Bloggiesta is over, and I have to say I didn't get much done. Woe is to me. But! I did get a new blog theme for 2010 up, and it is beautiful!!! Thank you so much to Drea from Book Blather for helping me with the HTML for it. So in case you visited today and said to yourself, "Wow! It looks like someone knows what they're doing." Yeah, that would be Drea. :)
Beth from Beth Fish Reads gave us all a mini-challenge to clean up our labels so they're more user-friendly. I didn't really accomplish this for the whole blog, but I did add labels to my old posts here, so people can find them. I kind of went label-crazy for a few months there, but people will just have to deal with it.
Chelle from Tempting Persephone (great name for a blog, by the way) challenged us to feature the best posts on our blog. However we defined "best" was up to us. This was pretty difficult, as you can probably imagine. But I picked out several favorites:
- One of my favorite reviews here is still Drood by Dan Simmons. Not just because I was really proud of myself for finishing it, but I think it's one of my better reviews, even if the formatting is all screwed up.
- I also enjoyed reviewing Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick for the sheer WTF value that is that book.
- Symbol or Fraud was another early post I did that was a response to a Booking Through Thursday meme.
- A Short History of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy in Art is ironically titled, since it is an insanely long post. In fact, it might the longest post I've written so far. I'm quite proud of it, though, even though no one wants to read the whole thing.
- My post about the art history shout-out on True Blood still gets comments.
- And Why I Don't Rate My Reviews is basically a manifesto of what my goal is when writing reviews.
And finally, Jenn from Jenn's Bookshelves posted a great mini-challenge on a way to brain storm for post ideas! Here is what you do:
Sounds simple, right? I tried this exercise and here's what I came up with:
- Set-up: Get a piece of paper and draw five
circles vertically along the paper. In the circles, write the titles
of your last five blog posts.- Extend Your Posts: Take each post and brainstorm
ways the post can be extended. Answer a comment left on a previous
post. Expand upon your answer. Expand upon an idea or opinion that you
may have briefly mentioned in the previous post. For each idea draw a
line out from the circle, draw a square (or use a different color) and
write the idea inside of it.- Extend Further: This step is optional. Expand upon the topics you have come up with and you’ll end up with even more post ideas!
Books--I Do Not Haz Them
- Giving books to non-readers
- Review of the Sharon Shinn book I got (after I read it, of course)
- Gift cards versus getting actual books: is one better than the other?
- Review of 500 Days of Summer
- The awesomeness that is Peter Lorre
- Read Maltese Falcon and compare it to the movie
- Women's roles in film (pretty broad, I know)
- Review of the next Harry Potter book I read
- Is JK Rowling the 21st-century version of Dickens?
- Dumbledore: how evil is he?
- How long is too long for a book?
- The next m/m book I read reviewed
- DNFs from m/m month
- M/M books-romantic?
- Basically reviews of the books I'm planning to read for this, haha.
- Updates on other posts participants have written.
Thus ends another Bloggiesta. I blogged for about 13 1/2 hours, completed three (ish--give me a break Beth, please?) mini-challenges, and retooled my blog. I know I did a lot less than some people, but I'm very happy with what I accomplished. I can't wait for the next Bloggiesta! Thank you again to Natasha from Maw Books for hosting it. Hasta la próxima, bloggers!
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