Clean Away the Clutter Challenge Activity 7

The read-a-thon is hosted by Kate at The Neverending Shelf.

Today’s activity is to do a wrap-up post, so here I go.

I’ve gotten a ton of reading done, more in the first half of the week than the second half though. I still think I made out pretty good. I didn’t reach my goal of 24 hours, it was probably more like 16.

I got a bunch of posts written – at least one a day, which is great for me cause I struggle with the whole consistency of posting thing. I thought there was no way I could post everyday, but the challenges were great and really made me put the effort in to get them done each day. They were so worth it.

It was great reading everyone else’s posts. The Mr Linky’s in each activity’s post made it easy to check out what everyone else was doing, so that was fun.

Thanks for all the work you put in Kate, as well as everyone who posted challenges. You’re hard work is very much appreciated!

Clean Away the Clutter Challenge Activity 6

The read-a-thon is hosted by Kate at The Neverending Shelf and the activity today is courtesy Eleni at La Femme Readers.

The challenge today is to list the top six books that you’ve read in 2010. Yeah, not so easy. I’ve looked through my past posts and here are the books I’ve chosen in no particular order (links go to my reviews):

A Big Little Life by Dean Koontz

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell

The Unwritten Rule by Elizabeth Scott

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Images: goodreads.com

Clean Away the Clutter Challenge Activity 5

The Clean Away the Clutter Read-A-Thon is hosted by The Neverending Bookshelf. Today’s activity is hosted by A Passion for Books.

Today’s challenge is to de-clutter the blog – always a good thing to do. It seems like I always think of something that I should do to make things more streamlined, but it never gets done, so this is a great challenge for me.

First I will be looking over the labels and make sure that they’re all used appropriately.

Second, I have a spreadsheet going of all my posts. However, it’s not up to date. It makes things a lot easier for to, to have everything organized in one spot with all the information that I need. So I will be updating that as well.

And last of all, I have a couple ideas for posts that aren’t really enough to be posts on their own. I think I’ll combine a few of them, and instead of doing 4 or 5 posts, I’ll just do 2. I’ll get my ideas written down so that I know which ideas go together.

Thanks for the challenge today, Casey!

Clean Away the Clutter Challenge Activity 4

The Clean Away the Clutter Read-A-Thon is hosted by The Neverending Bookshelf. Today’s activity is hosted by Teens Read and Write.

Is there at least one book on your growing TBR that has been there forever and (if you were honest) you could give up without to much trauma?

Yep. The third Anne of Green Gables has been in my basket for forever. By forever I mean almost a year. I’ve never read it before, but I think the first one will always be my favorite.

What is your latest “Gotta Have It” book? (That you can get once you’ve given up that one in question #1)

The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening. I watched an episode last week for the first time, and I really liked it, even though I didn’t know half of what was going on. I really want to read the books now.

What are your classics – you’re ‘comfort books’ that you never want to give up?

My Harry Potter books, Pride and Prejudice, a couple of my Stephen King ones, my non-fiction books on NGO’s/humanitarian organizations in Africa.

What are your best tips for keeping that TBR in check?

Using my book basket. I can have as many books as I want as long as they fit in the basket. If they don’t fit then some of them have to go back to the library, whether they’ve been read or not.

Clean Away the Clutter Challenge Activity 3

Today’s challenge is hosted by The Neverending Shelf. You can see the post with the challenge here.

So, we’re supposed to share three blogs that we enjoy reading and want to share with others. It’s such a great idea – there are so many blogs out there, it’s always interesting to see what other people are reading. Here are my three:

Cover to Cover

Not only is Jessica a book blogger and reviewer, she also hopes to one day be an author. I love hearing about the other side of the book, from the writer’s perspective. She’s participated in NaNoWriMo, and I’m kind of in awe, cause I want to do it next year too.

The Brown Eyed Baker

Not only do I like to read, but I’m also a big baker. I recently discovered that there are a ton of baking blogs out there in the blogosphere. Why I didn’t know this before, I have no idea, but I was pretty excited when I discovered this one. She makes a great selection of baked good – everything from breads to cookies to pies – and they all look so delicious. One of my favorite things I’ve made from her blog was doggy treats! I shouldn’t say that they were my favorite, my dog Bailey was the one who really liked them.

The Recipe Curio

I love looking at old school recipe. Anything from the sixties and older intrigues me – I find them so interesting. She  posts recipes that she’s found in old collections of recipe cards, clippings from magazine or newspapers, and even old cookbooks. Most of the time she shares a picture of the recipe card/clipping/cookbook as well as a typed version of the recipe. I LOVE seeing the old ones, they’re so cool!

I hope you enjoy the little look into what’s in my Google Reader!

Clean Away the Clutter Challenge Activity 2

Today’s Clean Away The Clutter Read-A-Thon activity is hosted over at Red House Books. You can find the challenge here.

Today’s challenge is to get all those reviews done of books that you’ve read. Amazingly, that’s not a problem I have! All my reviews are up to date and ready to go.

But it wouldn’t be a challenge if I didn’t do anything, so I spent some time putting together everything but the review for the books that I’m currently reading as well as the ones I have out from the library. This means that once I’m done a book I just have to put in my review and the rest will be done – I won’t have to find a picture of the cover, or put in the summary, all that prep work is already done. Yay!

Clean Away The Clutter Read-A-Thon Begins!

First off, head over to The Neverending Shelf for all the info about the Read-A-Thon. You can still sign up if you want to!

Today’s challenge is hosted over at Bookworming in the 21st Century, and the post can be found here.

I’m supposed to post a picture of my books, so here it is.

I usually don’t buy books, I borrow them from the library, so they stay in this basket til I get a chance to read them. Once a week I head back to the library to return the books I’ve finished and get new ones, so I don’t have to worry about where to store them. Although lately it seems like I’m borrowing more books than I’m actually reading, but I’m hoping this challenge will help me with that.

To keep the books under control I try to limit myself to the number of books I borrow. If they won’t fit in the basket then I can’t borrow them. That way I’ll always have a mostly manageable pile of books. At the very least they’ll be contained in the basket so that they’re not all over the place.

The magazines to the right of the basket on the floor are ones that I’m done reading and will be giving to friends of mine to enjoy.

I actually need to head out to the library today to pick up a hold so I’ll be taking a few of the books that I’ve already read back with me. It’s not too bad that I’m returning three books and (hopefully) only bringing one back, right?

Time to get back to reading!

Clean Away The Clutter Read-A-Thon

Kate over at The Neverending Shelf is hosing the Clean Away The Clutter Read-A-Thon, and I’ve decided to join in.

The idea is to make a dent in your TBR pile. You can decide how many hours you’ll commit to read. I’ve set my goal at 24.

It starts Monday, April 5 at 7am and goes until Sunday, April 11 at 11pm.

If you’d like more information or want to sign up for the Read-A-Thon, check out this post at The Neverending Shelf.