It's My Blogiversary! 16 years of Rose City Reader

IT'S MY BLOGIVERSARY!

Rose City Reader turns sweet 16 today. I started this blog 16 years ago and it is hard for me to think it has been around for so long. I celebrated my blogiversary by taping an episode of the Rare Book Cafe, a book vlog you can find on Facebook here or Instagram here. Give them a follow!

I started Rose City Reader to keep track of all the book lists I was working on. I had finished the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. While working on that project, I found that there were many other book lists that appealed to me and I started to gather them up. Some were admitted knock offs of the Modern Library list, like the Radcliffe list. Some were prize winners, like the Pulitzer and Booker Prizes. Some were "must read" lists, like those compiled by Erica Jong or Anthony Burgess. I needed a place to keep the lists and track my progress in reading the books. 

As I went along, I added some lists of my own, like bibliographies of favorite authors and theme lists. I now have my own lists of Campus Novels, books with a French twist, books set in Venice, and others. You can find a list of all the lists I'm working on at the tab at the top of the page or here. I also started reviewing books in addition to listing them; participating in annual reading challenges; and playing along with a few weekly events, like Book Beginnings on Fridays, hosted by me here on Rose City Reader. 

Over these past 16 years, book blogging seems to have waxed and waned in popularity. Other social media platforms have lured away bloggers and potential bloggers with shiny new options, some which faded away themselves and some which are going strong like Instagram. I like both "bookstagramming" on Instagram and traditional blogging. Instagram is fast and short, but with pretty pictures. Blogging is less visual, but offers the opportunity for longer, hopefully more thoughtful, posts.  

My own blogging activity changes over time, depending on what else is going on in my life. Since I started my own law firm, I have had less time to blog. No kidding! But I plug along with Rose City Reader because I love it. As I spend less time in the office and my law partner takes on more responsibility, I look forward to spending more time reading and blogging.

It's My Blogiversary! 14 years of Rose City Reader

IT'S MY BLOGIVERSARY!

Rose City Reader has been around for 14 years now, since 2008. The popularity of book blogging seems to have waxed and waned over those years. Other social media platforms have lured away bloggers and potential bloggers with shiny new options, some which faded away themselves and some which are going strong like Instagram. 

My own blogging activity changes over time, depending on what else is going on in my life. Usually it is my work that takes me away. Don't you hate it when your job interferes with your hobbies? But I persevere with Rose City Reader because I love it and look forward to "someday" when I can spend less time in the office and more time reading and blogging. 

It's My 13th Blogiversary!

 

Wow! It's my 13th Blogiversary! Rose City Reader started on this day in 2008, 13 years ago. That makes this blog officially a teen ager, although it feels more like a grandma in blog years. 

I've met a lot of friends through Rose City Reader over these years, but I've never done a Meet the Blogger post. Now that the blog is entering it's teen years, it's time for one!

13 THINGS ABOUT ME AND MY BLOG

• My name is Gilion with a hard G, like girl, Dumas, like The Three Musketeers.

• I live in Portland, Oregon because I love rainy days.

• I live in a 110-year-old house because I am a homebody and like puttering around.

• Hop on Pop was the first book I read by myself, when I was three, and I’ve had my nose in a book ever since.

• My parents encouraged me to read by paying me a dime for every book I finished and a quarter for every “classic” and the habit stuck!

• I'm more verbal than visual, so I was slow to join Instagram, but I finally did in 2017 as @GilionDumas (easy) and post mostly pictures of books, some of tabby cats, cocktails, and miscellany. 

• I started Rose City Reader when I finished reading the 121 books on the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and had turned my attention to other "Must Read" lists. I wanted a place to keep track of my lists. Soon I added Prize Winners and Favorite Authors. I can't resist a list! All the lists are in the right side column and the links at the top.

• My favorite books are literary fiction, classics, vintage mysteries, coffee table books about home decorating, food writing, books about books, many memoirs, some general nonfiction, and occasionally history. 

• I have too many favorite authors to list! You can find many of them in the lists in the right column or the tabs at the top. I'm working on adding more.

• According to LibraryThing, there are over 1,700 physical books on my TBR shelves. 😳 I get through 100+ each year, but that will still take me until I’m over 70, without buying another book, and we know that won’t happen!

• Like many English majors, I went to law school and have been a lawyer since 1992. My law partner and I represent victims of childhood sexual abuse, mostly adults now, in cases against schools, churches, and other organizations that allowed the abuse to happen. My husband is also a lawyer so we get along great!

• I host two challenges and one weekly event here on Rose City Reader. 2021 is the 10th anniversary of European Reading Challenge, which has been one of my favorite thing about this blog. I've met so many wonderful fellow bloggers though the ERC! The TBR 21 in '21 Challenge (or any version of reading a number of TBR books corresponding to the year) is new in 2021. There's still time to join both! I love the weekly event, Book Beginnings on Fridays, which has been going on a long time!

• Aside from actually reading books, blogging about books here on Rose City Reader has been my main hobby for 13 years. Blogging has brought me a lot of joy. I look forward to many more years here at RCR. 

PLEASE JOIN ME!

Blogiversary! Rose City Reader is 12 today!

It's my 12th blogiversary! I started Rose City Reader on March 20, 2008, and have been blogging along here for 12 years as of today. A dozen years of book blogging feels like a long time. I'd like to celebrate with a library cake like the one in the picture.

I started this blog to keep track of the book lists I love: Prize Winners, Must Reads, and a few of my own creation. The Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century got me hooked on book lists in 1999. By 2008, I had finished the 121 books on the Modern Library list (there are more than 100 because trilogies, quartets, and even a 12-volume series are counted as one book). I was inspired to tackle other lists, starting with knockoffs like Radcliffe's Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and Erica Jong's list of Top 100 20th Century Novels by Women.

Soon I had too many lists going and needed an organized way to keep track of them. Google kept telling me to "click here" to start a blog so I tried it and 15 minutes later I had Rose City Reader. It was easier to start this blog than to set up an Excel spreadsheet.

Twelve years later, I'm working on 29 books lists and 43 bibliographies of favorite authors. I don't know if I will finish them all. In fact, I know there are books on some of the lists that I won't read. But I still have fun playing with my lists.

More than the lists, I use Rose City Reader to post about the books I'm reading, books that catch my eye, and author interviews. I used to post more reviews and hope to get back to reviewing more when I retire from my Dumas & Vaughn law practice. The author interview posts are my favorite because I love learning more about what goes into creating a book and how authors work and think.

Enormous thanks to everyone who reads Rose City Reader! Thank you for 12 years of blogging fun and please stick around!

Blogiversary: 11 years! Thank you!

Wow! Eleven years of blogging makes me feel like a dinosaur. Did I start when computer screens were still black with green glowing letters? It feels like it!

When I started Rose City Reader in 2008, I was still transitioning from a pretty laid back, part time law practice, handling mostly real estate cases. I had lots of time to read, write book reviews, and spend time getting to know my fellow book bloggers. It was book blogger bliss.

But about the same time, my new law practice also took off, representing adults who were sexually abused as kids. I became a partner at a small firm specializing in cases against trusted institutions that allowed children to be abused. When my law partner died, I started my own firm in 2014 with one associate attorney. She became my law partner this year and we will have a great party to celebrate our firm's 5th anniversary and name change, just as soon as we finish a big trial against the Boy Scouts in Idaho in May.

Although my work keeps me incredibly busy, I still love book blogging and the blogging community. I blog when I can. I hardly write any book reviews these days. And I hate that I don't have time to leave comments on the blogs of my blogger friends. But I enjoy seeing book blogs continue to thrive, new ones pop up, book blogging on Instagram and other changes, all of it.

One of these days, when I can slow down a bit at work, I plan to spend more "quality time" with my blog. In the meantime, I'm happy to post what I can and to have the readers I do. Thank you! 

Blogiversary: Rose City Reader is 10 Years Old!

Wow! Rose City Reader has been around for 10 years! That might make me the Gray Lady of book blogs.

To commemorate, here is the list of Rose City Reader's "Top 10" posts. These are the posts that, according to google stats, have gotten the most page views since I started this blog on March 20, 2008.

• College Board's Top 101: This list of "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers" is far and away the most popular post on RCR because it was linked on a website that provides resources for young people applying for college.

• Teaser Tuesday - Plainsong: I have no idea why this teaser post featuring Kent Haruf's novel is the second most popular RCR post. I think this book may get assigned in high school English classes and so get googled a lot.

• List - Anthony Burgess: The list of Anthony Burgess' favorite 99 English-language novels published between 1939 and 1984.

• Review - Rebecca: A book review of Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier.

• List - Pulitzer Prize/National Book Award Crossovers: Just what is sounds like, a short list of books that won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. I should see if it needs updating since I posted this in 2009!

• Teaser Tuesday - A Simplified Map of the Real World: A teaser post about the title story in Steve Allred's Renata Stories, one of the first books published by Forest Avenue Press.

• Author Interview - Pat McCord Amacher: A recent interview with one of the authors of The Only Woman in the Room: The Norma Paulus Story, by Norma Paulus, Gail Wells, and Pat McCord Amacher, published by OSU Press.

• List - National Review's Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century: I think this one is popular because it is hard to find anywhere else.

• Book Beginnings & GIVAWAY - Even If I Am: One of the first Book Beginning events I hosted, and I had a book by Chasity Glass to give away.

• Author Interview - Sarah Mendivel: A very recent interview of Sarah Mendivel, who wrote Sam's Theory, a YA fantasy adventure with a practical twist. Sarah happens to be having a promo today and Sam's Theory is available as a free Kindle download until midnight tonight.

Now I think I'll go eat a cupcake and celebrate!

Happy 9th Blogiversary!

Rose City Reader has been around for nine years! 

In the last couple of years, I haven't been doing as many book reviews as I used to do because I've been busy starting and running my own law firm. There are times when hobbies have to take a back seat to real life. 

But it is always fun to spend what time I can playing with my books, interviewing authors, and interacting with other book bloggers and book readers. I look forward to many more years of book blogging fun.

Thanks for following along and interacting. Happy reading!

Happy 8th Blogiversary!

Rose City Reader is EIGHT years old! Hard to imagine.

After an introductory post to figure out what I was doing, this blog really started with this post about the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century.

It's My 7th Blogiversary!

Seven years seems like quite an accomplishment in blog years. I should have baked myself a cake!

It's My 6th Blogiversary!

If this wasn't a crazy busy week for me, I would ponder what's it's been like to have a book blog for six whole years and share some thoughts. I'll have to save them for my 7th blogiversary!

Blogiversary!

Rose City Reader is FIVE years old today. Wow! That's an eternity in blog years. 

It's My Blogiversary!

Wow! Four years ago today I started this blog on a whim.  I didn't expect that it would be so much fun or that I would keep at it for this long.

To celebrate my 4th blogiversary, I've pondered the four best things about my Rose City Reader experience:

1)  The hundreds of book conversations I've had with people when they learn I have a book blog.  Most of these people will never read my blog, or any other book blog, but when they learn I have one, they talk to me about what books they like, what I would recommend, books clubs, new books, classics, etc.  I enjoy these conversations and the common ground they create.

2)  Reading challenges. I love them. I can't resist a list and challenges give me so many excuses to read books from the lists I'm working on, make new lists, make lists of reviews, tally my progress, see other people's lists.  All wonderful fun for me.

3)  Focusing my thinking about what I'm reading.  I was never a big book reviewer before I started this blog.  I've become a more conscious reader knowing that I will probably write a review, and have gotten more out of my reading as a result.

4)  The new friends I've made.  We've all heard it and said it before, but book bloggers as a whole make up a very friendly on-line community.  I enjoy my new "virtual" friends.  But I have really enjoyed the new face-to-face friends I've met because of my blog.  Many are fellow bloggers, but I've also gotten to know several authors, publishers, publicists, and other book people.  It's been great meeting so many people outside of my usual social and professional circles.

My Third Blogiversary!

This calls for a celebration. I think I'll kick back this afternoon and read a couple of the umpteen books I have going right now. Kate Atkinson is calling me . . .

My Second Blogiversary!

My First Blogiversary!

It was a year ago today that I started this Rose City Reader blog and wrote my first post. I did it on a whim, hoping to have a place to keep track of the books I read and my many Must Read lists. I didn't expect to have so much fun with it! Over the past year, the highlights for me have been:

• Posting just under 300 entries, including roughly 85 book reviews;

• Having Laura Grimes feature my blog in an Oregonian story about Henry James;

• Getting several reviews reprinted on The Internet Review of Books, including in October, December, January, and March;

• Inciting an on-line dust up with the Amish over my cook book review; and

• "Meeting" so many nice people with bookish blogs of their own, especially Rebecca at Rebecca Reads, Terri B. at Tip of the Iceberg, J.G. and C.S. at Hotch Pot Cafe, Lezlie at Books 'N Border Collies, Nicole at Linus's Blanket, BurmudaOnion, Sandra at Fresh Ink Books, Bob and the gang at Artscatter, and Book Psmith who were all kind enough to each leave over 10 comments on my blog during the past year.