I have two book blog related things to be dorkily excited about today: a review I wrote of Watchmen got linked by a couple of other blogs based on it’s commentary and I was tagged by gautami tripathy for a book-blogging writing thing. I really can’t tell you how excited those two developments make me — almost like a rite of passage within the book blogging community, although I suspect it’s silly to think about it that way.
Anyway, first quickly to the linking. I was first linked to by Kim of Bold. Blue. Adventure. in her review of Watchmen. Kim’s friend KnightOwl73 then linked to my post in his post about “normal” people reviewing Watchmen.
Now, the tagging about blogging. Here are the instructions:
1. Write about 5 specific ways blogging has affected you, either positively or negatively.
2. Link back to the person who tagged you (and leave a comment on his/her blog after you do the tag).
3. Link back to this parent post.
4. Tag a few friends or five, or none at all (and inform them about it).
5. Post these rules— or just have fun breaking them.
So, five ways I have been affected by book blogging:
- Starting a books blog has helped me re-discover my love of reading. In college, reading became an obligation for class, something that you do in order to try and “dissect” a book to “figure out what it means.” I mean, i still love to do that, but there is more to reading that finding symbols and trying to interpret what the author means; sometimes you can read just to enjoy a good story, to learn something you didn’t know, to laugh, to cry, to experience something you may not get to experience otherwise. Book blogging, in a strange way, has helped me slowly return to a joy of reading that school took away from me for awhile.
- Book blogging has expanded my reading list. I think I have a pretty wide exposure to good books, but reading other books blogs has made me realize just how much is out there. This is both good and bad; good because I have so many things to think about reading, and bad because I suspect I just will never have time to read as much as I want to.
- Starting my blog and joining things like Weekly Geeks has helped me develop some online friendships in the book blogging community. Like others have said, the friendships might not be in person, but they are important connections to other people I really enjoy.
- Blogging about books has helped me keep writing. I usually take the summer off from, well, thinking in general, but keeping the blog helped me work on my writing and work on altering my writing from academic to a tone that average people can read — something I think will be useful as a journalist (someday).
- Book blogging is a good hobby. I’ve learned how to deal with html, the excitement of linking and being linked to, the un-written rules of blogging, and helped me keep in touch with friends from school through reading what I’ve been reading.
And now the tagging. I choose Rebecca Reads, Bold. Blue. Adventure., books i done read, The Inside Cover, and Can I Borrow Your Book?
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I can’t believe you were tagged by Gautami Tripathy. I’d be totally stoked about that too! Off to do my assignment now ;-P
Oh, this tickled me… someone changed the rules by adding the parenthetical material. I guess that’s part of responding to my suggestion to break the rules! : )
I loved reading all of these, but the one that interested me most was the observation about un-written rules of blogging. So blogging stretches us in surprising social ways. That’s pretty cool. Though some days it might make us feel like we’re back in the cafeteria at school.
bexadler: I know, I’m so excited, and such a dork about it too! I can’t wait to see the results of your assignment 🙂
L.L. Barkat: That’s funny, but I like the rule changes — I think maybe they’re more evidence for some of the un-written blogging rules and conventions (tell people you’ve tagged them, linking to people who link to you, etc.) Cool meme!
And maybe too, evidence that bloggers have a little non-conformist in them.
I was thinking how humbling it is to make rules and have others modify them (even though I said “go ahead, break the rules.”) Imagine how humbling it was for God to make the world, set just a few simple rules and watch them go right out the window in no time. : )
Hi Kim, I’ll try to do this when I have time. If I don’t I will just break the rules or something….. That is exciting when people tag you: you must have a presence! Thanks for finding me!
(If you’re looking for more hits, make sure you register with Book Bloggers Appreciation week. The number of hits on my site doubled since they posted the list. Of course, most of them are bouncing and not sticking around, but it’s a start, right? They’re going to have a searchable database at the end, so maybe more hits then.)
L.L. Barkat: That’s a good point too, I hadn’t thought about it that way. I guess we’re all push the rules sometimes 🙂
Rebecca: Don’t worry if you can’t do it — I normally don’t tag people on stuff just because I feel like it gets to be an obligation more than something interesting to think about. But, I got such a thrill out of being tagged in something (the first time I have been, that I can tell anyway)that I felt like passing it on today. I’ll go pop in to Book Bloggers Appreciation Week too. I think I missed a lot of the prep and early hype of it because of my move 🙂
Thanks for dong this! And I added the material in the parentheses, so that we get more linkings that way.! Making or breaking rules, is cool, is it not?
😀
gautami: Yes, breaking rules is cool 🙂 Thank you again for the tag!
Oh yay I like tags especially when I don’t have a good topic in mind to blog about.
And it is fun to see where something you put out there ends up getting linked, isn’t it? I actually clicked on links to my Watchmen post, and that’s how I saw your post 🙂
Great answers to the meme. I think one of the hardest realizations is that I can’t even begin to read all of the books I currently have on my shelf, much less the books I see on blogs. I love reading, but up until I started blogging, I did not have a stack the way I do now. It just wasn’t that common for me to go to the library on a weekly basis!
Kim L: I know, it’s hard to realize all the stuff there is to read that there just isn’t time for, a little depressing. And I’m glad you don’t mind being tagged 🙂