September 19, 2013

Things I Have Learned Since I Started Blogging

I've successfully missed my 1st blogging anniversary. Last August I was taking Coursera Fantasy and Science Fiction course, and some amazing discussions were happening on personal blogs, because course forums were sometimes not very friendly. I wanted to be part of it, so I started a blog and began posting miscellaneous things about books we read for the course. I made some friends and I liked it so much that I stayed and here I am a year later still writing stuff about books I read :)

A lot has changed in this year, not only online, but today I was thinking about things I got to know through blogging, and there happens to be a lot!

1) There are blogs out there that are not about politics/author's misery and loneliness/author's numerous kids or cats. Who would have thought?

2) TBR. YA. NA. BEA. SEO. It took me some time to figure out what all this stuff means. Moreover, I had never had a TBR pile before. How did I choose books? Oh, I don't remember. Somehow.

3) Read-a-thon. Read-a-long. Bloggiesta. Blogoversary. These are more self-explanatory, but they drive my spellchecker crazy.

4) There are such things as young adult, new adult, paranormal, dystopian and many more. The term literary fiction still kills me. Before I thought books were just books. Of course I made distinction between children's and adult books and between Fantasy/Sci-Fi and all the others, but that's pretty much all! If somebody told me he was reading mainly YA paranormal, I wouldn't have understood. Besides, I thought "mystery" meant something paranormal, not detective. My fault.

5) The lists! Soooo many bookish lists I haven't heard of. And the challenges! I've learned that I'm a hopeless addict of both.

6) Twitter and Google pages. Discovered them through one Bloggiesta challenge. I use them only for sharing though.

7) HTML. Blogger compose is sometimes driving me crazy, and then I open some guide and write the bloody HTML code myself. Comparing with different programming languages, it's surprisingly easy.

8) USA people are just more religious than Europeans. So if a blogger mentions God and blessings in his posts, or starts his "about" page with a statement that he's a Christian, this doesn't necessarily mean he's a crazy religious fanatic. In fact, he can be a really nice and interesting person. BTW, Christian fiction is another type of literature that I would have never guessed exists.

9) Homeschooling. I was wondering for some time, and then Jean explained it to me. I thought one can only avoid going to school if he/she has a condition.

10) There are places where seasons change on the 21st of each month. I've seen it on some blog very recently and I still need somebody to explain it to me. Volunteers? :)

11) Book promotion: tours, interviews, even book trailers!! I never thought books needed any promotion at all and was never exposed to any.

12) There are people who are actually interested in your thoughts about a book. My BF is very well read (and no surprise, considering how fast he reads!), but he usually becomes bored when I start talking about books unless we've had some alcohol before :) People at work are too busy to read a lot, my parents wear glasses and so also shun from straining their eyes, and friends are too distracted by the Internet and also don't read enough to make a bookish conversation interesting for me. Knowing that there are people for whom reading is as important as for me makes me feel less a freak :)

I guess there are much more things I learned through blogging, but that's all that came to my mind today. I'm thankful for the blogging experience, and I must also thank everybody around here for enhancing it! Thank you! :)



12 comments:

  1. Very funny post! I think we have learned some of the same things about blogging. I'm in Canada and the first day of autumn is the 21st. Autumn is nice but it also means winter is coming. Then we will be in the dark for 5-6 months and everyone will forget how to drive once the snow starts falling.

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    1. Thanks :) Darkness is killing me! In St. Petersburg I used to leave home for school/uni in the darkness and to come back in the darkness. It's a bit better here in Czech Republic, but still I wish the days were not getting SO short!

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  2. What a great post! Very fun. I've learned some of these things too. Are you referring to the American/Canadian habit of 'officially' starting seasons at the solstice and equinox? I don't know how widespread it is, but I always thought it was a bit silly. Why should the summer solstice *start* summer?

    I love fall. Finally, it's not hot all the time. I don't really care for lots of hot weather, so naturally I live in California's central valley, where it's hot and dry for half the year. :)

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    1. Oh, so it's again some American strangeness? ;) It's really weird...

      It was so hot this summer here in Czech Republic, that I welcomed colder autumn weather. However, with central heating not working yet and only +4 degrees C at night, I'm starting to long for summer again. We always want what we don't have :)

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  3. Ha. I loathe hot weather, and I live where it's extremely hot 9 months out of the year (Texas). Sigh.

    Ekaterina, your #12 above is the same reason I started blogging almost two years ago. I am the only one in my circle of family and friends who reads a lot, even though they are all highly educated people. I think it's the constant electronic distractions we live with. I was complaining to my husband that I have no one to talk with about what I read, and he suggested I blog about it. One of the best ideas he's ever had. :)

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    1. I agree that Internet is killing reading habits! When I was little, I remember that everybody were reading in public transport, but now everybody is online... It's sad, really.

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  4. I only started blogging in February this year, but I can recognise myself in many of those places. I think the main thing that stunned me was that there are young adult books and they are actually popular? Because when I look around among book bloggers, it seems that majority are about YA books, but I had lived in the blissful ignorance among my classics and fantasy/sci-fi books and I had NO IDEA.

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    1. I actually still think that this division between "adult" and "YA" is totally artificial. At the age at which YA books are aimed people can already read everything, not only about teenage angst.

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  5. happy blogiversary! thanks for your fun and enthusiastic recap at entering the awesome book blogging world.
    by the way, I'm celebrating soon my 3rd blogiversary, and I have a book giveaway to celebrate. it's here:
    http://wordsandpeace.com/2013/09/02/blogiversary-3-giveaway/

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    1. Thanks! Congratulations to you too, I'll check out your giveaway!

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  6. Great post! I could connect with the part about having people to talk about books with. I have no `readers` in my circle of friends who are slightly interested in what I read. I try to promote some books and assure them that these books are also available in Dutch....but I feel like a voice crying in the desert. Thanks for blogging and look forward to your thoughts!

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    1. Thanks, Nancy! Promoting books never helps, people are not really listening and are not eager to leave their comfort zone if they read at all. And the older they are the worse this conservatism is. Happily, my family is not actually like this. My granny have an e-reader which allows her to put the biggest font and read a lot, and she has recently surprised me by telling me she has read "a girl with the dragon tattoo". My granny is the best!

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