at comprehensive brainstorming listicle-style writing prompts. Sure, covers a lot of possibilities, but categorizing them according to the time it takes to write them seems, well, unhelpful. The length of the post seems more appropriate as a subcategory. A more helpful approach for readers would I think be to organize these according to genre, subject, potential audience (and then sub-categorized by length). Lots of bloggers, especially ones hoping to generate traffic, aren't interested in any ol' prompt; they want ideas specific to their niche (food, arts, fashion, essay, etc.). The form and focus of your blog will shape what prompts are helpful. How long it takes to write a post is secondary to generating usable topics.
  
  Somewhat in its favor is how short each suggestion is. You can read this whole thing in no time. But it would go even quicker, if it was organized better. Time seems to be one of the most important aspects of blogging for her, which gives the whole book a very rapid-fire, go-get-em, Business Bro meets Cool Mom vibe that doesn't fit my personality or what I look for in a good blog. But I know lots of people do dig that voice and approach.
  
  But there are some useful things in here, despite the book being ten years old now and blogging has moved into new realms. Some parts are a touch dated, but the underlying principle is can be easily modified to contemporary needs. Other readers might get more out of this. If your blog is a catch-all for life's happenings, then this might be a handy book. If, however, your blog has a narrower focus, then I doubt this will be one of the more helpful books for enriching your project. What's more likely is that the internet is littered with the stale corpses of blogs aspiring to greatness that eventually starved on the poor substance within this book.
• 
  Wendy Andrus

  A quick read. Some helpful ideas for blog posts.
• 
  Jill

  Eh there were a few good ideas but you could just do a google search and find this stuff out.
• 
  Dee

  This book is separated into five chapters. The first four chapters are aimed at the time increments you may spend on writing your blog: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, or “take your time”. The fifth chapter is about picking an area of expertise or of interest and just being a writer.
  
  I found that the first chapter based on 15 minutes of fame was fun and intuitive with ideas to keep readers coming back for more. This would be good for clients we work with who have a website designed for a specialized field: film making, fast cars, philanthropy. The chapter talks about personalizing ideas or details, being opinionated and different from other blogs.
  
  The second and third chapters are more focused on creating a blog that will bring a lot of new readers to their sites. This means creating content that seems interesting, funny, or gimmicky rather than intuitive information in a specialized field. Although after setting up a blog that is interesting, funny, or gimmicky, the blog itself becomes specialized in itself.
  
  The fourth chapter focuses on unique ideas that take some time and research to blog about. There are some good examples and some funny examples. The idea is to be inspired by these examples and come up with your own unique blog.
  
  I found the book to be a good read. It was fast and a page turner. It’s a good reference book to have on the shelf if you want to write about something new. The first half will help you with your existing blog if you are an expert on your blog. The second half will help you start something new.
  
  That’s just my take on it. I used to have just one blog but I found I wanted to separate them based on different ideas. This book would have helped me start sooner with it though, as I waited over a year before the first posts because I didn’t think I had something solid to blog about.
  
  This book will help you with new ideas. Reading about the different blog examples will inspire you to keep your blog active.
• 
  Roxanne

  I gave this five stars, not because it's the great American novel, but because it gives you exactly what it promises, with wit and flair. There are 100 ideas for your blog, most of them pretty darn good. I wish it were required reading before getting a Facebook account.
• 
  Karen

  Great source of ideas and advice for bloggers. I laughed out loud. The author (and the bloggers she features) have a great sense of humor and some unique ideas. If only I could read blogs all day.
• 
  Val

  It's a fun book to read through for ideas. I borrowed it from the library and now wouldn't mind owning a copy.
• 
  Amanda

  A quick and easy way to get the creative juices flowing...
• 
  Chia Chin

  I caught a few ideas. That's all.
  
• 
  Breige

  There was some interesting ideas in the book, I don't think I'd end up using them all myself but sometimes it's good to try and get some motivation and ideas when you have writer's block.
• 
  Frances

  I think I picked this up while I was still working at Pearson - it's been on my deep cut backlog shelf for at least 10 years, based on the spine fading.
  You COULD look at this as like, an interesting insight into what the internet used to look be, but your basic blogs are not like this anymore BECAUSE of this list: it's too random and it doesn't tell a story. No longer do people post articles like this: aimlessly. Even at the end there's a little paragraph about how most blogs just have friends and families as readers and if you want to grow your readership, you've gotta post consistently. Friends, your loved ones will not read your blog if it's like this.
  Apologies, Ms. Mason - I've followed you since MightyGirl.
• 
  Kristine

  I am glad I read this. It was entertaining. It gave me a wide range of ideas to springboard off of. I have had my blog for almost ten years now, and I wish I did have a larger audience. I plan to take some tips from this book in hopes of seeing some positive results within time.
  
  My Blog: Living In The Moment
  
  https://https:kristinelivinginthemome... if you would like to stop by for a visit.
  I write about all things that inspire me - From Hobbies, Photography, Books, Journaling, Poetry Etc.
• 
  Danielle West

  I've been wanting to read this book for several years now. I don't know why, but I just never really got around to it. The longer I waited, the less I felt it would be useful to me. Not because I didn't need help and inspiration for my blog posts, but because I thought the advice would be less relevant than it once was.
  
  This book was first published in 2006. A lot has happened to the internet in the last six years. Blogging has evolved since then, hasn't it?
  
  But really, it has and it hasn't. This book is really written for personal bloggers. People who post about their lives and what not. That, and people like me, who post about, well, anything really. I found a lot of the advice and prompts helpful and inspirational. It added a bunch of stuff to my idea file, for sure. I don't think it would be all that helpful to someone who has a super niche or a business blog, though. Unless you're really good at thinking outside the box. In which case you probably don't need this book, because you've already got all the ideas you need. And also I hate you a little bit.
  
  On a scale from Totally Awesome to Horrifically Awful, I'd give it a Good. It's definitely not for everyone, but it is well written and I, personally, found it useful.
  
  
• 
  Ethan Fleck

  A funny story, I originally told Kristin about this book as a joke of sorts that she should read it and how no one, in 2008, was going to care about her food pictures or selfies (look at us now in 2014, hehe) but I was interested in reading this and seeing just what was out there in the blogging world. Turns out, in 2006, it was very much an un-blazed trail.
  
  This is a quick and dirty book to get your brain restarted for blogging ideas, especially if you are stuck. A lot of these ideas are evergreen and stand the test of time, still many of them feel like they are stuck in the exact same year they were originally written. Can't win them all I guess.
  
  Fairly quick read, and it kept my attention the whole time.
• 
  Kayt O'Bibliophile

  Despite the title of the book, one entry/suggestion (#99-"obsess") suggests making a photographic record some *something* for *a determined period of time,* such as everything you buy for a month, or every outfit you wear for a year. The blog she uses as an example (
  geoffbadner.com/blog) ...took a photo of everything he ate for a week.
  
  It's not a bad book, actually. It's full of ideas (although to make the 100 ideas, some seem to be very related to others) that can spur you to come up with a post, without directly saying "write about this." Frequent references to other blogs can also point you in the direction of some new reading material.
• 
  Laura

  This book was not too impressive. I was dissapointed when the woman suggesting mocking religious fanatics and people in politics. I don't think it's nice to mock anybody.
  
  Maybe it's because my blog is less than 2 months old, but I have not run into a dry spell with nothing to write about. The one time I wondered, I just googled blog topics and found what I needed.
  
  The author's big advice is to live your life and try new things so you have something to write about.
  
  Overall I feel like this book is kind of obvious.
• 
  Terrence

  Such a waste of valuable paper, and for $20! Certainly Margaret Mason could have filled out the very sparse pages with dozens of more ideas in sidebars, photos, spot illustrations, etc.
  Content wise, it's very common sense suggestions on how to fill your blog up with more about the person you know best, y-o-u. Save your twenty bucks and borrow this one from the library.
  
  If your interested in blogs, here's mine:
  
  Wump Mucket Puppets Blog
• 
  Kathy

  This was a good book for bloggers. I got some really good ideas for my blog that I'll actually use.
  
  There were a couple of ideas that revolved around sharing intimate secrets and embarrassing moments. I think I got those covered. Pretty much, everything stupid that I do gets blog coverage.
  
  A friend of mine and I share the philosophy: if you aren't embarrassing yourself, you're not living. We live up to that often.
• 
  Janie

  I occasionally watch "momversation" blogcasts and one of the regulars wrote this book.
  
  It's better in idea than in implementation, but it was fun to go through and see what blog principles she goes by. I wrote down information for about three of the hundred prompts. For a target audience, I'd say it'd be best for people who
  
  - want to write but don't write
  - like writing prompts
  - want to have a blog that's kinda like everyone else's, except for personalized (cue "and do it myyyy way")
• 
  Brigit Zelenak

  We all get writer's block. And with blogging quickly becoming the preferred mode of communication (seriously, who doesn't have a blog these days??), the author's practical advice, served with a side of whimsy, might be just what the doctor ordered.
  
  There's really a little something here for everyone. And if by the end of all 100 tips you haven't hit inspirational paydirt, it might be time to concede blogging isn't your thing...
• 
  Maria Elmvang

  I'm always on the look-out for new blogging ideas, so was very intrigued when I read the title. Unfortunately, the book itself couldn't live up to my hopes, as it's really not very interesting. It's obviously aimed at new bloggers, as most of the author's ideas are well-known in the blogging community and not considered either spectacular or ground-breaking. And if it is aimed at new bloggers, most of the ideas are too meme'ish to interest a larger crowd.
• 
  Megan

  At one point I was conptemplating having a real blog, not just a myspace blog. But I don't feel like devoting the time to regularly write creative, cool entries and I'm not just going to write boring stuff about what I ate for breakfast and what is on my to-do list that no one cares about. There is already too much white noise on the Internet.
• 
  Jenny

  I bought this book to get some additional ideas for blogging. I wasn't expecting too much out of this book, but I was actually surprised by some of the suggestions. I read it from cover to cover and I find myself going back to it for ideas. If you need some blogging tips, I would definitely recommend "No One Cares What You Had for Lunch".
• 
  Davinia

  This would have been a good source of ideas when I had JUST begun blogging, but while there are a few good ideas in there, some of them seem a bit shallow. Mighty Girl is an excellent writer and I don't mean to discredit her; blog prompts are hard as everyone has a different, personal style of blogging.
• 
  melissa

  the thing is, I do care what you had for lunch. And what it looked like so take a pic plz. I'm not sure about receiving ideas for blogging, though. It's like an art - either you have it or you don't. I'm curious as to what this has to say...
• 
  Abigail

  This is not really a book. It's more a list of ideas for blogging, and each idea takes up one page. I bought it in a moment of crisis, when I didn't know what to write next, but after going through the author's 100 ideas I realized that it wasn't worth the money or the time.
• 
  Jen

  This would be a great book for someone who is brand new to blogs. However, most of the ideas presented were ones I've either tried myself or have seen other people use on their blogs. I picked up a couple tips, but just checking out other people's blogs has probably given me more ideas.