Bloggiesta: Friday and Saturday Progress Report

Friday 8th January 2010

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to do much on Friday as I was at work most of the day. Here’s what I did have time to do:

1. Signed in to Bloggiesta and posted my Starting Post.
2. Finished writing my review of The White Queen.
3. Looked at all the available Mini-Challenges and decided which ones to do.

Time spent: 1.5 hours

Saturday 9th January 2010

1. Commented on some other Bloggiesta participants’ posts.
2. Linked my review of The White Queen to challenge posts and challenge host blogs. Updated my challenge progress bars.
3. Completed the Labels/Tag Mini-Challenge at Beth Fish Reads. I was using far too many different labels so I removed the ones I decided were unnecessary. I’m still not sure I’m using the right labels, though. What do you think? I’ve also created a new tab (the tabs are near the top of the page under the blog header) so that I have a list of reviews by author.
4. Completed the Bloggiesta Back-up Challenge at Farm Lane Books. I had never thought about backing up my blog and it was a lot easier than I expected! I’ll have to remember to do this regularly.
5. Completed the Footers Mini-Challenge at Bookalicio.us and updated the copyright notice in my blog footer (I hadn’t even noticed the date still said 2009!). I also added a copyright to my RSS feed footer.
6. Completed the Cheat Sheet Mini-Challenge at There’s A Book. I’ve created a cheat sheet in Google Docs with some useful links, HTML code and post templates. I can’t believe I’ve never thought about doing this before – it’s going to save me a lot of time!
7. I ran my blog through Website Grader as suggested by the Grade Your Blog Mini-Challenge which was hosted by Bookish Ruth last year. I got a grade of 74/100 and it told me I needed meta tags, so that’s something I’ll have to work on.
8. Created a signature to use at the bottom of all my posts.

Time spent: 8.5 hours

Bloggiesta: Starting Post

Today is the first day of Bloggiesta! For those of you who don’t know what Bloggiesta is, it’s a blogging marathon hosted by Natasha of Maw Books and is a great way for bloggers to get ideas and inspiration to help improve their blogs.

When I first decided to start a book blog in October last year, I had no idea the book blogging community was so huge. I just thought I would post some reviews as a kind of online reading diary and if I was lucky one or two other people might read them. Consequently I didn’t give much thought to layouts, graphics, post templates or anything like that. That’s why I’m looking forward to taking part in Bloggiesta this weekend. I’ll try to post a few updates along the way to let you know what I’ve been doing!

See this post at Maw Books for more information.

It’s 2010!

Myspace Graphics
New Year Graphics at WishAFriend.com

Well, it’s 2010! I woke up today to the heaviest snow we’ve had here for years, so I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere this morning which is fine because it gives me time to organize my 2010 challenges and to do some reading.

The first book I’m reading this year is The White Queen by Philippa Gregory which will count towards a few different challenges including both the historical fiction ones. What about you – what’s your first book of 2010?

2009 End Of Year Wrap-Up Post

Since I only started blogging in October, this post refers to my October-December 2009 reading only. I’m looking forward to 2010 as it will be my first full year as a book blogger.

Number of books read (from 17th October – 31st December):

11

Reviews posted in 2009 (from 17th October – 31st December):

October 2009

An Echo in the Bone – Diana Gabaldon

November 2009

Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
The Moonlit Cage – Linda Holeman
Molly’s Millions – Victoria Connelly

December 2009

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
The Rendezvous and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
A Warrior’s Life: A Biography of Paulo Coelho – Fernando Morais
The Christmas Mystery – Jostein Gaarder

Challenges completed in 2009:

The Christmas Reading Challenge

Thanks to everyone who has visited my blog in 2009. It’s great to be a part of the book blogging community! Happy New Year and I hope you all enjoy your reading in 2010!

The Sunday Salon: 15th November 2009

Books read and reviewed:

This week I reviewed Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I also finished reading Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain this morning. It was not an easy read but I learned a lot from it – I’ll post my review later.

Blog updates:

You may have noticed that I’ve made one small addition to the left sidebar – this is a list of links to international book giveaways. There are not many giveaways which are open to those of us outside the US and Canada, so I’ll try to keep the list updated every time I discover an international giveaway.

I also now have an A-Z list of reviews which I will add to every time I review a book. There are only two books on the list so far because my blog is still so new, but I’m sure the list will soon start to grow!

Finally I want to tell you about a new feature coming soon to this blog – it’s called Great Books and will give me an excuse to revisit some of the great books I read before creating my blog. Although I have a very long TBR list, there are some books that are so good they deserve to be read more than once. Great Books will be an occasional series in which I’ll re-read and review one of my all-time favourites.

Welcome!

Hi, I’m Helen. Welcome to my blog. As I love reading and am constantly in the middle of one book or another, I’ve finally decided to join the world of book bloggers. Here at She Reads Novels I’ll be posting reviews, thoughts and opinions on the books that I read and on other literature-related topics.

Although I enjoy discovering new books, I’m also a believer in re-reading books. Sometimes I find that I need to read a book two or three times before I can fully appreciate it. Therefore I will also be reviewing some old favourites as I re-visit them, as well as books that I’m reading for the first time.

Most of the books I read are classics or historical fiction, but feel free to recommend anything you think I might like.