Communities

One of the conscious decisions I’ve made as a blogger is to minimize the time I spend on background projects — messing with my blog theme, redesigning my headers, updating my sidebars, whatever. I just so sucked into those projects that I run out of time for the things I think are important — writing good content and interacting with other bloggers. As a result, I’m way behind on new blogging technology, tools, and plugins. So here’s my question to you, blogging experts: What are some technology tools you use to make blogging easier? What are some of your favorite plugins? Mobile apps?

I do a good bit of book-related freelance writing outside my day job and this blog. I’m currently a contributor to Book Riot, and before I moved from Madison I was a regular contributor to The Capital Times (you can find links to some of those stories on my About Me page). By no means am I am expert about how to go about getting paid exclusively to write about books, but I have a little bit of advice if you’d like to try and make a little money on the side or use freelancing to gain exposure for your blog.

Although I am off at Book Expo America this week, I still wanted to participate in a very cool event — Armchair BEA — which was organized by a group of bloggers in 2010 to connect book bloggers aren’t able to make the trip to New York City. Throughout this week I’ll be posting on some of the daily topics to, hopefully, supplement post I’m actually writing from BEA. I won’t have much time to respond to comments, but I’m hoping to get caught up when I get back.

This week has been a week of palate cleansing reading.

Early in the week I finished reading Mary Doria Russel’s The Sparrow, which was totally and completely awesome. So totally and completely awesome, that I don’t even know what to say about it yet. The ending, which you sort of know is coming based on the structure of the story and the clues that are being dropped along the way, was a total surprise. Finishing the book also felt like an emotional punch to the stomach, which I know makes no sense but is the only thing I can think to describe what I felt when I put it down.

It’s been a pretty crazy week. Awesome. But crazy.

Thank you, everyone, for your nice words on my big announcement this week, and for my blogiversary the week before. (I’m going to draw winners for the Readers’ Survey giveaway soon, I promise!) It’s been a couple weeks of feeling warm fuzzy feelings everytime I come online. And all of this talk and general good cheer has made me even more excited for Book Expo America in a couple of weeks — fun plans are already starting to come together, including hanging out with many of my favorite bloggers. If you’re going to be at BEA, let me know so we can make sure we’ll get to connect!

Last month I read 14 books. So far this month, I finished one. What’s going on here?

I have a theory: I think my brain can only handle a certain number of books over a set period of time. If I go over that number it rebels and decides to fill itself with old episodes of Dorm Life and New Girl rather than pick up many of the books I would like to be reading. Anybody else have that problem?

I spent most of this week taking a break from my normal reading habits and indulging in some retro reading, the kinds of books I used to devour but have since almost entirely abandoned.

When I was in middle school and high school, I read almost exclusively mystery and epic fantasy. It stemmed from my elementary school reading habit of picking out the longest books I could find in the children’s and young adult sections of the library, regardless of the subject. We only went to the library every couple of weeks, and I read voraciously as a kid, so I had to pick out really, really long books to tide me over between visits.

Time // 3:20 p.m.

Place // At my desk in my home office/library/cat playroom.

Eating // Nothing yet. I’m getting ready to start cooking Easter dinner for the boyfriend and I — ham, baked potatoes, fresh green beans and breadsticks.

Drinking // Bigelow Tea’s Lemon Lift.

I’ve been on an amazing reading streak this month. Of the eight books I’ve finished so far, I’ve given five of them an initial rating of five stars on the big Google Docs spreadsheet I track my books on. Sometimes that number changes when I sit down to write my review, but I doubt these will change by much. They’re all pretty awesome.