It’s that time of year again!  The time when we rake all the year’s LOLs and feuds and WTFs into a pile and roll around in them.  Who’s with me?

This year saw a lot of bloggers going to the woods because they wanted to read deliberately (to love deep, to suck out the marrow, etc), and more than one blogger re-discovered the delight of re-reading, despite Mt TBR giving them the side-eye.

Much of this re-reading business came from the sudden wave of Blogger Ennui that swept the intersphere, and everyone knows the only cure is a dose of Childhood Favorites.  You may take two Secret Gardens and call me in the morning.

Speaking of childhood favorites, the flood of bastardized and zombified Victoriana seems to have slowed to a trickle, but this year’s making of Where the Wild Things Are into a movie, and then making the subsequent movie back into a yet a more different book proves once and for all that there is nothing new under the sun.  Angels are the new vampires and werewolves are the new zombies and there’s no option but to start buying stock in unicorns.

Book bloggers got their con on, at the First Annual Book Bloggers Convention following the Book Expo of America.  Presumably, having our own Con would make book blogging Official and Therefore Non-Ridiculous, but SF has disproved that theory pretty roundly.  Aw, SF, you know I love you and your nerdy, ridiculous face.

The FTC took us seriously for a second and gave us all a fright and we became Very, Very Scrupulous (and sort of pissy) about our book sources.  And then they took it all back and said we just had to try really hard to be honest, ok, little tigers?  *head pat*

In further head-shakey news, much beloved (by me) authors Diana Gabaldon and GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMartin spat in the faces of those fans who advertised their works FOR FREE via fanfiction, thereby revealing a woeful ignorance of how the intrawebs (and fanfiction [and the world]) works.

Authors weren’t the only ones causing kerfuffles.  Jackie’s post re: UK vs US bloggers resulted in OPINIONS – some were cogent and reasonable and some were just plain shouty and the whole thing became an untidy mess.  The friendly neighborhood Book Smugglers gave THEIR opinion on Sisters Red (it was predominately frowny-faced), which also resulted in many, many all-caps in the comments. 

And then Penguin turned 75 and we baked a cake, but not with candles because books are flammable.  As are penguins.

And then because some things will never change, RaceFail continued WITH A VENGEANCE.  Between the covers drummed up for Catherine Valente’s Habitation of the Blessed, Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix, and the original cover for Jaclyn Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass, I’m surprised POC show up on any book covers at all.  Oh no, look!  They missed one.  Let me get that for you, guys.

We clearly need to shame them harder.  Speaking of shaming, I was fully behind the shame-campaign to stop people from selling ARCs online.  ARCs are for hoarding and gloating over and reading ostentatiously on the bus before the release date.  If they are awful, you may use them to line the bird cage.

ARCs were in high demand for the final books in the Chaos Walking and Hunger Games trilogies, both of which came to an end this year.  One series that shall not be named (but that rhymes with Peel of Slime by Bobert Dordan) continues into apparent perpetuity, despite its author being very, very dead.  Someone get that cash cow another bale of hay.

A fair portion of the book-talking public came down with Franzenfreude (rumor holds that the plague began in the Weiner-Picoult Sector) and the legitimate question of whether or not the NYT is sexist quickly devolved into a spat over whether any of the involved authors are any good.  Because more gets done when you turn your reasonable complaint into a personal attack.

And then Nicholas Sparks compared himself to Cormac McCarthy but no one paid any attention because that is silly.

And because we needed more things to do on the intratubes, followthereader became a thing and #bblog became a thing and That’s How I Blog became a thing and not-being-able-to-go-to-BEA-but-attending-from-your-armchair became a thing and doing the Blogger Hop (which is like the Monster Mash, but with significantly fewer monsters) became a thing and flinging one’s panties at beloved authors became a (slightly tawdry) thing and bloggiesta continued to be a thing and the Nerds Hearted YA again and there are now SO MANY readathons that you could be reading at any time and be all, It’s for this online thing that I’m doing.  You can google it.

The internet is vast and sprawly and mostly NSFW, so thank God for our book-laden sandbox over here.  It’s bigger now, with more playmates and shinier toys, but I still feel like I could high-five everyone in the room.

Up top, y’all.  You are still the best ones.

(Thanks to Raych for another excellent year in review!)