Blogger game night and a blog anniversary

I realized today that my blog is just over two years old, as of November 4th! Fittingly, on November 6th, I had my first in-person get-together with other book-bloggers.

Thanks to Thomas of My Porch for hosting a game night at his home, which was complete with a great library, delicious food, and the lovely large-eared Lucy who hopefully pleaded with her eyes for people food (we managed to resist her somehow). Bloggers Teresa of Shelf Love and Frances of Nonsuch Book had met Thomas before, so I was the new face. But it doesn’t take long to become comfortable among book-loving people.

The game at hand was called The Great Penguin Bookchase, which was kind of like a bookish Trivial Pursuit. Our playing pieces were tiny bookcases and our object was to win six even tinier books which each represented a different book genre/category (e.g. sci-fi & adventure, poetry and plays) . The questions ranged in difficulty, with a few featuring authors and books of which we had never heard. Playing the game was diverted by the swapping of opinions on certain books (everyone), by the retrieval of the Maigret mysteries from Thomas’ bookshelves (I hadn’t heard of the author’s name before), and by the checking and updating of Twitter (that was Frances). For the record, Teresa won (partially by absconding with books from her fellow players, per game card instructions). The game continued with rules eventually discarded in favor of answering more book trivia rather than picking up cards or wandering around the board.

During the post-game, pre-departure discussion, it was revealed that I did not own any Persephone books. I was encouraged to sign up for the Persephone Secret Santa, hosted by Claire of Paperback Reader, which I did that night to make the deadline. I’m looking forward to participating as I’ve only read Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and have heard many good things about Persephone’s other titles.

I very much enjoyed the bookish get-together. I haven’t been able to be as engaged in the book blogging community as I was when I first started, and meeting Thomas, Teresa and Frances helped me feel not so distant.

Sort of in that vein, I was thinking that for my belated blogiversary, I would solicit a little feedback on my blog as a whole. As it is now, my blog is basically straight-up book reviews, with the occasional photo or personal post. It’s hard for me to tell if I’m coming off as too impersonal (as I sometimes suspect I am) or if it is fine the way it is. The point of the blog is definitely all about the books, but I know from my own blog-reading experience and from what others have said, that we like to connect with the personality behind the reviews as well. So let me know what you think about that.

In the meantime, I have a small backlog of reviews to be written which I’ll get around to in my regular, slowish pace. It’s probably a good thing to have a backlog right now, as I’m currently halfway through Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, which is wonderful but also very long.

Thanks to everyone who reads my blog, and especially for the times you’ve left a comment or otherwise told me what you thought about a review or a book I mentioned. I look forward to the books that I’ll read and share with you in the future!