It's Over!

And so my great reading experiment for 2008, my New Year's resolution from exactly a year ago, has come to a close. With it, I bring you glad tidings and sad tidings.

Sad tidings: I didn't come anywhere near my reading goal of 100 books.
Glad tidings: I read more books than I have in recent years. In fact, I read 10 whole more books than last year, which is excellent progress.

Sad tidings: I didn't read from nearly as many genres as I hoped I would. I didn't touch Christian fiction, sci fi, or really popular authors.
Glad tidings: I'm proud of how many mystery books I did read, and the genres I tried like Western.

Sad tidings: Inevitably, the blog as I know it must come to an end. I never thought it would all turn out the way it did. It's been hard work, a whole lot of fun and a labour of love all the way. I've had readers from all over, in fact every continent except Antarctica (I'm still hoping to hear from a polar researcher one of these days). I've learned that mentioning James Purefoy makes my readership level skyrocket and that lambasting a crappy show about Pride and Prejudice gets fangirls into an ire until the author of The Jane Austen Handbook comes to your defense. I've learned that if you write a site reviewing books, authors will imundate you with requests to review your books. (Please. For the love of heaven, send me a copy. I have too much to do to hunt for it myself.) Most of all, I've learned that I love talking about the books that I've read, which is why I started this blog in the first place.
Glad tidings: Wait! It's not over yet! You can't get rid of me that easily. No, for a long time now I have made a decision that I wanted to share with you at the last possible moment. This blog will continue, with a few small changes. Obviously I'm going to tweak the title a bit and add some useful links to the sidebar. I'm still going to review books on here, but to a lesser degree. Since I have a hard time reviewing a lot of "fact" books I like to read, I'll cut those out. But you'll still be getting reviews of most of the books I've read, including scintillating stories, crappy romances and of course snark-worthy tomes. I'm just having too much fun to give it up now. We'll see if I still feel the same way a year from now.

So what's in store for 2009? I don't have big plans in mind like I did last year. Mostly I want to continue tackling my backlog. Maybe this will be the year I finally read all the books I own. Just kidding! If I did nothing but read the next three years I still couldn't do that. I have some vague notions of working my way through Jane Austen and reading some hilariously bad romances, but other than that I'm pretty free. See you in 2009!