How many of my planned books did I read: I planned 11. Of those, I read 7 and one is in progress. I also read 4 others, so a total of 11 overall. Does that count? 😂
There were a few accidents in here. Like I chose Heartsongs with the idea of adding a nice bit of poetry to my reading. However, I didn’t realize that Heartsongs was written by a child. Like, a five year old. And it shows. Even the best poetry by a five year old is still about underwear and his favorite foods. That was disappointing since my expectations were drastically different, so if anyone has some recommendations of favorite poetry collections, let me know!
How many of my planned books did I read: I think I planned ten, but that was late in the month so it was really like I had already started reading and/or finished a few, and then I added a few more to those. And then proceeded to read completely different things. xD I ended up reading twelve books.
the plan
the result
I got an ARC that I have been absolutely thrilled to get a chance to read: To Sleep In A Sea of Stars. It’s a dense one by Christopher Paolini, so totally in keeping with his usual. It comes out in September, and I’m fangirling pretty hard about it right now. 🥰 I legitimately did a happy squealing dance when I opened the package and my boyfriend watched me hop around the kitchen like a madwoman with no judgment in his eyes. That’s love. 😉
My informational-audibook-while-gaming strategy continued nicely, and I got through Invisible Women by Caroline Perez Criado. This was an enlightening and enraging and tiring and baffling book, yet again. I’m doing a lot of those lately. I realized an issue with audiobooks of nonfiction though: it’s harder to take notes like I usually would with highlights and bookmarks when it’s a spoken version. There was so much data and facts and research that I wish I could have bookmarked some of the more outrageous realities. But one that stuck with me is that the leading killer of women worldwide is oven pollution. Just having shitty ovens that give off crappy fumes. That and the fact that crash test dummies don’t ever account for women. Not even as passengers, where women are most likely to be (a separate issue). Jeez, I’m falling into this trap of ranting about it – I’ll just have to a full post. 😄
I’ve been blogging for over a year now, which is a big exciting accomplishment for me! And yet, it wasn’t until this week that I stopped and thought about how weird the word blog is. It doesn’t sound very nice; in fact it sounds more like a sound you might make while throwing up. 😶
So let’s take a look and find out exactly why there’s a whole community built around this bizarre word and wonderful hobby. ^.^
Origins of the word ‘blog’
When did it first get used? 1998
What does it mean? In this sense, it’s defined as an online journal
What did it come from? This was a shortened and tweaked version of “web log,” which was originally a record of server requests.
Web, from World Wide Web. Not sure how many of y’all are old enough / young enough to remember that URLs used to begin with www, but that’s what it came from!
Log, in the sense of a record of observations, thoughts, etc. Think old sea captains, or Star Trek.
“Captain’s Log, Stardate 41153.7. Our destination is planet Deneb IV…”
It’s not a new one, though!
Even though blogging in the sense we use it for writing online is still new, the word blog itself has been used in many other ways through the years. The etymology stretches back:
1750: to look sullen or sulky
1860: a servant-boy at a college (related to the British bloke)
1860: to beat or defeat someone (schoolboy slang)
1898: used of anything resembling a block or log of wood
1969: a generic term for any random person as in “Joe Bloggs,” a default anonymous name
I also have to laugh when I look back at last year when I started compared to now, a year later. Not only because the world looks very different, but because my blogging habits do too. Wildly so. Let’s share that laugh, shall we?
