Thank You...We Won!

While there was no moment of "May I have the envelope please..." and I did not get to wear the fabulous backless dress that I have envisioned wearing to every awards ceremony since Kim Basinger dazzled with her ice blue number at the Oscars years ago, it was an amazing feeling yesterday when we saw that we had won Best Book Group Blog in the Book Blogger Appreciation Awards. The awards were in honor of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, launched by My Friend Amy. The winner in our category was announced yesterday by Booking Mama. We did a cyber air kiss with her later!

Thank you to everyone who voted for us. We are just thrilled to have won, especially given the wonderful work of our fellow blogger competitors. We share this award with everyone who has ever blogged for us --- and all of our readers.

This blog is actually a collection of voices, not just one. When we conceived of the idea, the thought was that we wanted to have many voices writing here, not just mine or those of the staff at ReadingGroupGuides.com. Since we launched in February, we have had 120 posts from 70 different contributors --- authors, booksellers, librarians, publishing industry execs, and book club members. It's been fun seeing the many different ways people look at book clubs. Just when we think we have heard it all, we have another person talking about reading groups in a whole new way.

VERY special thanks to Shannon McKenna Schmidt, who has been writing/editing/producing/cheerleading posts for this blog from the beginning. Shannon and I have known each other since 2000, thus she is very used to getting calls from me where I say, "Shannon, I have an idea..." About nine months ago, I made just such a call with an idea for this blog. I am glad that a) she answered and b) she jumped on board to make my random thoughts take shape and create a real winner and c) she has been so imaginative at coming up with people to tap to write for us. I am VERY lucky to have someone who can take a kernel of an idea and crystallize it as wonderfully as she does.

Now, with that in mind, we always are looking for people to contribute a blog post about their book group adventures. Whether you're an author or a book club member, a bookseller or a librarian, we'd love to have your perspective on things like great discussion titles, what works and what doesn't in your group, reading books by theme, anecdotes and advice, holiday tips and other reading group topics. Seriously, folks, we want you to be part of this. Write Shannon@bookreporter.com with your ideas. Thus far they clearly have been winners...and we would love to keep that spirit going here.

For those of you just meeting us for the first time, you can read our archives and catch up. For our regular readers, there will be a new post tomorrow. Thank you again...