{"id":12020,"date":"2021-05-01T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-01T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=12020"},"modified":"2021-05-01T09:48:27","modified_gmt":"2021-05-01T14:48:27","slug":"whoosh-11-years-of-booksyalove-a-decade-of-april-a2z","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=12020","title":{"rendered":"Whoosh! 11 years of BooksYALove, a decade of April A2Z!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-default\"><figure class=\"alignright size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"12032\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?attachment_id=12032\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/booksyalove.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Reflection2021.jpg?fit=400%2C190&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"400,190\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Reflection2021\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/booksyalove.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Reflection2021.jpg?fit=400%2C190&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/booksyalove.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Reflection2021.jpg?resize=300%2C143&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"text reads: reflection- Blogging from A to Z April (2021) Challenge http:\/\/www.a-to-zchallenge.com\/\" class=\"wp-image-12032\" width=\"300\" height=\"143\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/booksyalove.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Reflection2021.jpg?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/booksyalove.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Reflection2021.jpg?resize=201%2C95&amp;ssl=1 201w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/booksyalove.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Reflection2021.jpg?resize=150%2C71&amp;ssl=1 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Like that snowball rolling downhill toward a cartoon character, growing larger and faster as it goes, time seems to pass more swiftly as the calendar pages flip over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eleven years ago today, I stepped out into the then-new world of blogging, thanks to the encouragement of Michelle Rafter&#8217;s Blogathon in the early 2010s and the repository of book recommendations that I had written for Barb Langridge&#8217;s awesome kids&#8217; book discovery site <a href=\"https:\/\/abookandahug.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">www.abookandahug.com<\/a> (still going strong &#8211; be sure to take the Reader Personality Type quiz <a href=\"https:\/\/abookandahug.com\/reader-types\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>!).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ten years ago today, I looked back at a whole month of posts (every day but Sunday) pegged alphabetically from A to Z &#8211; wow, I really could create content on a daily basis\u2026 for at least one month of the year during the April AtoZ Challenge!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the end of March every year since, I&#8217;ve pondered whether I could really complete another AtoZ, not missing a single alphabetical day (X is so hard). And for 10 years straight, I&#8217;ve decided that I should try, and I have succeeded!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Book bloggers don&#8217;t get medals or awards for our work promoting books, authors, and illustrators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of us don&#8217;t get any money for our writing, some of us get review copies from publishers (thank you, thank you!), and many of us pay out of pocket to host our sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We all spend innumerable hours reading, deciding which books to write about, looking at our growing TBR (to-be-read) piles of books\u2026and the books waiting for a review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Book reviewers may never know whether our recommendation of a specific book led someone to read it\u2026 but one review and one book may be what makes life better for one reader &#8211; and that is enough for me as I begin my 12th year of BooksYALove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have you read any of the 1000+ books that I&#8217;ve recommended?<br>**kmm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like that snowball rolling downhill toward a cartoon character, growing larger and faster as it goes, time seems to pass more swiftly as the calendar pages flip over. Eleven years ago today, I stepped out into the then-new world of blogging, thanks to the encouragement of Michelle Rafter&#8217;s Blogathon in the early 2010s and the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[10,136,125,174,202,259,82,99,55,56,61],"class_list":["post-12020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflective","tag-a2z","tag-blogathon-2011","tag-blogathon2012","tag-blogathon2013","tag-blogathon2014","tag-blogathon2015","tag-blogging","tag-bookandahug","tag-books","tag-reading","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12020"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12034,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12020\/revisions\/12034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}