"Life changes? Yes, indeed: today seems like the perfect day to announce that I have just signed a book deal with a NYC publisher, that I have quit my dayjob and that I now live the happy life of a full-time writer, working on the book and a miscellany of other projects. Excited, thrilled, gleeful and proud is how I feel -- but most delightful of all, free. There is no price tag on that."
Indeed, blogging demonstrates the persistence of a key truth in the history of reading … that readers, in a culture of abundant reading material, regularly seek out other readers, either by becoming writers themselves or by sharing their records of reading with others.
Surrounded by ephemeral print, many began to make references in their journals to what they had been reading—the rough equivalent of what bloggers do by linking to a Web page. During the Revolution, for instance, Christopher Marshall, a Philadelphian radical and friend of Thomas Paine, peppered his journal with references to the papers, often with brief comments on the news.
