The One-Year Anniversary of Antick Musings

One year ago today, I started this blog. I immediately followed up that very timid test post with my first statement of purpose; I seem to have mostly been doing what I thought I would (lots of booky posts, avoiding politics as much as possible), which I suppose is a good thing. And, since I'm terminally self-obsessed, this is a great time to see what the heck I've done with my time since then.

My first milestone, the 100th post, was devoted to my favorite political joke.

I somewhat restated my purpose in the guise of a New Year's Resolution. When the SFBC Blog finally launched, I announced that here, and reiterated that this is my personal blog, and that nothing I say here is indicative of anything whatsoever. (I find I regularly have trouble getting people to understand this point.) Much later, I answered the musical question "Who is This Hornswoggler, Anyway?"

I explained early on why I'm calling The Wife, Thing One and Thing Two by those names. I find I've only rarely trotted out "look how cute my kids are!" stories, which I'm sure you all appreciate -- Scissors of Pain and Darkness, and Limber Children are the only major ones two I saw.

I've mouthed off about various SFFnal things:

• Fantasy Contraception
• why the Library of America H.P. Lovecraft book is inadequate
• Two Words Overused in Fantasy
• One Way to Look at the Near Future
• Random Heinlein Thoughts
• Origins of SF
• In Which I Pick on James Blish
• An Examination of the Legal Disclaimer in Cryptonomicon
• Making Fun of Fantasy Novels: Part One and Part Two
• A Reader's Essential Fantasy List (inspired by Jeff VanderMeer's list, which I then pondered)
• Fanfiction and "Real" Fiction
• Publishers Weekly Notices We Exist
• Space Opera and Space Opera
• A Short Unhelpful Derogatory Definition of Horror
• Maps and Territories
• The F&SF Slush Bomb
• The Asimov's kerfuffle
• Nitpickery Is Killing SF
• Hugo Postmortem
• Beer Money SF Vs. Literary SF
• and, of course, Beer Money SF Redux.

I spent a lot of time analyzing the flood of World Fantasy materials, starting here, and following just about every day through the end of June.

I recommended a long list of lesser-known graphic novels on a cold February day.

I provided photographic proof of my much-too-large unread "shelf" in three parts. (There's more now...)

I started picking on Dave Itzkoff here. I'll leave finding the follow-up posts as an exercise for the reader.

Other things I'm proud of:

• googling all of the various "andrew wheeler"s of the world
• What Are The Best Time-Travel Novels of the 23rd Century?
• my write-up of For Want of a Nail
• The Efficiencies of Modern Capitalism
• How an Omnibus Is Made
• On Weeding One's Collection
• An Explanation of Who I Work For
• How To Read a Book A Day
• Deep Dark Financial Secrets of Publishing
• Wheeler's Law of Hype
• Fanficcers Strike Back
• Getting Published Is Hell
• In Which I Am Generally Too Thick To Comprehend a Comic Strip
• and Things People Searched For and Found Antick Musings.

Lots and lots of posts have been about books I read, starting with Tim Powers's Strange Itineraries. (I also owned up to quitting a book in the middle.) I did a very long post about kid's books once, and keep thinking I will do more (shorter!) similar posts.

I started a similar line of patter about movies with Chicken Little in November, and have seen a whole bunch of animated kids' movies and slow-moving indy dramedies since. (Yes, my movie-watching life is schizophrenic, what of it?)

I started my now-irregular "Reading Into the Past" feature with this ridiculously long monster back in late October, and soon afterward carved it back to a more reasonable size. I now do it (supposedly) weekly.

I embarrassed myself by listing all of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy winners, and admitting which ones I'd read and not read.

I asked readers what the Great SF Novels of the 1990s were, was surprised when Neil Gaiman linked to me, and then posted the results.

And I had a contest after someone burned a book and mailed it to me: announcement, prizes, update 1, update 2, winner.

Finally, I've done far more memes than are good for me, but I won't link any of them here. All in all, a good year. Let's see what Year Two brings (if Batman's life is any guide -- and why should it not be? -- I'll be getting a brightly-colored sidekick any day now.)