The title of this blog comes from a passing line in Jamie O’Neill’s seminal work At Swim, Two Boys. The line refers to the minutiae of moving things and how incredibly strange they are if you take a moment to reflect on them.
Regardless of what it refers to, I felt the line was an incredibly beautiful line and it stayed with me. The alternative title I considered was “Journal of the Movement of the World,” which if you’ve read The Elegance of the Hedgehog you’ll recognize this line. (Apparently, I have a fascination with movement—it probably comes from being rather larger, awkward and clumsy.)
I began “The Oddness of Moving Things” in July of 2010 after completing a year of AmeriCorps and trying to find a full time job In Boston. One day while applying for jobs and following random paths on the internet I stumbled across the 50 book challenge (probably on Goodreads). I thought “HEY! I can do that! Easy peasy.”, and thus my blog started. I needed something to keep me on a schedule and to get me out of bed in the mornings. You can see my original post here.
That first year I set out to read and blog about 50 books by the end of 2010. I failed spectacularly! But really it didn’t matter, I had fun and wanted to keep going. It’s been almost 10 years and I’ve grown as a blogger and a reader. I’ve read books I never thought I’d read I’ve discovered the wonderful world of galley/advance reader copy requests, and I’ve even had some great shout outs by world famous authors. There were a couple of years in the middle where I played with podcasting and at one point considered Youtube, but felt I was better in words than video (you’re welcome) 😀
As I approach the 10 year mark I continue to reflect every year on what makes this blog unique and keeps me blogging. I’ve stopped participating in challenges and awards and I’ve gone back to the basics: read a book and write about it. I don’t try to use flowery language. I don’t try to write like a professional reviewer. I talk about the book how I would if you and I were sitting down for coffee and I wanted to convince you to read a book I just read (or convince you not to read it). I’ve seen hundreds (seriously, I clean out my feed reader annually) of bloggers come and go. I’ve seen people go from writing great reviews about books to trying to monetize their Bookstagrams, start podcasts or try become YouTubers (and I tried some of those), but the majority have just faded away. I’m basically an antique in the book blogging community and I’ll keep on trekking along for a while yet.
For the highlights of each year of blogging I recommend checking out my blogiversery posts:
- Year One: Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
- Year Two
- Year Three
- Year Four: Another Year Has Gone By – My Reflection – A Dismal Outlook – Numbers, Numbers, Numbers! – Keep Moving Forward – A Not So Secret Surprise
- Year Five: Five Years and Still F*cking Fabulous
- Year Six
- Year Seven
- Year Eight: Elite Eight
- Year Nine: Nine Years of Blogging
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