Blurb Slurped my Blog

I have mentioned a couple of times that I was doing a Blurb book of my 2010 blog entries. Well, the book arrived and I have to say, I'm mighty pleased with it.


When I first heard about Blurb slurping my blog into a book, I assumed that it would take it and print it in the same format as my blog. So, if I had text, photo and more text, it would appear just like that in the book. I was a little disappointed to find out it didn't work quite that way. Instead, there were a variety of layout formats that included spots for text and photos. I eventually discovered how I could reformat these to suit my own purposes, which helped.

What did bug me, and more so now that I've seen the book, were the captions that went with photos in the blog were simply inserted into the text of the book - presumably where the photo was, but without any proximity to the photo.  Not a big deal, but there was one caption that makes no sense at all in the text when the photo is elsewhere. If I had realized that's what happened I would have paid far more attention to the text. I didn't proof read the blog entries all that carefully since I had decided from the outset that I wouldn't make any changes; I wanted the entries in the book to appear as they did on the blog.


Those minor disappointments aside, I am thrilled with the book overall. It arrived within one week of placing the order, wasn't that pricey (and, to be honest, the Groupon offer helped immensely) and is of pretty good quality. 

With the blog housed in some digital land that I don't understand and have no control over, it's great having a paper copy. The blog has become my way of capturing my voice and will someday give the kids a chance to get a better sense of who I was when I was young(er) and more with it than I eventually will be. It's also giving me a great opportunity to display some photos I love, tell some stories I have, and otherwise get down some of the things in my head that would otherwise never leave my head.


So, not that you want my advice, but I'm going to give it: If you are not a solid journaller and you don't keep a daily journal, but are interested in some form of journalling or "memory keeping", start blogging. You can keep it private so that it's only for you, you can open it up just for family and friends, or you can put it out there for the world to see. But, at the end of a certain period of time, turn it into a book so that your children and grandchildren, or others in your family, get a good sense of you, by you.