Bloggiesta Update, Day 5 and 6

Themes : Organize and destress / Read

Goals: Day 5: Organize. Stay organized and stay up-to-date on my reviews, my challenges, and keeping my pages current. Day 6: Read at least four books this Spring Break.

Organize- sometimes I shock myself how unorganized I am about the blog and blogging. For example I am one month behind on my Books Read in 2015 page just because I forget about it. Or I ignore my challenges because I figure no one care than me. (So why do them?)

Destress: I purposely avoided getting on any lists to receive ARCs because I didn't want to be forced to read books that ultimately wouldn't help me in my position as a high school librarian making book recommendations to teens. I do feel stress when I compare my blog statistics to some hypothetical numbers. honestly I shouldn't even look at my stats.

Tomorrow's focus for bloggiesta is reading, since I will be en route to our Spring Break locale here is my reading list for the week (subject to change):

• The Martian by Andy Weir---i'm seeing this book everywhere so I am anxious to start listening to this audiobook.
• The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley---as part of my Printz Challenge
• All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven---I'm almost done with this one.
• A Matter of Heart by Amy Fellner Dominy---an ARC, after saying I wasn't reading any of them.
• Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan --- on my new Kindle App on my new iPad. It will be my first e-book.

Bloggiesta Update: Day 4

Theme: Reviews

My goal: to catch up on back reviews.

I partially participated in the Twitter chat today because I was actually home from work when it was scheduled. However, there wasn't a lot of consensus about what makes a good review so I will just give a few of my opinions about good reviews...and mind you, I don't always follow them!

• Creative blog titles are best but they are hard to think up and some readers just want title and author.
• The summary or synopsis of the book should be brief, one or two paragraphs only and should be written by the reviewer, but just grabbed from Goodreads or elsewhere.
• Review can include spoilers if there is plenty of notice  that it is coming. Then readers have a choice to read on or not. I rarely include spoilers but sometimes feel like it is necessary to make my point.
• I use links because I want to make sure to give credit where I got my information and to avoid the appearance of plagiarism. There were a variety of opinions about this topic but one blogger admitted that she often didn't include links due to laziness.  Hey, that's what I fight at school with high school writers.
• My favorite reviews include a statement about who the target audience is, including concerns about age-appropriateness.

On a personal level I counted today and of  the 23 books I've read this year I've only written ten reviews, and two of those reviews were incomplete. I knew I wasn't up to date on my blog, but had no idea I was that behind. I analyzed the books and selected five more I hope to review in the next two weeks. And, of course, stay current moving forward.  I've already started. Today I got off a review for Three Men in a Boat and another review is half written and will likely be published tomorrow.

I am adding a rating system back for my reviews.

We'll see if  I can keep this up!

Here is the link for today's Twitter chat. It has some links to other sites about writing great reviews which I will look at tomorrow when I am not so tired.

Bloggiesta Update Day 3

Bloggiesta topic of the day: blog layout and presentation

My goal: to make my blog as user-friendly as possible.

I revamped my blog a year ago or so and thought I was doing pretty well but now know I need to continue to clean things up. Here are some of the highlights from today's Twitter chat on the topic.

Bloggiesta Update Day 2

Day two: E-Presence

Honestly, I am not good at having an E-presence. I like blogging and do fine with Facebook with my friends, but I totally don't "get" Twitter. When I read the posts from people on Twitter I always think to myself, "who cares?" because it always seems like there are just random statements made with no context. Obviously I am doing something wrong. I don't really spend enough time on it to really understand all the tips to successfully use it.

So when I read through the Twitter chat from today and saw everyone extolling the virtues of Twitter and of Instagram I just froze up. Obviously if I want to improve my blog presence I need to work with the social media that people are using. But keep in mind, we are talking about a lady here whose whole job revolves around books and I didn't get a Kindle-reader until today.

So...I have a long way to go, I know. Baby steps. Baby steps.

Bloggiesta Day 1 Update

Today's topic: PEOPLE

My goal is to make my blog more friendly and make it easier for people to comment.

I read through the recap of today's Twitter Chat on comments and blog friends and a few suggestions I will try. One idea was to use DISCUS for comments so that the person making a comment gets a notification when I reply to their comment. Brilliant plan only thing, I am a chicken when it comes to adding outside functionality to my blog involving me adding something to the html. Has anyone had any experience with adding discus to blogger? Any suggestion you have for me would be gratefully accepted.

The other thing I got out of the recap is that comments should be viewed as a type of conversation. If I am friendly and visit other sites and make thoughtful comments that blogger is likely to do the same. I am in the process of adding a blog roll to my blog of my favorite blog sites to visit which will encourage me to visit those sites more often. I also want to figure out how to make a HEADFULLOFBOOKS button that others can add to their blog, if they so choose making it easier to find their way back to me. No promises that will happen any time soon. I suspect I need my son-in-law's help on that one.