Today is my parents' 68th wedding anniversary. We had a small family gathering for lunch at the Middleton Tavern. Ern Willats and Joan Dean tied the knot on 30 November 1940 and have lived at Victor Harbour and Port Elliot ever since.Here we are at lunch:
That's me on the left, then my son-in-law, younger daughter, Mum, Dad, my sister, and then my sister-in-law on the extreme right. As usual husband is behind the camera.
Anyway on with the books....
I'm a bit disappointed on two counts.
Visits to my blog have dropped off a bit this week. I'm not sure whether that is because I've done such a good job of getting people subscribed to the email feed or the RSS feed, or whether my blog is getting just plain boring.
Secondly hardly anybody has used the new rating widget I put in last week. Perhaps it is not clear what they are actually rating!
Blog posts for the last week:
- Book Lists for Christmas buying
- Review: THE ROAR OF THE BUTTERFLIES, Reginald Hill
- 2008 Blog Advent Tour
- Forgotten Books: THE COUNCIL OF JUSTICE, Edgar Wallace
- CORDUROY MANSIONS, Alexander McCall Smith
- What's on Your Nightstand?
- ACRC: Short Stories, Update #1
- Review: PROBLEM AT POLLENSA BAY and other stories, Agatha Christie
- Crime and Mystery Fiction on FriendFeed
- Review: OVERKILL, Vanda Symon
- ACRC: The Short Stories
This was the poll that I have been running this week which 20 people participated in.
Here are the responses. They seem to say that people to appreciate the book reviews, recommendations from friends, or that they "follow" particular authors.
12 - Blog book review
9 - recommendations from friends
9 - I follow particular authors
6 - newspaper book reviews
4 - book blurb
4 - book selected by online reading group
3 - book selected by face to face reading group
3 - "challenge" group
2 - I read award winners
1 - library recommendation
1 - book cover
5 - not covered here
Breaking News
- The Times Christmas Books: Crime
- Profile: Henning Mankell Hot and Cold
- Interview with Adrian Hyland (DIAMOND DOVE/MOONLIGHT DOWNS)
- Murder Story in Verse Wins 15th Scarlet Stiletto Awards
- Disappointment with latest P.D. James and Ian Rankin novels
- USA stamp honours Edgar Allan Poe
- The Best in American Literature - National book Awards
- now - DEAD I WELL MAY BE, Adrian McKinty
- sometime soon - THE 19TH WIFE, David Ebershoff
- also listening to - CORDUROY MANSIONS, Alexander McCall Smith, ready for ch. 52 (running a week behind)
- in the car - BLINDSIDE, J.R. Carroll
How many books are you currently reading?
It will be interesting to see the answers to this. Many book bloggers that I know have a number of books "on the go" at once.
6 comments:
Congratulations to your parents!
Congratulations to them, too, Kerrie.
I read blogs in RSS so never see widgets, etc, unless I visit the blog itself to make a comment. And I am increasingly not prepared to put in the time to comment on a blog, then check back to see if there have been replies, etc. I do like the Friend Feed platform for online discussion, compared with individual blogs.
However, when I think back to my first year of blogging I felt rather differently and I had more enthusiasm for all of that - I think I've partly become a bit jaded (as quite a few of the blog discussions one sees around, not your blog, are repeats of earlier discussions), and partly, as online use has proliferated, 'blogging and commenting' is just one aspect for me - eg I am involved in Nature Network, Friend Feed, numerous online activities at work, etc - I feel that time is too short to devote much of it to one individual blog when there are all these sharing options around these days.
Having said all that, your blog is one of the few that I regularly come back to and comment, because my interests overlap so much with yours. But maybe my overall feelings are shared by many other people, who knows?
This is my first visit to your blog, I came over for TSS, but I thought I'd say hello. Also, visits are way down on my blog too and I think it's because a lot of people have been traveling or have company for the holidays.
I shouldn't worry about numbers of people visiting one's blog. I'm newish to blogging, but I try not to be competitive about it. For me, it's a fun way to see what others are reading.
Thanks for sharing the wedding photo. I love vintage photos, especially from around the 1940s.
I use RSS to read blogs, but I also visit blogs frequently to comment on posts. A lot of times, though, I don't have anything to add to the conversation.
I don't even check the number of visits to my blog any more. If people are reading but not commenting, then I start to second-guess my posts and wonder why those readers aren't reacting. If you are writing a blog as a professional, then that makes sense. However, I'm writing for a hobby, so I've decided to not worry about who's reading it.
I do love reading people's comments! I'm definitely not writing this blog as a professional.
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