* This week in Weekly Geeks – Weaving a book-review web. Quoting from Dewey:

The theme for Week 2 is something borrowed (yes, she said it was ok!) from Darla at Books and Other Thoughts. She says in her sidebar that if she reviews a book that you’ve reviewed, you can email her and she’ll link to it in her review. I love this idea for three reasons.

1. As a blog reader, I like that I can have my review linked in someone else’s blog.

2. As a blog reader, I like that if I’m interested in a book Darla writes about, there will be other reviews linked at the bottom of the page, so I can get other viewpoints. You can see how this works here.

3. As a blog writer, when I review a book, I often remember that I read someone else’s review at some point, but whose? And when? With Darla’s method, people tell her about their reviews, and she can see what they had to say about a book that is still fresh in her mind.

So here’s your challenge! If you’re willing, adopt Darla’s policy in your own blog. I realize this is a big commitment, so think it over first, but I think it can be really community-building.

1. Write a blog post as soon as possible telling your readers that you’re adopting Darla’s policy. Darla has people email her, but you could use a Mr Linky or you could just ask people to leave their links in your comments.

2. As much as you can with the time available to you during the week, visit other Weekly Geeks who are adopting Darla’s policy and see if you have any reviews of books they’ve reviewed that you can offer them.

3. Later in the week write about your experience this week: did people take you up on your offer, did you find reviews you could give to other bloggers, did you enjoy the experience, do you think you want to keep this policy, etc.

Going forward, whenever I post a book review entry, I will link to other bloggers’ reviews of the same book too! If you’ve reviewed a book that I’ve blogged about, please e-mail the link to me at 3.rsblog AT gmail DOT com, and I’ll link back to it in my post.

Since I don’t post reviews at quite the pace of some other bloggers – partly because I don’t exclusively blog about books – I’ll also make the policy retroactive for all the books I’ve blogged about except for those that were reviewed for MotherTalk Blog Tours (noted as MTBT on the following list) – the main posts for the tours have plenty of links already, and I’ll just point you there without accepting additional links myself.

I really like this idea, but I honestly don’t expect to collect – or contribute – a lot of review links, mainly because of the way I review books here, which usually amounts to “whatever I happened to be reading this week.” Aside from the fact that this isn’t exclusively a books blog, another reason that I don’t have as many book-review posts as some other bloggers do is that I’m usually not reviewing for any outlet except this blog. I participate in MotherTalk Blog Tours when the book interests me (and I get picked), and I occasionally get contacted by publicists to read and review books by their authors, but I don’t review for CurledUp or Front Street, and while I am signed up for LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program, I haven’t really participated in it (yet). I also don’t tend to read much genre fiction, and since I usually wait for paperbacks, I’m not usually reading the latest “buzz” book at the time it’s being buzzed about. But I originally started this blog to keep a record of what I read, and that motivation hasn’t changed, so I want to keep my reading choices primarily self-directed, and for me, that means limiting the reviewing I do “on request.”

Challenge #2 started on Saturday, May 3, and I visited participants that signed up over the weekend (#1-#27 in Mr Linky). I exchanged review links from my archives with Foreign Circus Library, Mrs. S: 50 Books Challenge, Puss Reboots, Melody’s Reading Corner, Reading Adventures, Chris’ Book-a-rama, Beastmomma, My Own Little Reading Room, and the book-review database on the Maw Books Blog.

(If you’ve sent me a link but it’s not mentioned above, it’s only because I had to stop somewhere in order to get this posted before the end of this week! Keep sending ’em, and I will do the same!)

My experience with this challenge showed me one thing – it’s very helpful when a blogger maintains a regularly updated page somewhere with a simple list of the books he or she has read and reviewed, so I’ve done to do the same, and there’s a link to it in the sidebar, just above my LibraryThing widget. Please be sure to check there and see if you have any review links you’d like to exchange!

I’ll add a reminder to each new book review post about the linkage. I experimented with Mr. Linky, but it seems to interfere with some of my other widgets, so for now I’d prefer to get your links via e-mail or comment directly on the post.

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