BBAW: What Book Blogging Means to Me

It's day three of Book Blogger Appreciation Week and I'm not sure how to approach today's topic.  What does book blogging mean to me?

It's not a question with a concrete answer.  Book blogging means a lot of different things to me.  On the most basic level, it means writing about books in a place where others can easily discover and read that writing.  But that's not a very interesting answer.

Part of my motivation for blogging, that is quite relevant to this week, is to push myself out of my comfort zone.  There is a social connotation to blogging and I'm not at my smoothest when meeting new people.  In person, I tend to be quiet around people until I get to know them and then I don't shut up.  But on my blog, no one is going to speak up if I don't.  I have to be chatty from the word go.  The more I blog, the better I get at it.  And let's face it, social skills are super important.

The comfort zone pushing applies to books as well.  I have my favorite niches.  I'd probably go crazy if I wasn't allowed to read anything but urban fantasy novels, but it would take longer than if I was asked to read only modern poetry.  There's nothing wrong with modern poetry, but I prefer it in small doses.  I also don't seek it out.

But the thing about book blogging is you don't always have to seek something out.  You'll get pitches from people who obviously never read your review policy, but some of those books will sound interesting anyway.  You'll enter a contest on a whim and win a book you might not have been willing to pay for.  You'll see books on someone else's blog, on Tumblr, on Goodreads, on LibraryThing, and you'll remember it and read it later.  Book blogging is throwing yourself bodily into the path of new, strange, wondrous books.

Some of those books will be total crap, but let's not talk about that.

So what does book blogging mean to you?  Is this a question that makes you want to run for cover?  Because that's kind of how it makes me feel.