Before I even started to read The Muttering Muse, I was already enamored by the site. It’s a layout recently created by the author. While it is the traditional two-column layout, it doesn’t match any of the over-replicated templates that are floating around the weblog world. The creativity the author shows in just her layout made me a happy camper. She also includes links to different portions of her site. This isn’t done nearly enough anymore, and it’s because everyone’s become so dependent on the generic templates that are available to them.
Who is The Muttering Muse? She goes by Kestrel, which is explained in the “About†section of her site. In the brief bio she includes on the main page of the site, readers can learn the basics about her. She’s a 25-year-old married grad student living in New England with her husband and dog.
The site’s pulled me in with its design and given me enough information about the author that I don’t feel like I have to dig for information about the person writing every day. Color me impressed.
The Muttering Muse has archives dated back to April 7th, 2004, but at the top of this entry, referring to the movie The Passion of the Christ, it was originally posted on the author’s old blog. I should have known from the get-go that this weblog didn’t exactly belong to someone who’d just picked up very recently. I just wish the additional archives were accessible somewhere for hooked readers like myself!
As aspect that turns a weblog from good to great, in my opinion, is how a writer/Blogger relates to potential readers. This author has no problem reaching out to a wide variety of people. She writes about her dog Oreo – being a new dog owner, I completely relate to the stories of the pooch, and I feel like many other pet people will do the same. The author is currently finishing graduate school and obviously mentions her trials and tribulations and she works towards her final thesis. These posts clearly reach out to other people going through the same thing. All of her posts that I read are like this. It’s refreshing to read a site with this much clarity, instead of one that random readers may be completely lost while reading. An average reader can jump right into the middle of The Muttering Muse’s archives and not be too terribly lost at all.
In addition to very well-written summaries of her days in general, the author also does a bang up job of breaking up the monotony of stereotypical “this is what I did today†posts. On a regular basis, you can find recipes, complete with pictures of the finished product. The author also consistently creates her own memes, giving her readers a chance to not only learn more about her, but also participate in the comments part of the site.
As I mentioned earlier, the design of the site is a uniquely done layout, designed by the author. She uses a few shades of brown in the two-column layout. The site is very easy to read with the colors chosen, and it is also easy to navigate. She lists autobiographical information, links that she reads on a regular basis,
I didn’t read through all 245 entries that the site stats listed in the sidebar have counted before writing this review. However, now that this review has been submitted, I may go back and read all of the archives on my own time. The Muttering Muse is definitely a site worth exploring.
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