Wrap-Up: Bloggiesta!

First of all, thanks to Natasha of Maw Books Blog for hosting the Bloggiesta (¡Ole!)! It was a wonderful idea that helped me accomplish quite a bit for my blog, even though, at first, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do.

Timetables:

I goofed and began the Bloggiesta at 6 a.m. my time; we were supposed to start at 8 a.m, but because I started early, I put a large sticky note on my computer saying “Stop at SIX” to remind me not to squeeze in another two hours.

That said, here’s my timecard for the event:

• Began the Bloggiesta at 6 a.m. on Friday
• Stopped at 8:45 for breakfast and to help clean out my brother’s room
• Began again at 10:15
• Stopped at 11:15 for lunch
• Began again at 12:30 p.m.
• Stopped at 3:00 to go see “Up,” which was fabulous.
• Began again at 8:00
• Stopped at 11:00 for bed
• Began at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday
• Stopped at 8 a.m. to drive my brother to camp
• Began again at 6:00 p.m.
• Stopped again at 11:00 for bed, and then I slept past my stop time until 6:23 a.m. on Sunday.

So, if my math is correct, I Bloggiesta-ed for fourteen hours and forty-five minutes, which was just three hours and fifteen minutes short of my eighteen-hour goal. Pretty good considering that when I signed up, I didn’t know I would be driving my brother to camp yesterday.

Bloggiesta To-Do-List:

• Write reviews for those books I need to review:
  • Sky Burial (Xinran)
  • The Plain Janes (Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg)
  • Pretties (Scott Westerfeld)
• Participate in weekly memes:
  • Library Loot
  • Teaser Tuesday
  • Friday Finds
• Get caught up on Booking Through Thursday questions
• Write The Sunday Salon post for a rainy day
  • Post covers upcoming books-to-movies. (Some of you may have already seen it since I actually posted it instead of scheduling it.)
• Write post about “Political Science Fiction” seminar class
  • Not a whole post, but I’m waiting to write something more in-depth when I’m actually in the class.
• Update TBR List
  • Removed the sixteen books I’ve read
  • Added twenty-three more
• Update Challenge page
  • Wrote wrap-up post for Scott Westerfeld Mini-Challenge
  • Added info about Summer Lovin’ Challenge
• Fix broken links and/or links to old blog
  • I’m afraid that this is such a massive undertaking, it needs it’s own Bloggiesta to get done.
• Post book review URLs on challenge blogs
  • 1% Well-Read
  • 9 For 09
  • A to Z
  • Chunkster
  • Classics
  • Dewey’s Books
  • Diversity Rocks!
  • Read Your Own Books
  • Read Your Own Name
  • Scott Westerfeld
  • Spring Reading Thing
  • To Be Read
  • War Through the Generations
  • What’s In a Name?
• Create a blogroll/links page
• Check out different themes for the blog
  • Found another I liked, but the repeated authors tag takes up too much space on the side and I would have to make a new header for the blog. So for now, I’m sticking with the one I have.
• Figure out where to move repeated authors tag cloud since it has ballooned into something bigger than I expected
  • Unfortunately, it’s going to have to stay where it is. Every where else I move it squeezes it so much that the text gets all jumbled up.
• Type up giant giveaway post for July 1^st
  • I made the database of books in Excel, but now I need to upload it to Google Spreadsheets and flesh out the details for the post.
• Find new selections for Dewey’s Books Challenge
• Comment on every blog I follow
  • I’ve probably most proud of this. I’m the world’s worst commenter, so this was a great way to comment on all 40 book blogs I follow.
• Reorganize Google Reader
  • I weeded my reader down from 89 book blogs to 40 that I really enjoy reading and have similar tastes to myself. Some of these blogs also hadn’t been updated since December of 2008.
  • The Book Lady’s Mini-Challenge helped me with this one.