Announcement: Bloggiesta 2.0 Begins! Bloggiesta kicks off this morning! Participants will be spending time during the next three days tackling those nagging blog-housekeeping tasks that we have so much trouble getting around to doing – and encouraging each other along the way! If you need some ideas about what to work on, the challenge announcement post at Maw Books has lots of suggestions; there’s no minimum time commitment required, but Natasha suggests putting enough into […]
I have an idea for a personal mini-challenge that would help make a dent in the ol’ TBR, count toward a couple of other reading challenges, and contribute favorably to blogger karma. Gotta love multitasking! One of the folders I use for feeds in Google Reader is called “author blogs,” which should be self-explanatory. In some cases, I read one of the author’s books first and then learned he or she had a blog, which […]
Good day, and welcome to 2010! I hope that you’ve had a pleasant holiday week, and that your New Year is starting out with at least one day of relaxation and good cheer. Like all good Southern Californians, we’ll probably start the day with the Tournament of Roses Parade, but since Chris is hanging out with friends today, the rest of us will probably be spared the football games. Tomorrow morning he flies back to […]
I “borrowed” this first line meme from Kristen at BookNAround – it suggests that taking the first line of the first post of each month of the year will make an interesting portrait of your blogging year. I guess it depends on how you define “interesting,” but let me know if you can spot a theme here. I don’t see one, other than the fact that several of my “firsts” were Weekend Assignments. However, you […]
Before getting into the discussion of the quality of my reading this year, let’s run some numbers: BOOKKEEPING: The Reading Status Report Number of books read and reviewed in 2009: 47. This is an improvement over my 2007 reading, and a nice return to form from the dismal 35 I read in 2008. Given the pace at which I usually read, which isn’t aided by big chunks of reading time (other than my “Starbucks hour” […]
A few weeks ago, Jennifer at The Literate Housewife Review brought up the idea of “Reading Deliberately.” It’s a concept I find intriguing, and one that’s gotten a lot of other book bloggers thinking and talking too. Part of “reading deliberately” seems to be ceasing to accept review books, or becoming much more selective about the books we’ll accept. I started to cut back on review books several months ago, and haven’t regretted it – […]
Assorted Announcements This is officially my last Week-End Review of 2009! Although it seemed to get more reader response when I posted it on Saturdays, I’m still not sorry I moved it to Fridays. However, I won’t be posting one on Christmas Day – and I certainly hope you’ll have better things to do next Friday than look for it, anyway! I’m not certain yet whether I’ll be posting on January 1; I suspect that […]
If you rate books – when you review them on your blog, and/or on your LibraryThing or GoodReads account – what does it take for a book to earn your highest rating? At our recent SoCal book-blogger meet-up, Amy posed that question to me. She knows I use a 5-point rating scale, and questioned whether I’d given a 5 to any books I read this year. Since I didn’t, she wanted to know: How would […]
Two weeks from today, we’ll be waking up on Christmas morning! Guess we’d better get our tree up soon, hadn’t we? To those of you who will be lighting the menorah and starting your celebration tonight, Happy Chanukah! New Arrivals in my Google Reader Too Many Books, Too Little Time Baby Got Books Book Snob LaurieWrites I Have Things… Dispatches: Links of the Week Lots of holiday-themed links this week, but hopefully not an overdose […]
‘Tis the season for year-end wrap-ups. I’ve already participated in the Weekly Geeks‘ Book Bloggers’ Top 10 of 2009 preliminaries, and really need to find some time to think about my personal Books of the Year picks (can’t write a post about them till I decide what they are!). I expect those to differ a bit from the Top 10 list, since it’s based on books I read this year, regardless of when they were […]
Since I missed last Friday, I have LOTS of links to share this week, so let’s move right along… New Arrivals in my Google Reader Novelwhore’s Blog nomadreader My Books. My Life. Books Worth Reading The New Dork Review of Books Dispatches: Links of the (last 2) Week(s) Baking cookies every day ⇨ a daily cookie giveaway: a donation to a food pantry means food for them, and – maybe – cookies for you! When […]
Does the holiday season take a big chunk out of your reading time? Between weekends spent shopping, decorating, and socializing and the normal daily routine, I find that I have fewer opportunities to settle down with a book, unless I can squeeze in a day off here and there (which I am doing a couple of times before Christmas, and possibly more once I know what my son’s travel plans for the holidays are). My […]
