Four years ago today I moved my random book posts from my personal blog, to this here bookish one.I didn't think I would be very good at updating it though. I wanted to keep track of the books I read a little better than I had been. This was before I knew about places like LibraryThing or GoodReads. I knew of one other book blog, which belongs to my friend Monkey and it was because of her I took the leap to keeping a blog just about the books I read.Through Monkey's blog I started discovering other book blogs and I suddenly had a long blogroll to go through daily and find new book recommendations. It became overwhelming quickly because book bloggers blog A LOT. I started getting picky about which blogs I wanted to visit regularly. There were blogs that I loved back then that don't seem to be around anymore. I have met new people who have like-minded reading habits. It was sort of nice to find a place that I could talk books with people again because since I left working in bookstores, I really missed book talk.As with any online community, there are always those who feel they have the right to tell people how to do what they are doing. I quickly learned to avoid those people because I wasn't blogging about books for anyone but myself really. I honestly started this blog for myself, to keep track of what books I'd read, what was going on in my life during the time I was reading them and to direct friends and family from my personal blog over to this one when I thought they might like a book I read. The concept of being asked to review books by publishers just because I had a book blog was completely foreign to me. Even to this day, the rare email I get from publishers asking if I'd be interested in something feels like I have won the lottery.The first author comment I ever received was from Melissa Walker on my post about Violet on the Runway. Through that contact I discovered that authors were younger than I am (oh, how under-accomplished I am!) and can be friends. I have made friends with bloggers, authors and publisher reps that I would not have met had I not started this silly thing. Having been online for most of my life (since I was 14 and it was dial-up on a thing called a BBS), I have always loved that I can meet people who have common interests as I do and become friends that I NEVER would have met just living in my own town. This goes for my personal blog as well as this one. The internet is pretty nifty that way.I have never gotten involved in the drama that happens in the book blogging world. Normally once something starts up I tend to stop following people who seem to show their true colours during situations like that. I am happy that my blog has always just been that - a blog about the books I like to read. I have a much smaller Book Blog list in my google reader now than I did 3 years ago. I follow people who I am friends with or who write about books that I would be interested in on a regular basis.I have flirted with book blog memes and decided that most of them are not my cup of tea. I write about books I didn't like or didn't finish. I only write about book that I have read and I only giveaway books that I have read and enjoyed. (And the occasional book cleansing from my shelves.)I am happy with what blogging about books has brought me in the last 4 years. Friendships, mostly, that I never would have made had I not discovered that people write about books for fun. I got to attend BEA in 2010 and room with two people who I wish lived so much closer to me so I could hang with them more than once a year. Keeping track of the number of books I read in a year also helped me with my reading because I seem more motivated to read more and more each year. I like to challenge myself that way. I am buying more books now than when I worked in a bookstore (in my defence I make more money now than I did then!) and although I am still not as good at remembering which imprint is attached to which publisher (I could do this when I was at the bookstore!) I am happy in this world of books. It's just so much more comforting than anything else that I have done.As I said in my first ever post on this blog "I need to read like I need to breathe". I have always been that way and I don't see it changing any time soon.So, thank you for those of you who have been on this book blogging journey with me all this time and for those of you who are newer, welcome and I hope that my bookish ramblings help you discover new books along the way!