Book Blogger Hop
This prompt was submitted by Julie @ JadeSky:
Why did you start a book blog?
Well, one day I was taking a tour of a lab and was bitten by a radioactive pilcrow…
No? Not buying that?
Okay, there was a period, slightly over a decade ago, when I was just reading too quickly, without any reflection, or really thinking about it. I was practically binging non-stop. I’d end up checking out the same book from the library multiple times and wouldn’t understand why it felt so familiar (that’s when I started keeping a log). I didn’t like that. Authors deserved a reader who would take a beat and think about the book, who’d really appreciate their work. Also, what was the point of reading like I was just going through them like Pringles? What was the benefit to me (other than keeping me occupied)?
So I plunged into Goodreads, resolving to post something about every book I read, as a way to force myself to ruminate at least a little on what I was consuming. I wanted to soak it all in. But I largely didn’t have any Friends or Followers there and wasn’t good about finding people to interact with, so it was easy to take breaks from it and fall into old habits.
I’d been blogging for over a decade in a few places—some related to theology and whatnot, and I had a personal blog about everything—I thought about putting my Goodreads reviews there, but no one seemed to read/care about any blog post I had about books. So why go to the trouble?
But I’d heard about book bloggers. It’s important for me to say this—I had never read a book blog at this point. But I liked the idea. If I’m just one voice in thousands on Goodreads, who notices if I don’t say anything. But if I’m the voice on a blog (even if only 3 people see it), it’ll be noticed that I stop.
I played around with a few templates, copied over a handful of my most recent Goodreads posts, and dug in. After posting pretty regularly for a month or so, I started to tell people that I’d done it. But not many—I think I was up and running for about three months before I showed my wife! I just wanted to make sure I could do it regularly.
8 1/2 years and 3,500+ posts later, here we are.
Robert Germaux
H.C., yours is the only blog I regularly read. Heck, yours is the only blog, period, that I read, and I do so religiously. Eight-and-a-half years? Over 3500 posts? That’s truly amazing. There are two reasons I follow your blog. First, I simply enjoy your writing style. It’s fun to read your posts every day, not to mention that I occasionally find a book that appeals to me, so I try it. Second, as you know, I’m an author, one whose books you’ve reviewed. I know that when you review one of my books, you’ll actually read the whole book (not skim it, as some reviewers clearly do, thus often missing the point of the narrative), and your review will be an honest one. No writer can ask for more than that. So . . . thanks, and here’s to many more years of blogging.
P.S. You’re sure you weren’t bitten by that radioactive pilcrow . . .? ‘Cause that would have been a really cool story. I’m just sayin’.
HCNewton
Thanks, Robert! That means a lot to me.
Bookstooge
Congrats on the 3500 posts. That is the one thing I regret about changing platforms so many times over the years is that I lost a lot of the non-review posts as I went from platform to platform. I bet I lost a couple of hundred just making the move from bookstooge to wordpress, never mind waaaaaay back in the day going from blogger to devilreads.
I hope that your journey continues just as prodigiously as before.
HCNewton
Oh, yeah, the loss of posts jumping from platform to platform is distressing…
Thanks for the congrats–not quite as prodigious as you (fun word to use, thanks for prompting it), but it’s clearly a habit that’s run out of control (I’ve said that for awhile, but looking at that number makes me realize how far it’s gone)