Tag: Miscellany Page 99 of 179

Book Blogger Hop

This prompt was submitted by Julie @ JadeSky:

If you were in a book, would you rather be the main character or in the background?

When I saw this question, a line from The West Wing* jumped to mind, President Bartlet asks Josh:

You know what the difference is between you and me? I want to be the guy; you want to be the guy the guy counts on.

That’s me. Put me as the loyal sidekick, the comic relief guy, the one the protagonist comes to for answers, resources, venting, whatever. Keep me out of the limelight, let me get stuff done.

* from “Guns Not Butter” from Season 4, Episode 12

What about you?

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.