First, Happy 25th Birthday to Sonderbooks!
Yes, it was August 5, 2001, that I sent out my first Sonderbooks email newsletter! So the actual 25th birthday is this week!
But I’ve been celebrating the 25th year for quite some time with #Sonderbooks25. I’m reading all my old reviews, year by year, and revising the old Stand-outs pages into the new phone-friendly format.
It turns out that, as I was hoping, this is much easier to do once I hit 2007 – when I switched to the new format and an accompanying blog instead of the old email newsletter format with separate “issues” that I posted at the same time. It took me only a half-hour to convert my 2007 Sonderbooks Stand-outs page to a phone-friendly format instead of the few hours it took with the older reviews that were set up completely differently.
I’m afraid it also helped that I didn’t get a lot of reviews posted in 2007. 2007 was the year I was in library school, getting my Master’s in Library Science. I finished at the end of the year. I also got a job in May as a half-time youth services assistant at Sterling Library for Loudoun County Public Library – and if I had ever given up writing Sonderbooks, that would have been the year.
I also went over my Project 52 posts that covered 2007:
First, the last half of the Welcome to Virginia post, as I was still settling in to Virginia. We actually moved to Virginia on August 18, 2006, so I’m coming up on the twentieth anniversary of that.
Then I’m a Librarian! covered finishing my Master’s in Library Science. I got a job as a librarian in February 2008.
I took a class on Web Design as part of my degree – so that was when I switched the format of Sonderbooks. Yes, that means it’s 20 years old, and I should think about updating it, but I was able to fairly easily convert that set-up to a design that will adapt to phones, so I will probably stick with this format. Anyway, I still like the colors I chose.
However, with all that going on in 2007 – the majority of 2007 Sonderbooks Stand-outs I never did write a review for. So several are on my list to reread, and if I reread one that doesn’t have a review yet, it’s time to write one. Let me mention some highlights:
I did recently reread Shannon Hale’s Book of a Thousand Days. It is also featured in many of my Sonderling Sunday posts, and the last time I did that, I got sucked right back into the story and kept reading until I finished it. Still one of my all-time favorite books.
I’m also already planning to reread Shannon Hale’s Austenland (not reviewed yet), because she revised it this year for modern times – and I bought the new edition.
Our library owns Enchantment, by Orson Scott Card on eaudio, so it’s in my queue, and I’m really looking forward to hearing that again.
I remember Jane Austen in Boca, by Paula Marantz Cohen, and Home to Italy, by Peter Pezelli, both as delightful reads, so I’d like to try them again and write a review this time.
For nonfiction, I think I’ll revisit Sacred Choices, by Christel Nani.
I’ve long been planning to reread Inda, by Sherwood Smith, write a review, and then tackle the rest of the series that it begins.
And The Gaslight Effect, by Dr. Robin Stern, I probably won’t reread (because, thank God, I don’t need it right now), but I do still strongly recommend to people in relationship difficulties. And it somehow strengthened me to read the detailed review and remember that no, you don’t argue with people who are trying to tell you you are the one in the wrong if you were hurt when they cheated on you. (Just as a wild example.)
I’m still a little sad about all those good books that never got reviewed. But it’s been fun to remember them by reading the reviews. Because I got so few written in 2007, first I went through all reviews posted on the blog in 2007, then all the reviews of Stand-outs that I hadn’t covered yet.
Next up: Reviews from books read in 2008, when I was working full-time as a librarian!