Bloggiesta To Do List

I’ve been procrastinating on blog maintenance issues for a week now, saying that “I’ll do that during Bloggiesta” so I really should get started on doing something now that Bloggiesta is here! I’m back from work at the library and ready for a weekend.

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Reading Journal (14 Oct): Blogging Burnout

I haven’t slowed down my reading, but I have felt intense burnout this week from blogging. Is this the beginning of the end of Rebecca Reads?

I certainly hope not. I’ve just started The Classics Circuit, which I’m very excited about. I’m still hosting The Spice of Life Challenge (which I haven’t given much energy to, I’m so sorry to say) and in November I’m to host The Really Old Classics Challenge with Heather J.

Like Amanda said the other day, I too am a compulsive “finisher.” My Google Reader needs to be at zero every night in order for me to feel like I’m finished. But as I’ve added many blogs in the past weeks, I’m finding it impossible to catch up and get to that “finished” state.

This week, I’ve been avoiding Reader because I know there are so many unread posts in it, and because I know that reading your blogs will make me want to read the books. Since I started tracking it a few months ago, I’ve found I add at least 15 books to my TBR each week, while I only read 2 to 4. Reading what I want to read has begun to feel like an uphill, impossible battle.

I started reading some posts (via Google Reader) yesterday. I’ll try to get back to them. I don’t want to mark all as read, because I feel this is a deeper issue: if I can’t keep up, I’m subscribed to too many blogs. I have to find a way to enjoy the process and stay caught up. Marking all as read does not solve the deeper issue. I’m going to experiment with a few different methods in the coming weeks. Maybe I need different folders of favorites so I can mark some as read and others not. Maybe I need to skim more often. The fact is, I love your blogs, I love reading them, and I love getting tons of books on my TBR. But I can’t keep up.

How do you manage your blog reading? When do you find time to read blogs? How many are you subscribed to?

(P.S. If you have a partial feed, change it to a full feed ASAP. I’m about to unsubscribe, it’s driving me nuts. I love you, but I hate your partial feed!! If you don’t know what type of feed you have, subscribe to it yourself to find out.)

I’ve also felt burnout when it comes time to write my reviews. I have a number of reviews waiting, but at night, I’d rather sit down and read rather than sit at the computer and write up reviews. So the blogging has suffered. I’m going to try something new by merging reviews together but I’m not sure how that will work since my reviews border on 1000 words normally! But merging reviews could take me from 5 or 6 posts a week to 3 or 4. That seems more doable in my overwhelmed mind.

When do you find time to write your reviews? How long to you spend writing reviews?

So instead of blogging this week, I went to the zoo with my family (in honor of the birthday boy). I played in the leaves with him. We visited Grandma. It was a great week, I just neglected my blogging friends.

How do you balance your blogging life with real life? Continue reading »

Celebrating the Classics: A Dead Author Blog Tour? (An Idea)

Yeay! My guest post on reviewing the classics is up on the Book Bloggers Appreciation Week site!

I wrote it in response to Amy’s query on Twitter for what parts of book blogging are underrepresented. I said without hesitation, “Classics,” and I’ve been pondering that thought ever since. (This post is, therefore, rather long.) Continue reading »

Reading Journal (9 Sep): What is Rebecca Reads?

I didn’t even respond to comments over my short vacation weekend. It was so refreshing, and yet for some reason, I feel like I was being neglectful. That suggests to me that I’ve been tied to the blog a bit too much, and I think I may make it a habit to not check the blog every once in a while. (Is that just sad?)

I did read a little bit this week, in between the family dinners and my son’s early-birthday picnic (he’s just a few weeks away from age 2). I finished my reread of Beloved, which I loved, and I read a shorter book for my book club.

Because I’ve been away from the blog, I’ve been thinking about why I blog about books to begin with. I’ve wanted to explore what my blog is, and when Lezlie wrote a post pondering how her blog is perceived by her readers a few weeks ago, I put that idea on my radar too. I’m not sure how my readers perceive this blog (that’s a question for another day), but here are some my thoughts on why my blog is what it is, and what I see it as. Continue reading »

Reading Journal (2 Sep): Vacation Prep

I was going to finish rereading Beloved last night, but instead I fell asleep. Beloved is a powerful, heart-breaking book about the effects of slavery, and while it is brutal, I love rereading it.  At this point, because I read it so many times as a late teen and college student, I feel like I know it. I haven’t reread it for probably five years, and yet, it’s still so familiar.

I finished Gulliver’s Travels and my Mormon architecture book this week, but I won’t get them reviewed until I return from my vacation to Utah. In fact, I’m going to be pretty off-line for the next few days. I’ll have my computer and I’ll respond to comments, but I won’t be Twittering (amazing how quickly that became a habit) and I won’t be checking Reader.

When I go out of town tomorrow, I doubt I’ll get much time for reading. Despite the fact that it is a vacation, it’s a “family vacation.” I don’t often get time to read during the weekends (because it’s “family time”), and this is an extended weekend. To be honest, I’m really looking forward to a non-internet, non-bookish weekend! I really feel I need a break.

Do you read while on family vacations?

I’ll probably post next Wednesday that I haven’t finished anything (other than Beloved, which has 50 pages to go and that I’ll finish tonight). I may surprise myself, though.

That said, I am taking two books with me on my trip. The first is Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. I’m having an IRL book club meeting at my home next Thursday, so I’ll really have to push to finish it if I don’t get any read this weekend. (I, uh, kind of forgot that I needed to read it.) I’m also taking Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, which is the IRL book club selection for the library book club I’m hosting starting in October. I think I’ll read this book at a similar rate to how I read Gulliver’s Travels: a little bit each week. Continue reading »

Reading Journal (29 July): Summer Mode to Blog Reading

My problem this summer is not finding time to read: I’m really enjoying a lot of reading. My son runs around in the back yard and I sit under the umbrella with my books. I curl up in the air conditioning after my son goes to bed for the night. I’m finding lots of reading time.

No, my problem is finding time to read blogs. I’ve only been getting about 20 minutes of blog reading time a day. I haven’t been the commenter I’d like to be. I sincerely apologize to all you great bloggers out there. Maybe I’ll get back in control soon and get more blog reading done. I really do love leaving comments, and I miss visiting your wonderful blogs.

I started to have a weird feeling this week like I’m not reading enough books blogs, but I’m going to try to resist the urge to add more to my Reader. I do hop over to the blog of anyone who comments, but yet I still get this feeling that there is a “summer mode” going on in my blog reading world. Maybe we’re all posting less, but I don’t thinks that’s it. I just feel that I don’t have enough time to give you the attention you deserve.

Have you been doing less blog reading since summer started?

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How to Read and Why: Short Stories Retrospective

Last June, I had just barely begun book blogging. My reading was beginning to expand beyond my comfort zone (i.e., go to the library and randomly take a book with a pretty cover off the shelf) and into the world of TBR lists. When I read the preface to Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why, I decided I needed to focus my reading. I asked myself the question:

How can I really “read” a book, even fiction, to get something out of it?

I decided to treat Bloom’s book as a textbook as I read through the works on his list, in search of the answer to that question. The How to Read and Why Reading List can be found here; all posts on Rebecca Reads relating to HTR&W can be found on the HTR&W tag.

Since I have now finished the short story portion of the HTR&W challenge, I thought I’d take the chance to revisit the project itself. Continue reading »

LibraryThing and Shelfari Revisited

Back in July, I posted a poll on this site asking for input into LibraryThing and Shelfari. I was very curious as to what other bloggers used and why.

Since the Blog Improvement Project this week is to discuss some “social media” tools that we use for blogging, I’d thought I’d revisit these. I feel that both Shelfari and LibraryThing help me blog, although I find them to be more of a help for me than for others. Continue reading »

A Meme, A Farewell, and A Giveaway Winner

Bookshelf Meme

Eva at A Striped Armchair created a fun meme about the books on our bookshelves. Continue reading »

Google Reader Overload! + Blog Thoughts + Memelet

I have a problem. I am subscribed to too many great book blogs. Continue reading »