Ten Year Blogiversary

My tenth year of blogging came and went, and I finally have time to make note of it. I rarely read my stats because they are not what motivate me to blog, but on my fifth blogiversary I enjoyed a look at my most viewed posts. Five years later I see that the same titles (Code Name Nimrod, The Horse and His Boy Aesop's Fables, Two Towers and Wednesday Wars) still lead the way.

But a few other posts have attracted attention. My Recommended Librivox Recordings has had several thousand views. My dabbling in Georgette Heyer's novels and my comments on Profanity in Books and Culture have evoked quite a few views and comments. And one of my next most popular posts was a review of a YouTube video: Why Beauty Matters.

I love how these titles show the spectrum of my tastes from children's lit, to literary classics, to WWII memoirs, to books about why faith should make a difference to culture. I am grateful to all who read my blog and who occasionally leave comments. Here's to another ten years of great reading and sharing!

Blessings,

The Benefit of Kindle Fire for Book Bloggers (and other Random Thoughts)

By the time this post goes live I'll be in the U.S. for our brief home assignment. I have pre-scheduled several posts because I don't know when I'll be back online.

First of all, I'm excited about living in a city in Michigan where I'll have access to many libraries. My Amazon wish list is really a list of 500+ suggestions for books and I'll be reading/exploring voraciously during our 8-month stay.

Secondly, for any of bloggers who use Kindle Fire, I want to share what I love about the color options for highlighting. I use the yellow for general highlighting, the pink for salient quotes (for the blog or for facebook), the blue for new vocabulary words and the brown for titles of books or points of history that require further investigation. Since research shows that our brains remember less of what we read on e-readers, I like to finish a book and then go back and re-read all my yellow highlights to fix the main ideas in my head.

Third, there has been some buzz on the internet on the book How Dante Can Save Your Life by Rod Dreher. Since I made it through Paradise Lost, I may just give Dante's Divne Comedy a try as well.

5th Year Blogiversary

Gulp! I just realized I've been blogging for five years.  I had planned to do a special post on the momentous occasion, but life got busy and the date slipped by.  I will make amends by citing a few statistics that I find interesting.

I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I don't care if people read my blog or not.  Yet I never purposely choose a book just because it will increase traffic.  I read what I like and at the same time I endeavor to point people to the best books.  (It's been a wonderful treat to have my readers point me toward great books as well.)

Now for the statistics. . . The five most popular posts in the past five years.  C.S. Lewis' The Horse and His Boy wins hands down with 4,000 views; my second most viewed post is Tolkien's The Two Towers. But would you believe my third most popular post is on Aesop's Fables? Fourth comes a WWII classic called Code Name Nimrod and finally the YA title The Wednesday Wars.

I am astonished that some of my more obscure posts receive comments (Kathleen Norris & I Saw Two Englands) and I puzzle over the fact that my rave reviews (Wind in the Willows) get little or no commentary.  It keeps me in a pleasant state of wonder.

I appreciate that blogging gives me a platform for sharing my love of literature; secondarily it provides me with a delicious sort of accountability - I'm "forced" to keep reading and writing on a consistent basis and I feel stretched and nourished in new ways every week.

Why Blog?

I read a good article on blogging today. I blog because I love to read and I love to write. I wouldn't say blogging is a compulsion, but it has been a hobby that has brought me a great deal of satisfaction. I do get a thrill when the number of viewers is high, but that is not my ultimate goal. My primary purpose for starting a blog was to keep reading (having a book blog is a great incentive) and my secondary purpose was to find a handful of readers who shared my interests. In that sense it's been a huge success and I'm grateful for how I've grown through this endeavor.

Why do YOU blog?

You Know You Are a Book Blogger When...

I was amused by Chain Reader's "Ten Signs That You Are a Book Blogger" and am borrowing her idea. As I celebrate my first “blogiversary” I have created my own list:

You Know You Are a Book Blogger When…
1) You can’t sleep in on the weekend because you want to link to your most recent post as soon as possible at Semicolon’s “Saturday Review of Books”.

2) You are thankful your husband likes to do all the driving so that you can get in a few extra chapters on the way to anywhere.

3) You use an index card instead of a book marker so that you can jot down page numbers, quotes and thoughts on the books.

4) You are in a bit of a panic if you haven’t started a new book by Monday in order to have a post written about it by Friday.

5) You read responses to your book posts before you open any other mail and the feedback makes your day.

It’s been a great first year and I’ve appreciated meeting many likeminded readers!