Tag: blogging

Organization Part Six: Goodreads II

Posted March 28, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 14 Comments

Inspired by my recent organizational acquisitions (and posts by Hannah), I wanted to share some information about how I keep myself organized – primarily for blogging and reading, but also a little about my personal organization, too. Part Six: Organizing My Goodreads Shelves (II) Yeah. My most recent organizational post was about Goodreads too. I’m already ready for a little update because I’ve made some GREAT changes to help me further organize my TBR. I talked on Friday about how many problems I have with actually creating and sticking with a TBR, so today will show a couple ways I’ve worked towards fixing that issue. It’s not a perfect system because I’ll never have a strict TBR, but it helps a lot. In the previous Goodreads organization post I also shared links for more Goodreads organization posts by some other bloggers, so I’ll do that here for your reference again: Brittany’s, Bekka’s, Hannah’s. This one is specifically about two new shelves I recently created that help me manage my TBR and keep track of books I’m excited to read. TBR-Next | an exclusive shelf Do you want to hear something really stupid? When I first saw people like Danielle creating exclusive shelves on Goodreads to mark what books they’re planning to read next, I thought it was a great idea to keep your TBR ideas in one place. I made a shelf and it lasted like a day or to. The reason? I hated having to scroll down on my Goodreads app to click to access […]

Adjusting My Blog Post Schedule

Posted March 9, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 22 Comments

Many moons ago, I wrote a post about my blogging schedule. At that point, I had just started up the blog and had maybe a little too much time on my hands. I was incredibly specific about when I posted certain things and making sure I had 15 book reviews up per month. This was in addition to participating in 4 memes per week and posting 2 “random” things (like recommendation lists or discussions). I’d also post sign-ups for readathons and both mid-month AND end-of-month wrap-ups. You can do the math: that means that most days of the month had 2 posts. I even said, “I really try not to bombard people with any more than 2 posts per day!” SO EXCESSIVE. I mean, I’m glad I dove into this hobby headfirst… but good lord, woman. I can’t lie though, I definitely blog a bit too much still. I love signing up for readathons, participating in tags, and writing so many posts that I’m scheduled out until next year. (Slight exaggeration, but not that much. I’m insane.) I LOVE making lists and TBRs even if I know I’m never going to follow them. I love making graphics and messing around with layouts for my posts. I CAN’T STOP. I’ve changed my organization methods SO many times and I feel like I’m finally getting used to my latest plan. Today I’ll share my new blog schedule and talk about how I organize and plan… everything.Do you have a planned schedule for your […]

Organization Part Five: Goodreads

Posted February 3, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 14 Comments

Inspired by my recent organizational acquisitions (and posts by Hannah), I wanted to share some information about how I keep myself organized – primarily for blogging and reading, but also a little about my personal organization, too. Part Five: Organizing My Goodreads Shelves There have been an influx of Goodreads-related posts online lately (Brittany’s post and Bekka’s post for starters!) plus Hannah’s tried-and-true guide that I think everyone has read. Feeling inspired by these posts, I decided to include how I personally use Goodreads to keep organized. I’ve come a longggg way since I first started using the site in 2010. Hopefully some of these methods help you out too! Time for a Change When I first started using Goodreads heavily when blogging, I noticed everyone had fun shelves that they were using to remember certain things about books. They also had them split up by genre, for easy access to certain kinds of books. I think mine was super general, including just read, to-read, and currently-reading. I decided to at least add in genres so that I could keep track of what I was in the mood to read. This was a REALLY LONG PROCESS. I added all of the books I read and all of the books on my TBR to these genre shelves. I also added a few more to keep track of things further. Step One: Genres, Formats, and More I added the shelves you see on the side (thank god for old screenshots from when my Goodreads looked like […]

Organization Part Four: Reading Notebooks

Posted January 22, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 11 Comments

Inspired by my recent organizational acquisitions (and posts by Hannah), I wanted to share some information about how I keep myself organized – primarily for blogging and reading, but also a little about my personal organization, too. Part Four: Revamping & Reorganizing Bookish Notebooks I realize that this is kind of a broad category because I plan to talk about how I take notes while reading as well as where all of my book-related notes exist. I’ve been trying to revamp my TBR creation methods and haven’t had a lot of success. Now that I changed over into a different method that actually helps me take better notes while reading, I revamped my Foxy Dori a little bit. Here’s how I’ve switched everything up lately. The Old Way A major Foxy Dori redo has occurred since you last learned about my traveler’s notebook. I shared how mine contained various sections to hold multiple notebooks and clear pockets to hold things. In case you forgot, here are some of the features of this wonderful invention: Dashboard, including clear pockets and pouch: basically a piece of laminated paper folded in half, to create a separate section inside of your traveler’s notebook – I keep my pockets, bookmarks, notepads, etc. in here. Book notes notebook: a place for me to write notes as I read (and reference later to write better reviews) – this is the biggest issue area for me, and the reason for this entire revamp. Post planning and other notes: a separate notebook that contains graph paper for […]

Organization Part Three: My Planner(s)

Posted January 7, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 13 Comments

Inspired by my recent organizational acquisitions (and posts by Hannah), I wanted to share some information about how I keep myself organized – primarily for blogging and reading, but also a little about my personal organization, too. Part Three: Finding a Planning Rhythm OH HEY, remember this series? I previously talked about my Traveler’s Notebook and Book Bag last year, but I’m here again to update you on some planning-related THINGS. First thing’s first, a little update about my previous two posts in this series… because some things have changed. Updates! On my book bag → I don’t really carry all that shit around to work anymore. To be frank, I got lazy. That’s really all it comes down to. I started sleeping later and now give myself less time to jerk around in the morning. I started realizing that I really don’t give myself time at work to plan or read during my lunch breaks anymore. So why lug it around? On my notebooks/foxy dori → I still use this… in general. I’ve become terrible at taking bookish notes these days (and I feel like my reviews reflect that. Whoops!). I just don’t feel like dealing with it. I still love my Foxy Dori but need to find a better use for some of those notebooks. I like holding my bookmarks in there and recording quotes, but I don’t fully use it like I used to. I still love the idea, but just need to re-evaluate how I’m using it. My Planner-Related Timeline of Failures […]

The Difference Between Readers and Bloggers

Posted November 20, 2015 / Discussions, Features / 31 Comments

A popular TTT a few weeks ago introduced me to a lot of people’s bad bookish habits that they want to quit. Along with popular “bookworm problems” or “confessions,” this general topic makes its way around our section of the internet quite frequently. We’re always discussion some of our quirky or bad habits surrounding reading and blogging. It makes for a lot of fun conversation because you’re like THANK GOD I’m not the only one who does this! In reading the comments on my post, I started to think: bookworm problems that you’ll see on Buzzfeed, for example, don’t FULLY get us bloggers. People who read and people who blog (about books) are sort of really different. OUR bookish “bad habits” aren’t even thought about by the general reading population. Most of them are driven by blogging. We totally relate to those long lists of bookish problems like wanting a full-scale library in your house or thinking of fictional characters in non-fictional ways. BUT, beyond that, we put a lot of unnecessary pressure on ourselves to read and blog and keep on top of things. (I loved Brittany’s somewhat similar post a while ago on cutting ourselves some slack!) Being a regular ol’ reader is a totally different story. This is meant to be a fun post to kind of make fun of ourselves and think about our bookish habits from before we became bloggers. Remember those days? Free from obligations and terms like TBR or DNF? Let’s reminisce on the good days, shall […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #22: Resolutions

Posted December 30, 2014 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 24 Comments

Top Ten Bookish and Blogging Resolutions Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we make LISTS of our top ten books based on that week’s prompt… and then we stalk other people’s answers to add a million books to our TBR. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. I was planning on including a post like this within the next day or two about my goals for 2015, so this is perfect! As everyone knows, I started blogging in July of 2014, so this coming year will be my first full year of blogging. I’ve signed up for a number of challenges, since it’s the first time I can participate in the year-long stuff, and plan on doing a lot of stuff in the coming year. Thanks everyone for your support in getting me started! Write more original discussion posts: These seem to get a lot of traffic on the blog and I love reading other people’s opinions. I need to start drafting a post the minute an idea pops into my head, because otherwise I forget all of my ideas when the time comes. Write more top 10 lists and recommendation lists: These are supposed to be a main feature on my blog but I rarely post them. The problem is that I didn’t really have a lot of books to base these lists on. I would find myself repeating the same ones over and over again. With the hefty […]