Wednesday, October 04, 2006

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:
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:
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.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is awfully late (catching up for the week), but I couldn't let your one-year anniversary post go without a single comment! I have been reading for most of that year, and I find fully 38% of your content fascinating.

(For a blog, I consider that a very high percentage.)

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