It's My Blogiversary!

Wow! Four years ago today I started this blog on a whim.  I didn't expect that it would be so much fun or that I would keep at it for this long.

To celebrate my 4th blogiversary, I've pondered the four best things about my Rose City Reader experience:

1)  The hundreds of book conversations I've had with people when they learn I have a book blog.  Most of these people will never read my blog, or any other book blog, but when they learn I have one, they talk to me about what books they like, what I would recommend, books clubs, new books, classics, etc.  I enjoy these conversations and the common ground they create.

2)  Reading challenges. I love them. I can't resist a list and challenges give me so many excuses to read books from the lists I'm working on, make new lists, make lists of reviews, tally my progress, see other people's lists.  All wonderful fun for me.

3)  Focusing my thinking about what I'm reading.  I was never a big book reviewer before I started this blog.  I've become a more conscious reader knowing that I will probably write a review, and have gotten more out of my reading as a result.

4)  The new friends I've made.  We've all heard it and said it before, but book bloggers as a whole make up a very friendly on-line community.  I enjoy my new "virtual" friends.  But I have really enjoyed the new face-to-face friends I've met because of my blog.  Many are fellow bloggers, but I've also gotten to know several authors, publishers, publicists, and other book people.  It's been great meeting so many people outside of my usual social and professional circles.

Teaser Tuesday Oregon Two-fer: Wild in the City and Portland in Three Centuries

Today it is not uncommon to look up and see the sickle-shaped silhouette of a peregrine falcon slicing through the clouds above our city.  The peregrine haunts our urban landscape just as it has passed gracefully above medieval cathedrals and castle ramparts for centuries. 

-- Wild in the City: Exploring the Intertwine: The Portland-Vancouver Region's Network of Parks, Trails, and Natural Areas by Michael C. Houck and M. J. Cody, from OSU Press.  This book is a must-have book for any Portland explorer.

The tens of thousands of shipyard workers, many of whom were unmarried or without their families, also had money for liquor, gambling, and prostitution.  While the circulation of books from the public library dropped, the pari-mutuel handle at the dog tracks skyrocketed.

-- Portland in Three Centuries: The Place and the People by Carl Abbott, also published by OSU Press.

This is a concise, readable history of Portland, here describing the rollicking days of WWII, when Portland's shipyards thrived.  The shipyards are pretty quiet now, as are the dog tracks, but we still have -- by reputation at least -- the most strip clubs and breweries, per capita, of any major city in the US. 


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia at A girl and her books (fka The Printed Page), who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring meme (details here)

Diary of an Eccentric is hosting in March.  Please stop by her terrific blog to see what this "eccentric bookworm" is reading lately.

I got a mix of books last week:



Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr. This is the 6th book in his Bernie Gunther series. I haven't read the others, but this looked really good and I was lucky enough to get an ARC from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.




The Free World by David Bezmozgis. Late '70s Soviet Russia -- looks great!I was lucky enough to get a review copy from the Internet Review of Books. Mine has a different cover on it, but I like this one, the real one, better.

And I got two adorable books from the new BabyLit series -- "A Series of Board Books for Brilliant Babies" by Jennifer Adams.  These are fabulous! They were too cute to pass up and I plan to pass them along to a nascent reader on my list -- it's never to young to turn a kid on to great literature!



Alice in Wonderland: A Colors Primer by Jennifer Adams



Jane Eyre: A Counting Primer  by Jennifer Adams

What Are They Reading?

Authors tend to be readers, so it is natural for them to create characters who like to read.  It is always interesting to me to read what books the characters are reading in the books I read.

I can't say that ten times fast.  But I can start a new, occasional post about what these characters are reading.

Usually, the characters' choice of books reflects the author's tastes or, I like to think, what the author was reading at the time.  But sometimes the character's reading material is a clue to the character's personality, or is even a part of the story. 

If anyone wants to join in, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your related post. And feel free to use the button.  If this catches on, I can pick a day and make it a weekly event.

This inaugural post looks at what the character's in P. D. James's The Black Tower are reading.  This is the fifth book in her Adam Dalgliesh series, was published in 1975, and takes place at a private nursing home on the coast of Dorset.

Dalgliesh himself, when he is not solving mysteries as a Commander at New Scotland Yard, is a poet, with several published volumes of his own verse. He is recuperating from a serious illness and heads to the coast determined to retire from the police force.  He packs with him several volumes of poetry and a Thomas Hardy novel.

One of the residents at the Toynton Grange home finds a poison pen letter in the book she is reading -- "the latest" by Iris Murdoch.   The story takes place in the fall of 1974, so depending on when Dame Iris's books were published, this character was reading either The Black Prince (which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) or The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (which won the Whitbread, now Costa, Award). Good choices, both.

Opening Sentence: Murder in Belleville

Aimée Leduc's cell phone rang, startling her, as she drove under the leafy poplars tenting the road to Paris.

-- Murder in Belleville by Cara Black.

This is the second in Cara Black's Paris-based series featuring Aimée Leduc, a half-American corporate security expert who finds herself -- like so many other amateur detectives -- drawn into murder mysteries.