There was a time, in the first year or two I was blogging, when one of my occasional blogging topics was 'meeting such-and-such, a blogger'. Thus, there were posts about meeting Harry, meeting Oliver and Jackie, meeting the stoical Stoa and meeting the black cat, aka Hak Mao, among others. A couple of days ago, it dawned on me that I am not quite so assiduous as I was back then in recording these encounters for posterity, and I thought about why. Maybe it's because, even though I can't count myself among the pioneers of blogging, when I started in July 2003 it was still the case that being a blogger was being part of a tiny company of people. Meeting another blogger was getting together with another of the rare species which you had recently joined. Now, on the other hand, so many people blog that blogging doesn't so much pick out a category of person as it defines an activity that is not at all unusual.
What prompted these thoughts was my meeting Harriet Devine for the first time. On Wednesday she came to lunch with me and WotN. Harriet is one of a large group which hardly existed five years ago, or not to my knowledge anyway - the book bloggers. She has done a normblog profile and also contributed to the Writer's Choice series. And she has recently discovered the pleasures of reading Anne Tyler, on which, as she tells here, we compared notes - though I can't imagine what Harriet used to think I look like since it's obvious that I look like me.