An Assortment of Items

Well, here we are again.

I am FINALLY updating my lovely blog the morning after I finally finished a book for the first time in a month. Needless to say, I’ve been pretty apathetic about reading as of late.

I haven’t even posted about how excited I was for the Cybils announcement for the 2011 winners, specifically for Stupid Fast, the winner for YA Fiction (aka the category I was a panelist for). I adored that book and am so happy others found Felton as awesome and amazing as our panel did. He was a great character to root for and I’m really pumped for Geoff Herbach.

I also never posted a year-end wrap up, which is one of my favorite posts to write every year. In 2011, I read an even 100 books (mostly thanks to the 61 Cybils reads). I participated in 2 official challenges: the 2011 Debut Author Challenge (read 19+/12) and the Contemps challenge (6/18). I also decided while I like the idea of challenges, in practice, I am not a fan.

The Cybils also had a huge impact on my thoughts on reviewing, The Re-Shelf and interacting with the blogging community. Prior to serving on the Cybils panel, my thoughts about book reviewing were pretty isolationist and lax – it was just something fun to do. Since the Cybils, though, I’ve realized how much fun I have when I get involved in the community and how much I would like The Re-Shelf to become a somewhat respectable review source.

This isn’t to say I’ll guarantee regular posts, nor that my 2 am guerrilla-review, run-on sentence with lots of exclamation marks style will disappear – super edited and regular posting just isn’t my style – but I am exploring some new ideas that I’d like to try (for better or worse).

While I still am in constant pursuit of reading all the Printz and Morris honors and award winners, I will likely not be taking on any book reading challenges. Instead, I am going to track how many of my own books I read for the year. After working at A Big Bookstore Chain for two years, I accumulated numerous books and would love to start hacking away at the TBR mountain. This doesn’t mean I will only be reading older books, but I’m hoping to get through at least 40 this year.

I also want to thank anyone who follows this blog even semi-regularly. Thanks for putting up with the craziness. I like to think of this blog as the erratic younger sister that blows into town for random periods and a good time. It’s a blast.

And that’s my year-end summary and look to the year ahead two months late. Typical. 🙂

Hope all is well, kids!

~kell