Challenges

I’m a little bit late getting any final thoughts on the Bout of Books posted, but I have a good reason — I spent most of today reading! I started Oryx and Crake on Saturday and I just couldn’t put it down until I finished right after dinner today. Here are my final stats for the [...]

Last night I was planning on writing a review to post this morning, but then I remembered it’s the Bout of Books, which gave me all the excuse I needed (which really wasn’t much of an excuse at all) to spend the night reading rather than writing. I’ll have reviews next week, I promise. Anyway, [...]

Coming up later this month is a new-to-me event that looks like a lot of fun, the Bout of Books. Here are the details, for those who may also be interested in participating: The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda at On a Book Bender and Kelly at Reading the Paranormal. It is [...]

Last December I signed up for my one and only challenge for 2012, Adam’s (Roof Beam Reader) 2012 TBR Pile Challenge.  The goal of the TBR Pile Challenge is to read 12 books that have been your “To Be Read” pile for at least an entire year. And you’re allowed to put 14 books on the list, in case two of them end up not working out.

For some reason, I’ve always had this impression that all collections — essays, magazine writing, short stories, you name it — were all about the same. All of the entries would fall on a sort of bell curve — a few would be terrible and a few would be stellar, but most would fall somewhere between mediocre and pretty good. It didn’t matter what the theme of the collection was or who was in charge of putting it together, it was just a natural part of a collection and how different pieces appeal to different readers.

As you may (or may not) remember, Ash (English Major’s Narrative) and I have embarked on a project to read an Essay a Day in 2011. After we announced our grand plan last December, Vasilly (1330v) e-mailed and said she wanted to join us, which was awesome! After one month in, I thought it was time to offer an update on my progress.

Back in October, our topic for the Bloggers’ Alliance of Nonfiction Devotees was nonfiction anthologies. Ash (English Major’s Narrative), the topic author, is an avid essay reader and wanted us to write about our favorite collections of nonfiction writing. At the time, I admitted that I have a lot of nonfiction essay collections, but I’m terrible about reading them.

Lately, I haven’t joined any reading challenges. I used to sign up for quite a few, but I never managed to complete any. It seemed that once I put together a book list for a challenge, the books on the list took on some sort of virus that made them entirely uninteresting. I wish I had a name for the phenomenon… suggestions?

I’m combining three of blog-business posts into one with this, because I don’t like it when my blog gets overrun with posts not actually about books.  This week, Weekly Geeks wanted to look at commenting, a topic I think is really important to think about as a blogger. The task for the Blog Improvement Project is to look into categories and tags — two administrative tools that help keep blogs organized and can help search engines find you blog. And finally, a few bloggers (My Friend Amy, Beth Fish Reads, others?) posted social media policies yesterday, which inspired me to do the same