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! :)