Happy Birthday Moi! And other celebrations...

I never remember the exact date I started this blog, but when I checked yesterday I discovered... it's today! Three years old today - that calls for a stock picture of balloons, wouldn't you say?


Agreed. As always on celebratory blog occasions, I want to go all mushy and say thank you to everyone who reads Stuck-in-a-Book, for all the wonderful bloggers making the Blogosphere such a fun and rewarding place to be, and especial thanks to those lovely people who have sent me emails over the years filled with general niceness. Always a highlight for me. Oh, and thank you authors and publishers for keeping me stocked up on books! Thanks all round, basically. Oh, and UK Bloggers - there's still time to join us on the 8th May for a UK Bloggers Meet Up (and to tell your friends to email me about it) - final details will be going out sooooon.

So, 795 posts later (which is actually only 265 a year, by my quick calculation, which means I have a hundred idle days each year) I'm enjoying blogging more than ever, and especially - check out this seamless link - events like yesterday's Sceptre Bloggers Event.

I read enviously of all the bloggers heading off to the Headline event, so was delighted to be invited by one run by Sceptre - where I had the pleasure of seeing Karen/Cornflower and Claire/Paperback Reader again, as well as meeting other bloggers, several authors, and the lovely people who work at Sceptre (who, like the good people of Bloomsbury, made me realise I will never be stylish enough to work in publishing. Or perhaps even to live in London.) They were all very welcoming, friendly, AND gave me a goody bag of books - they know the way to a blogger's heart. Oh, and I share my blog birthday with little Scarlet and Stanley, twin son and daughter of Jocasta, Sceptre's deputy publisher. Happy birthday, S & S, hope it's as sunny in London as it is in Oxford! Cue another (rather sweet) free stock image:


The authors in attendance were Emma Henderson, Natasha Solomons, and Ned Beauman - whose respective books Grace Williams Says It Loud, Mr. Rosenblum's List, and Boxer Beetle are all coming out this year. The only one I've had to read so far is Ned Beauman's Boxer Beetle - completely not my sort of book, and yet I thought it was brilliant. It's not out til August, so I'll write more about it later in the year, and I'm hoping to snare an interview with Ned B before he becomes too rich and famous to appear on a humble blog... I predict big things!

So, more thank yous to the lovely people at Sceptre - and for Claire for rescuing me when I got lost wandering around London. I'm off to enjoy the sunshine...