Happy Birthday, FanLitDear faithful FanLit readers,

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (well, 15 years and the Milky Way, to be more precise), a band of plucky underdogs who believed life’s too short to read bad books started a website under the able leadership of Princess, err, Dr Kat Hooper.

June 1 will mark our 15th birthday, and we’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our readers who have joined us on this epic journey, whether you found us a decade and a half ago or just today.

If it weren’t for you we’d have given this up long ago and just be ranting with our friends over beers about waiting for the next GAME OF THRONES book, moaning with our friends over beers about how Brandon Sanderson just wrote another book between our first and third round while we’re still working on our unfinished short story, reminiscing with our friends over drinks about the first time we read the RIDDLE-MASTER trilogy followed by a toast to Patricia McKillip, and, well, you get the idea (and yes, we like beer and drinks).

Instead, we were lucky enough to find a fanbase that (unlike our friends/ partners/ pets) didn’t tire of our ranting, moaning, and reminiscing. Not to mention our effusing and gushing about whatever book we last fell in love with. So thank you once again. And as someone who has been here since the beginning, I’d like to thank and applaud my colleagues, past and present, who made celebrating our 15th birthday possible.

Like a lot of 15-years-olds, we’ve gone through, and are continuing to go through, some changes. As noted, we’ve had reviewers come and go (and come back again) over the years. And those of us still here are busier than we’ve ever been — new jobs, new responsibilities, new priorities, (new books if you’re Marion!).

And so you’ll notice some scaling back of our site as we adjust our output to better match our current abilities. We’ll still be reviewing (no worries on that!), but not quite as frequently. And while some of our columns will remain regular features, such as the What’s The Best Book You Read Last Month posts, others will move to intermittent posting. We want to emphasize, we’re not going anywhere! We’re just pulling back a bit.

We hope those of you who have been with us over the years have found us a valuable and engaging resource even as our faces have changed (or aged). And if you’re new to the site, welcome! And here’s to having you with us when we celebrate our 20th birthday!

FanLit T-shirt

FIVE commenters from the US will receive some lovely FanLit BOOKMARKS (quite practical!) and a cozy FANLIT T-SHIRT (as long as supplies last, we have S,M,L,XL). Or, if you prefer, you may choose a book from our stacks, or a $5 Amazon gift card.

You can leave any sort of comment — a birthday wish, an admission of how many days/ years you’ve been wasting your time edifying yourself at our site, a festive natal day poem. Whatever!

Just make sure to subscribe to comments so you’ll know if you won, or check back in about 10 days.

Thank you for wasting spending your time with us!