Monday, January 25, 2021

Book Chase Is 14 Years Old



Well, here's a Book Chase first for you. Book Chase turned fourteen years old five days ago, and the anniversary sailed right past me without making even a tiny ripple in my consciousness. Something like that has never happened to me. I've always been near-obsessed by numbers and statistics, but it looks like the Pandemic Year from Hell has somehow altered my brain. Anyway, I'll do a quick recap of the key cumulative numbers now because they really do still fascinate me:

  • 1,349 Book and Short Story Reviews (99% books)
  •    209 Posts about bookstores
  •    331 Posts about specific authors
  •      33 Author obituaries (very sadly)
  •     581 Posts about book news
  •     181 Posts about Libraries
  •     110 Posts about readers who make the news
That's all well and good, I suppose, but the numbers are telling me that my focus has drifted a bit and that a significantly higher percentage of my 2020 posts than usual were devoted to book reviews or book discoveries. I guess I can blame it on the REAL pandemic and on the political pandemic, but I'm not taking the time anymore to seek out those book-related stories that I usually find so interesting. Too much of my time is being spent thinking about things that only lead to distress and/or a depressed mood. I hope I can change that in 2021, but I'm off to a slow start.

Anyway, thanks to everyone (Bloggers, readers, writers, publishers, librarians, and bookstores) for making me feel part of the book world during 2020, and for the hundreds of conversations we've shared in the last twelve months. You guys make it all worth it. Keep on reading...and talking about it.


22 comments:

  1. Happy 14th anniversary...a few days late! :D Your blog is awesome, and one I really enjoy reading every day.

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    1. Thanks, Cathy. Hard to believe the years go by so fast. This one caught me by surprise.

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  3. Happy blog anniversary! I'm still back on being happy you survived those accidents to come back and blog. So very many people just disappear. They blog one day, and then nothing for ages, and then I realize years have gone by. I'm sorry about the things that upset you. I think that feeling is "pandemic" in the world. It is so hard to keep one's spirits up. Reading about books, and of course reading itself, helps me enormously.

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    1. Thank you, Nan. Without books 2020 would have been even tougher than it was, no doubt about it. I look back on it now and realize just how bad it was in so many big and small ways. But reading has been the one constant in my life since I was about five years old...no quitting now.

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  4. Happy blogiversary! The amount of time you've spent blogging and the quality posts are really impressive. I always like reading what you have to say about bookish news and authors- especially because I could never come up with such material myself. And of course the book reviews keep me coming back. Hope this year is a much better one for all of us.

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    1. Thank you, Jeane. I appreciate that. I don't think we've reached the bottom yet, but surely we are close to turning this thing in the right direction. We lost another good friend to the virus last week, and his wife has been in ICU for two weeks, so it can't happen soon enough.

      Where would we be without books, music, and film to lose ourselves in for a few hours a day? Strangely enough, the two books I'm reading right now are both ones I learned about by watching their film adaptations...and the books are so much better than the video even though the videos were both excellent.

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  5. Happy 14th. anniversary, Sam. The time slips by doesn't it? And those are some impressive stats. Personally, I'm just glad you take the time to blog about books as you're one of my favourite people in the blogging world.

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    1. Cath, that means a lot to me, so thanks for that. Fourteen years has gone by in a blink, that's for sure. Seems like yesterday I was struggling to figure out the old Blogger software and dealing with a much slower internet connection. Here's to a few more years.

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  6. Happy #14, I'm glad you are still at it Sam - impressive stats as well. (I'll be 13 mid year).

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    1. Thanks, Diane. The numbers add up over time for sure. I'm trying to figure out my future approach to book blogging because I tend to put myself under too much pressure by not wanting to say no sometimes when I should.

      As for book blogs, I think I've been reading a whole bunch of my regular stops for well over a decade now. But a bunch of the ones I used to read did finally stop posting, and it's that burnout that we all need to deal with sometimes. We've seen some really excellent bloggers hang up the keypad in the last few years.

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  7. That's an impressive amount of time for a blogger. Congratulations! And may you clock up many more years. All the best for 2021!

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    1. Thanks, Carol. I still follow a couple of bloggers who first turned me on to the idea of starting a book blog. I think they must be something over 16 years now. Who ever would have thought that a book blog had a chance of lasting 20 years. I hope they make it. Have a great yeat.

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  8. Congratulations! Your reviews and posts have been something I've always looked forward to reading, Sam!

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    1. Thanks so much, Jen. Yours is a blog I've read and enjoyed for all the years of change we've experienced on the internet. It's a wild new world for sure.

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  9. Congratulations on 14 years, Sam. That's quite an accomplishment! I'll be turning 13 later this year and can't get over how much has changed, how many bloggers have disappeared, and how my own posts have changed, too. I think reading has always been a great comfort to many of us, especially over the past year. Here's to another 14 years!

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    1. Thanks, JoAnn. Sadly, at least two of my favorite bloggers have died in the last few years...and both of them were still relatively young people. Book bloggers have a nice, supportive community going and I think that's what keeps us all doing this.

      A whole bunch of us are somewhere between 10 and 15+ years of book blogging now, and that kind of blows my mind.

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  10. Congratulations on 14 years. I recently discovered your book blog and am enjoying it so much and your posts and reviews are very insightful and well written.

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  11. That's very kind of you, Kathy. Thank you for that. I added your blog to my blog list a while back, and I've enjoyed hearing what you have to say. Happy that we've "connected" this way.

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  12. Congratulations! I posted my first BBB review in August of 2006. Back in the blogging heyday. A lot has changed since we started, hasn't it? I still love this community, though, and I'm glad some of us blogging relics are still hanging around :) It's been fun following you over the years.

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    1. Thanks, Susan. Yours was one of the first book blogs I discovered...six months later it looked like so much fun that I joined in.

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I always love hearing from you guys...that's what keeps me book-blogging. Thanks for stopping by.