Communities

Being part of a community takes work. That’s true in real life, and it’s true in blogging. You don’t get comments without leaving comments, you don’t get followers without following others, and you don’t feel part of a community until you do some work to participate that community.

That said, I do think there are some ways to feel connected more quickly than others, at least from my years of experience as a blogger.

The BBAW Interview Swaps are some of my favorite things to read during Book Blogger Appreciation Week. In 2010 I interviewed Donna of Holocaust Resources and in 2009 I met Michelle of GalleySmith during the interviews.

This year I interviewed another new-t0-me blogger, Alysa at everead. Although it looks like we read pretty different books, Alysa did just recently post a review of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, a book I also read and reviewed awhile back.

When I went to BEA this year, one of the things that struck me about the trip was how much blogging has brought me great friends that I would never have gotten to meet otherwise.

Some of these friendships seem a little more obvious than others, in the sense that if I met these bloggers randomly in real life it would be less strange to imagine us as friends.

I was going to do a Sunday Salon post about how I didn’t do any reading this week and setting some personal reading resolutions. But I started watching a live stream of the September 11 ceremony in New York City and now it just feels strange to do that.

Florinda (The 3rs Blog) wrote a lovely TSS post today about how September 11 reminds us of how important it is to connect with others, which is true. It’s not a day I ever want to spend by myself, or one where I don’t want to take some time to see how other people are remembering, reflecting, and honoring others.

I’m a little late to the party on this one, but if you’ve missed the news, here it is: Voting for Book Blogger Appreciation Week is open, so get over there and cast your votes for your favorite blogs. You can check out the short lists to explore the amazing bloggers who were nominated and selected, then log in to vote at http://bbaw.heroku.com.

Since August is three-fourths of the way through the year, it makes sense to do some bookish stats updates. But instead of doing and entire breakdown of genre, book source, author gender, year, and everything else, I just want to look at something I’ve been curious about: my ratio of fiction to nonfiction and how that’s changed through the year.

At the end of August, I’d read 74 books total. That puts me on pace to read 100 books this year. It’s above where I was last year at this time (72 books), but in 2010 I ended up reading 109 books total. So if past trends continue, my reading could speed up in the fall and put me over the 100 books for the year mark.

As promised, I finally have enough of my stuff put away that I can show off some pictures of my new library/office in our house. The photo above is a view of the living room while standing on the stairs to the second floor. The front door is to the left, and my library is to the right. You can see one of my bookcases right behind my awesome reading chair.

Sophisticated Dorkiness is now officially coming to you from small town Minnesota.

Things have been quiet around here for the last several days because Boyfriend and I — with the help of family and many great friends — were in the process of moving 425 miles with a U-Haul full of stuff and one cranky cat. We left Madison on Wednesday, arrived at our new home on Thursday, and have been settling in ever since.

Thank you for hanging in there with me while blogging takes a back seat to major life changes. I don’t like putting the blog on hiatus, but I just can’t seem to find the inspiration to puts words together, and I’d rather not post than post things that aren’t good.

It seems like everything in life has become a numbers game… how many days until X, how much will Y cost, how far until we get to Z? In that sense, here’s some of what my life has been like lately…