About Me & My Blog



Hi!

I'm Cathy, and I'm addicted to books (especially crime fiction), laughter and traveling off the beaten path. In my free time, when my eyes aren't glued to the printed page, one of them is usually pressed against the viewfinder of my camera. Let's see... books, laughter, photography, travel... anything else? Oh yeah... my dream house wouldn't have a kitchen!

I'm a baby boomer who grew up in a small farm town in central Illinois. When it came time to start planning for college, I was tired of everyone in town knowing my business before I did, so I looked far afield until I found a college in Utah. One year after visiting family in Illinois during the summer, I returned to Utah via Arizona. I stopped in Phoenix. It was 110 degrees in the shade, and I fell in love with the heat, the light, and the Sonoran Desert. When I graduated, I moved to Phoenix and never looked back. After twenty years, I knew I was Home.

What is the purpose of this blog, Kittling: Books? First of all, you may wonder just what "kittling" means. It is a Gaelic word that means "anything that strikes [my] fancy", and that pretty much sums up my reading tastes. Although I do have a strong preference for crime fiction (mysteries), I also love historical fiction, history, biographies, time travel...anything that satisfies my craving for strong characters, story, and setting.

In Kittling: Books, I chart my reading, sharing reviews of what I've read, and hoping to encourage others to read the books I've loved. You won't just read favorable reviews here. If I don't like something I've read, I'll say so, and I'll explain why I didn't like it in as kind a manner as I know how. Fortunately, I'm much cannier in choosing what I read than I used to be, so the unfavorable reviews are few and far between.

This blog is a work in progress. It will not only have book reviews and book news, but it will also contain some of my photography, weekly participation in book-related memes, and weekly features that spotlight the book blogging community and let you get to know me a bit better.



There are a few things that you'll seldom see on this blog: contests, giveaways, and participation in blog tours. I find it annoying to open my blog reader and find over a dozen reviews of the same book on the same day-- the result of a blog tour-- and I'm sure that I'm not the only person who has this reaction!


As for the contests and giveaways... money is a bit scarce in this house at the moment. Most of the time it seems that contests and giveaways are attempts to inflate a blog's traffic numbers, especially when "follows" are listed as ways of garnering additional entries. I always wonder how many of those people actually read any of the rest of the posts, or if they only appear when they want to win something? I'm very proud of the traffic on Kittling: Books. It's a drop in the bucket compared to many other book blogs, but traffic has increased steadily since I began blogging in 2008, and each and every person is here because of what I have to share-- not because I'm giving away freebies!

If any of you ever have questions, concerns, ideas or comments you'd rather not share with all my readers, feel free to contact me... KittlingBooks(at)gmail(dot)com. 


In the meantime, here are some links to more information about me:




FAVORITE WRITING


2 comments:

  1. great intro. Lived several years in Phoenix. It does have its appeal, just not as much as it use to. When I went there in 1967 I remember it had the bluest sky I had ever seen.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The sky is still very blue, and a very intense blue in the summer. Thanks for stopping by.

      Delete

Thank you for taking the time to make a comment. I really appreciate it!