Book Blogger Appreciation Week: Bring on the short lists

All the nominations are in and the short lists have been announced for 2011′s Book Blogger Appreciation Week. Feel free to drop on by the BBAW website and vote for your favorite blogs.In looking at the list of nominees, I’m happy to say it’s an impressive line-up of blogs.

I’m was also quite happy, (and incredibly honored, not to mention pleasantly surprised) to learn that my blog made the short list for Best Nonfiction Book Blog. Thanks to any and all who nominated me and I will try to be worthy of this fine honor.

Speaking of worthiness, I’m sharing this nomination with two other book blogs. Both blogs are excellent and well-deserving of this nomination.

• Kim’s blog Sophisticated Dorkiness is one of my favorites, and I’ve been a frequent reader of it from the day I stumbled upon Sophisticated Dorkiness about two years ago. Besides having a professional layout, it’s a great resource when it comes to not just interesting books, but also news from the publishing industry. I also enjoy following the links from her “Shared Items In Google Reader”. I check her blog on a daily basis and I’m never disappointed.
• If Mad Men and Breaking Bad are the best TV shows I’ve haven’t seen, then Christa’s blog Mental Foodie, is probably the best blog, (until just recently), I had never read. Somehow, this blog was completely under my radar. After spending some time last night and this evening familiarizing myself with her blog and reading her posts, I’m happy to say it’s a terrific blog and well worth the nomination. She also posts funny comics like this one called “Twilight in One Minute”.

Since I’ve been blogging for only a few years, it feels great to be considered among these excellent bloggers. To be honest, I’ve kind of thought of myself as the “accidental blogger”. I originally started blogging on Vox because my brother-in-law kept emailing sign-up invitations so I signed up, more or less just to shut him up. I chose to blog about books because my friends and relatives, knowing that I read a lot, kept asking what I was reading. To me posting a book blog was the obvious solution. Lastly, I stumbled upon WordPress while searching for cool pictures from BSG. After visiting the main WordPress site and learning I could import my old Vox page to WordPress in one fell swoop, I did it. And from that point on, I’ve had a ball.

If you are reading my blog for the first time, welcome aboard and I hope you enjoy yourself. If you have been here before, thanks for letting me share my thoughts with you on an ongoing basis. For now, that’s all I really have to say.