Last week’s dire predictions have come to pass – I’ve been pretty scarce around the blogiverse. My only post since last week’s Salon was my review of How to Be an American Housewife for the latest BlogHer Book Club. BHBC has recently shifted to a more discussion-based format, and we’ll be having a variety of conversations about this novel over at BlogHer.com during the next few weeks. Have you read it? Please join in if you have!
This week may not be much different, posting-wise. I’ve got a blog-tour review due up on Tuesday, and a few other potential posts percolating if I can just make some time to work on them. We’ll see how it goes. I did the “mark all as read” thing on my Reader yesterday, so it’s a fresh start on blog-reading this week.
To be honest, I’ve been pretty bad about blog-reading since Book Blogger Appreciation Week ended, and that was nearly a month ago! I’m not the only one having trouble keeping up with it these days, though, and that makes me feel a little better. Molly from The Bumbles Blog has been struggling with this too, and she’s got a great idea for turning it around:
“Why not just take that time that I spend writing posts over the course of one week and use it instead to read posts that other bloggers have written? Give myself a week off from producing posts and devote my energy into reading everyone else; leisurely and with my full attention.
And wouldn’t it be cool if other bloggers did the same thing at the same time? So that we were all just taking one week to visit each other, read and engage without the pressure of trying to balance the creation of posts with the reading of others – which always seems to get bumped to the bottom of the priority list.
If we knew when this week would be, we could spend time the week before putting our best foot forward so to speak on our own blogs, posting funny, cool, informative or inspiring posts for everyone to read when they went visiting the following week. That way we would all have really great writing, photos and videos to check out all week long. We would be entertained continuously. We would meet some new bloggers. We would be able to do more than scan. We would be on a vacation from blogging…in the blogosphere!”
It’s very true: one of the great frustrations of blogging is that when you’re focusing on writing your own posts. you don’t have time to read anyone else’s; and when your time’s very limited, it’s got to be one or the other (except for those brief periods when it can’t be either). Usually, that means your own blog is the “one.”
Molly hasn’t come up with a name for this blog-reading week or set a date for it yet, but I’d love to participate in something like this. Do you think it sounds good, too? If you do, go let her know!
As for today, though, I’ll be reading that book for Tuesday’s tour post, when I’m not doing chores and spending family time. Hope you have a good Sunday!
By the way, for those of you waiting to hear about the West Hollywood Book Fair from last Sunday, there’s not much to tell. Small regional presses had a nice presence there, but the larger book vendors weren’t especially well set-up for sales. Kids’ and YA books were pretty well represented, though. I didn’t attend any panels, and the signings–as one might expect at a “Hollywood” book fair–were heavier on “celebrity” authors than one might see at other book events, but I guess they are a part of the local literary scene. I’m glad we checked it out, but I don’t think I’ll be going again next year.
