Around this time last year, Queen Amy the Super-Marvelous threw us all a lavish love-in.  And while some douche-holes pulled out there nits and began picking, the rest of us enjoyed our bash enough to demand a Round II.

And because nothing says love-in like rehashing where you’ve been, please enjoy this list of Shit That Went Down In The Last Four Months of 2008 and the First Eight Months of 2009!!!  *sigh*  It appears Twitter has taught me nothing about brevity.

Despite the mousey, bookish reputation of litnerds, the bookbloggonets were awash with STRONG OPINIONS LOUD VOICES this year.  Like when Bloomsbury lied about their Liar cover lying, 

and much rabble was roused and they changed it, proving that despite the #gameondiet bookbloggers still have some serious weight to throw around.

I mean, not that we’re bullies.  SPEAKING of bullies (and the award for best segue goes to…), Alice Hoffman demonstrated her clear ignorance of How the Internet Works by tweeting her rage against a tepid reviewer.  When she realized that NO ONE in the review-o-sphere was going to help champion her cause and barrage the reviewer with hate-mail, she sent in half her ass to apologize.  At least she didn’t send in her husband.

Quirk Publishing likewise tried to hogtie its constituents with a condescending letter commanding us to, among other things, not post quotes from their Pride and Prejudice zombification, perhaps not realizing that 95% of PPZ was directly cribbed from La Austen herself.  But then, contra Ms Hoffman, they said sorry in a heartfelt and sincere way that made us kind of want to make out with them again.

In some lighter dueling, the Nerds pitted YA against itself and generally geeked out until they squeee’ed up a winner.  Teams Gale and Peeta picked up where Teams Rochester and Darcy left off, and abandoned Teams Edward and Jacob to battle Team AndthenBuffystakedEdwardTheEnd (go team!).

And then there were epic rivalries that people had no idea they were a part of.  Old-skool vs. new-wave, cool vs. uncool,  ARCs for everyone vs. you-are-a-book-grubbing-whore and so help me I am not going to flog this dead horse ANYMORE!  I would rather make out with a mer-pire than debate blogger integrity.

Speaking of ARCs (last time, promises), even though Hatchett continues to have extravagant giveaways (do those guys not know that we’re in a recession?) the FREEBOOKTSUNAMI of 2007-8 seems to have slowed to a manageable flood, no?  BUT HEAVEN FORBID THAT WOULD SHRINK MY TBR STACK STOP RECOMMENDING THINGS TO ME YOU GUYS!!!!

*phew*  Ok.  And if we got fewer books read this year it’s because we were all on the Facebook finding out what kind of cocktail we are, or on Twitter hashing out whether The Time-Traveler’s Wife movie was going to be Really Good or Total Dreck or, to a lesser extent, ninging or Digging or stumble.upon.ing or del.i.cious.ing or otherwise falling into the whirling vortex that is social media.  So sue us.

Because we actually met in real-life sometimes (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘everyone except me’ *cries into Cheerios*), like at BEA and the LA Times Festival of Books and in Oregon and Utah.  And everyone who wasn’t meeting IRL at these things was meeting to #tweetsulk about not being at these things (and again, by ‘everyone’ I mean ‘everyone except me’ because I was not yet hip with the twitter).  And twitter proved what a soulless bastard it really is by not being able to differentiate between a bot and, say, a party hostess or a really enthusiastic Cheer-a-thonner.

And even though we never had enough time for reading, there was always, you know, Time For Reading.  24 Hours to Read-a-Thon, 48 hours to Read-a-Mystery-Thon and also to Read-a-Mother?  To Read-as-a-Mother?  To Mother-Reader?  Whatever, we were reading and there were snacks involved and a great deal of cheering and some midnight madness.

There was also time, surprisingly, to get our collective asses in gear and have a ship-shaping Bloggiesta.

And the kidlitosphere became an actual thing, and various bloggers dared various other bloggers to do various scandalous things (ok, mostly just to read more YA or to watch a chick flick), and we all continued to read Philippa Gregory even though she’s pretty much just having monkeys write her books now.

And a lot of people lied about their lives and we kind of got our knickers in a knot because if a memoir is mostly double-un-true, does it still count for our Non-Fiction Challenge?

And then Dewey shocked us all by up and dying, and we all looked at each other like, Is this ok, that I’m sad?  What do we do now?  Can I shed actual human tears for this person I’ve never met IRL?  And then we flung our collective arms around each other and wept, because Dewey was a Force To Be Reckoned With and we will never see her like again.

But if Dewey’s death impressed on us nothing else, it is that we are all still alive.  Stephanie had The Cancer this year, and she’s still alive, and I had The Cancer this year (maybe), and I’m still alive, and Dawn walked 60 miles to ensure that others who have The Cancer will also be still alive, which HAD BETTER WORK because 60 miles is far.  And you, bookbloggers and readers both, despite sickness and tragedy and an mysterious plague of zombie-vampires, YOU are still alive, and I feel that deserves a general HUZZAH!

So huzzah for all the things we’ve accomplished!  Huzzah for Reading Dangerously and Imbibing Peril.  Huzzah for having Salonned our Sundays, Mailboxed our Mondays, Teased and Thingered our Tuesdays.  Huzzah for Wednesdays both Wordless and Wondrously Wordy.  Huzzah for having Booked through Thursdays and Followed Fridays with a well-earned Saturday nap.

Huzzah for the books dnf, the tl;dr, and the books tbr.  For the posts to be written, the comments left, and the donuts shared between friends.

Huzzah, my friends.  You are the very best ones.