WordPress tells me that a year ago yesterday I started this blog. I wish Eiger, Mönch & Jungfrau nothing but the best in the coming year, including, just maybe, a more frequent posting schedule.

Keeping this blog has meant a lot to me and given me some sorely needed confidence about my writing. It’s helped me be freer and looser in my writing, and allowed me to contribute, albeit in a small way, to a larger ongoing conversation online about books that I value a lot and am pleased to be part of. And it’s made me think more carefully and clearly about the things I’m reading. What I tell my students is really true—you can’t know what you think about something until you write about it.

I’ve a couple of blogging goals this year: to write more posts and to keep them shorter, and to try different kinds of writing, more in the vein of the personal essay. I’ve been striving here to write pieces that combine criticism with personal reflection, pieces that bring my own reading experience or history into the discussion of the books I write about. So I think the writing has already been personal. But I want to try to write essays that are inspired by, even grounded in, things I’ve read, but that aren’t so much reviews per se.

It matters a lot to me that others are reading these posts. I know from my stats that there aren’t that many of those others, but numbers aren’t everything, and the encouraging feedback I’ve received has meant so much to me.

To my readers, then, thank you for your interest & support.

I take requests, too. Maybe not about which books to write about—I always want recommendations, but I usually follow my own reading inclinations and it can take a long time before I get to them, which is why you should never lend me a book—but about the kinds of pieces you’d like to see here. Do let me know, if you’ve a mind.

That’s all for now. More mountains to climb. The bedside pile is particularly north face-ish just now.