One Year!

One year ago today I shared my first blog post!

I always wanted to do more of two things. First, express my opinions more thoroughly to those who were interested in bookish ideas. Second, to have more conversation and interaction with other people about books. To those ends, I declare that my efforts here have been a smashing success!

To be sure, the time spent on blogging and related interactions have slowed my reading a little. However, the overall experience has made me a much better reader. Though I always expended mental effort thinking about themes, characters, connections with other works and trends, etc., blogging has forced me to organize my thoughts on these matters in serious ways. In addition, my commenters provide me with new and alternative ideas, as well as insightful and intelligent disagreements. Finally, the world of book blogs has led me to experience and explore the writing and thoughts of numerous other bloggers. On the sites of my fellow bloggers, I have discovered thought provoking and entertaining commentary on various books, some that I have read and some that I have not read. In turn, I hope that I have prompted their thinking through my interactions on their sites. All in all, if only for self - improvement related reasons, the additional time spent online has been well worth it. However, it turns out that there is another enormous fringe benefit to blogging.

When I began this, I had no idea that there was such a dynamic, intelligent, supportive and warm community of book bloggers out there! I have established really wonderful connections with a host of people from all over the world who share my interest in books and important ideas. The community has been welcoming and supportive. My fellow bloggers are such a smart and nice group of people!

This experience is akin to belonging to an international book club that I have access to 24 hours a day! The Internet has its supporters and detractors and those like myself who tend to see the good and the bad, but this interconnectedness that I have discovered can only be characterized as very good. More about this will be included in an upcoming post.

So thank you to all of my readers and commenters. Also, I want to add a special thanks to my wife Catherine whose editing assistance has been key in keeping these posts readable.

Hopefully, this is the first year of many during which I will be sharing my thoughts and ramblings. It has been a blast so far!