Over NINE YEARS (with an interruption) and ELEVEN HUNDRED POSTS!

When I posted PANCAKES IN PARIS: Living the American Dream in France to my blog, it was my 1,100th post (not review...post)! I started blogging again (Geocities, *sob*) because I was unnerved by the Amazon data defilement in 2009 (snatching paid-for content off Kindles without warning or compensation) then their purchase of Goodreads in 2013 hard on the heels of losing dozens of my reviews to their bizarre "off-topic" review bullshit...go here and/or here if you want to know more about that!...made me think it was time to have *another* public-facing place to put my reviews.

Now, that event was followed by my complete and utter collapse in 2014. Six months in the goofy garage, reading James Rollins books and doing nothing but thinking, followed by moving into an assisted living facility and getting accustomed to the systems in place to enable the destitute to live...well, no posts from October 2014 to January 2016 suddenly makes sense, no? It was a difficult adjustment. It's been quite a shock to try to accomplish things and meet with disparagement, obstacles, and contempt! But, at the same time, the people who survived this unintentional purge of my life-list of friends made themselves a devout disciple.

In the nine and a quarter years since I started the public-facing book-reviewing practice here, I've had 451,000 unique views and accrued a high of almost 3,000 email subscribers as well as 1,200 Feedly followers. It's not The New York Review of Books, but it's not too terrible and all I do is talk about books I've read. Once in a way an essay...that first link is to the essay that was my first post that got over 1,000 views. No affiliate links because 1) ew and b) I can't afford to make money lest some jackass run report me to the DSS for exceeding my allowed income for a disabled person. (Yes, it's happened more than once and it was indeed someone from real life not my "parasocial relationships." *snort*) So it's really just me talking about books that, almost a half-million times, others have made the effort to find me or to go to my blog via a link and read what I've said.

I hope to post at least 1,100 more times and amuse and entertain and illuminate more books for all y'all. My sweet Young Gentleman Caller, when he called to say "congratulations", was very complimentary about the work I've done. He was kind enough to say he thinks I'm good at the job, and it's a job in the sense that it absorbs my energy, my thoughts and my time, so he's unsurprised that so many read my work. Really though, he said it best and most sweetly when he was getting back to his own work: "Everybody loves a curmudgeon. Especially when he's really a truffle."