A year ago today I posted my first introductory post on this blog, quickly followed by several reviews I’d previously written for The Complete Booker Blog.
So much has happened in my first year of blogging. I never imagined the wonderful experiences that I’d find in this amazing community.
I have always loved reading, but 18 months ago I was completely unaware that the wonderful book blogging community existed. One day I decided to search for reviews of Booker Prize winners, as I’d decided that I wanted to try to read them all. I discovered The Complete Booker Blog and was really excited to discover a group of people who had already decided to take on this challenge. I started to add reviews to this site and then became aware of Musings, the blog belonging to Laura, the founder of The Complete Booker. I became fascinated by her blog. I loved the idea of writing reviews for each book I read, and as I had similar taste to Laura I became a little bit obsessed with her. I used to log in every day and became really excited whenever she wrote a new post.
After a few weeks I decided to look in to starting my own blog. I became very excited about the idea and did a lot of research into the best platform and templates to use. Finally, with the techincal support of my husband, I launched Farm Lane Books Blog on 28th September 2008.
It wasn’t an easy start for me, although I wrote my first post in September, it wasn’t until November 8th that I received my first comment, from Rose City Reader. Michelle from 1MoreChapter and Teddy Rose from So Many Precious Books, So Little Time were next to find me on 9th and 16th November respectively. Thank you! I still follow all three blogs to this day and each will always hold a special place in my heart for being the ones to start it all off.
I then discovered Weekly Geeks, but for several weeks I was too scared to join in, as everyone seemed to know what they were doing and had such wonderful blogs. I felt so intimidated by them, but then on 24th November I finally plucked up the courage to write my first weekly geek post. I was so excited to have finally taken the plunge and was anxiously waiting for Dewey to welcome me into the blogging community, as I knew she was amazingly good at encouraging new bloggers. Tragically that never happened, as Dewey died on 25th November. I was devastated when I heard the news. She was one of the only bloggers I had discovered at that point. Weekly Geeks was the only community event I had heard of and the whole blogging community seemed to freeze with grief. I didn’t know what to do and my blog continued with me continuing to feel like an outsider in the community I so desperately wanted to join.
Slowly, I began to find my feet. I started to develop relationships with other bloggers. The first person I connected with was Beth, and she then led me to Sandy. Since then my blog has grown exponentially. I have discovered an amazing range of blogs, found lots of people who understand my passion for books and increased my TBR pile by about 500 books!
Thank you so much for following my blog!
I couldn’t do it without you!
To celebrate I am going to write a series of posts about what I have learned during my first year of blogging. I am also going to reveal my favourite books of all time. I hope you’ll continue to follow my blog and share your passion for reading with me.
Book bloggers are continually adding to my wish list, but it takes something special for me to be persuaded to run out and buy the book straight away.