Good Monday morning, and welcome to one of the biggest weeks in the world of books and the people who blog about them! Book Expo America is getting underway in New York City today, and I’m there for my second visit. (I wrote this post before I left.) I will be one of the speakers at the session “Critical Reviews: Fine-Tuning Your Craft” at the BEA Bloggers Conference this afternoon, and all week long, I’ll be part of the Armchair BEA team providing on-the-scene reports at Armchair BEA Central!
By way of introduction, here’s a little five-question self-Q&A via Armchair BEA’s opening-day activity, “Introductions First!“
Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging?
I’m Florinda Pendley Vasquez (you can just call me Florinda, but not Flo), a/k/a @florinda_3rs, and I’ve blogged here at The 3 R’s Blog: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness since March 2007–my tagline is “it’s not just a title, it’s a mission statement,” and I’ve posted here more than 1700 times. I started this blog because I read a lot but found it increasingly difficult to remember much about what I read, and the mental discipline of blogging has definitely helped with that (as has the fact that it’s given me a tangible record I can consult). As I began to read other people’s blogs and discovered that I wasn’t the only one doing this, I found books–and more importantly, people–I wanted to know better. The books are what got me here; the connections they lead to are why I stay.
I’m not sure I’d say they’ve changed so much as expanded a bit. Well-written, non-genre commercial adult fiction is still my go-to, but book blogging has shown me that there’s an impressive amount of well-written, non-genre YOUNG adult fiction out there…and that it’s quite acceptable for adults to read and enjoy it. I read more non-fiction now than I did in my pre-blogging days, and not just memoirs and biographies. On the other hand, I find myself less attracted to deliberately “literary” fiction these days, especially when it’s more interested in form than function; one thing that doesn’t change is my interest in a good story. The style may be impressive and ground-breaking, but if it doesn’t say something, I’m not sticking around.
Honestly? Perhaps dead, at least in its current form–revamped, at any rate. It’s just hard to get my head around the idea of a ten-year-old personal book blog, but I’m willing to be surprised. I’ve begun doing outside (paid) book reviewing during the past year, and if that continues, I’ll probably scale back the blogging more, or shift back to the way it started out–writing about the books I read for myself.
Tell us one non-book-related thing that everyone reading your blog may not know about you.
The end of June will mark the tenth anniversary of my move to Southern California, and I’m planning a two-part post about what I love and hate about LA to commemorate it. In nearly five decades, I’ve lived in five very different states–New York, Connecticut, Florida, Tennessee, and now California. I’m not sure whether this is my last one or not. Moving–especially long-distance–is a royal pain, but it’s a terrific adventure.
Which is your favorite post that you have written that you want everyone to read?
Tough call–did I mention that I have over 1700 posts here? To be fair, though, many of them addressed something that was a hot-button thing at the time they were written, and so they had only a brief period of relevance and may not have aged terribly well. Having said that, I do have a collection of links on my “Popular/Favorite Posts” page, and if I have to pick just one of those to offer Armchair BEA-ers, I’d invite you to look at Things to Know (and Love) about LibraryThing.
If this is your first visit to The 3 R’s Blog, I’m pleased to meet you, and I invite you to visit my Me & My Blog & My Contact Info page to learn a little more about…well, me and my blog.
