Working on two blogs at the same time is a bit much, I found. Next time I will have to concentrate on one… What did I get done for The Bookkeeper?

• I wrote down some ideas for future posts.
• I finally found out why my WYSIWYG editor hasn’t worked for ages. It didn’t matter that much, because I use Live Writer, but when I wanted to edit a post it so annoyed me to use html that I went and finally looked for the solution to the problem.

That’s it really. I got more things done at my Teleidoscope, though. How is your Bloggiesta going so far?

What have I done so far? Not much I’m afraid, at least not at The Bookkeeper.

• I created two different footers that I can add to specific posts in order to prompt readers to comment (whether it’ll work we’ll see).
• I joined the Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Books’ Help a Blogger out challenge and offered help with Photoshop. Seems everybody is all set though.
• I joined the Word Lily’s 10 Things a Blogger shouldn’t do challenge. See my post here.

Still do do:

• Do the Devourer of Books’ Google forms challenge
• Have a look at the Bloggiesta Feed and visit some blogs
• Write some future posts, but at least I cooked something today for the next weekend cooking post and took pictures along the way.

How are you all doing with Bloggiesta?

I thought it would be interesting to join the Word Lily’s 10 Things a Blogger shouldn’t do challenge.

If I assign 0.5 points to every list item I think I would score around 4. That doesn’t mean that my blog is perfect and I have millions of readers. No. For example, I am doing pretty good at the “You must not expect success without promoting” item, but this only means that I do not expect success. I suck at promoting and am actually not active enough in that area, but at least I’m not complaining about the lack of success, .

The one thing that definitely needs improving is the networking angle. I comment on almost every comment on MY blog but do not comment on many others. My Google reader is neglected, the number of blogs I really read regularly is very small and I do not comment nearly as much as others. I am not overly active on twitter and I only use Facebook sporadically for my real life. There, I know what the problem is, but lack of time and lack in inclination (sometimes) throws a spanner in my works.

It’s Friday and Bloggiesta has started. It is already evening here and due to work I haven’t done anything yet. But I already had a look at Maw Books Blog and decided what I want to do. I must go and have a look at twitter, too. I just hope I am not going to get lost there and as a result won’t get anything accomplished.

My plans include not only this blog, but also my craft blog Rikki’s Teleidoscope which is very badly neglected. It needs tons of work, so I might put the focus on that other blog this year.

For The Bookkeeper

• I am mainly planning to write posts for a rainy day and prepare some review posts of books that I already have but not read yet.

Then I want to

• add some sort of footer under each post encouraging comments

and do three mini challenges that are not related to a specific blog:

• Devourer of Books’ Google forms challenge
• Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Books’ Help a Blogger out challenge. If anyone needs help with creating a button or banner in Photoshop feel free to ask me. Either contact me by email or at twitter @Ailuah
• Word Lily’s 10 Things a Blogger shouldn’t do challenge

For the Teleidoscope, I’ll do a separate post over there, otherwise I’ll just get too confused.

 

For all the news about Bloggiesta you can either

• subscribe to the shared Bloggiesta RSS feed.
• Follow @Bloggiesta on Twitter, and use the hashtag #bloggiesta to join the chatter.
• Follow the Twitter list of this edition’s Bloggiesta participants.

It’s time for another round of Bloggiesta soon. The 4th edition will take place on the weekend of January 21-23, 2011 and will be again hosted by Maw Books Blog. I participated for the first time last year and it was such a fun event, I’d recommend it to every book blogger out there. Not only did I manage to get a lot of things done re my blog or book blogging in general, I also got to know a few very nice people who are now some of my favourite bloggers and online friends.

If you are planning to re-organize your blog or learn something new about book blogging and maybe need some motivational help and/or would like to meet new book bloggers, you should head on over to Maw Books Blog to sign up.

Wondering where to store the large amounts of books you have? Why don’t you do it like a couple in St. Louis Parks and buy the house next door? Tada, the perfect private library!

Our book shelves are in a state of perpetual transition. We sort them out, arrange everything and by the time we are finished we need to re-arrange again. Unfortunately the space for books does not grow proportionally to the acquisition of books.

So this is the current state of some of our shelves. There are more opposite and in other rooms, but this is a large part. As you can see from the boxes and the general disorder we will never be done.

The books are three or four rows deep which makes it hard to find any specific book. This is the reason why I said in a former Weekly Geeks post that sometimes I can’t find a book I want to read. The books simply get sucked up in the maelstrom only to turn up again by chance. So far we haven’t found a solution to the problem. Just. Not. Enough. Space.

In case you don’t know me, I like to make up medical sounding names for my book obsessions. For example: P.A.B.D.. I’d now like to introduce Shiny Book Syndrome. This is usually accompanied by a book hording problem yet to be named.
So what is Shiny Book Syndrome? It is when a person only wants to read their newest book and leave piles of poor unread books on their shelves to collect dust.
What can you do to alleviate the symptoms?
My first suggestion would be to make a list of all the books you own. I use GoogleDocs. I start by creating a form and then can organize the spreadsheet to see what I have and if I’ve read it yet or not. (For more info on how to do this, go here).
After you know what you have, I’d suggest jumping in on some reading challenges to motivate you to read the books you already own. Read more…

It’s strange, but it seems I’m an untypical reader – or at least not as avid as the rest of us. I don’t particularly suffer from P.A.B.D., don’t hoard excessively and my wishlist is manageable. And now I realize that the Shiny Book Syndrome isn’t my thing either. Yes, I often do read the new book first and leave the older books on the shelf, but this is simply because I got the new book since it suited my current mood. If I all of a sudden feel like reading that specific book that has been waiting to be read for months, then I’ll read it. I had “Gods behaving badly” next to my bed for a long time and the other day I felt drawn to it and started to read.

To me it’s not about new or old, but totally about my mood and whether a certain book fits in or not.

 

Don’t know where to put your books? Have a look at the very smart and beautiful solution that Levitate Architecture came up with.

So this week, I am curious about those gigantic TBR piles which readers tend to accumulate. Please share with us your habits, tendencies or obsessions when it comes to hoarding behavior.

• Post a photo (or two or three) of your books to-be-read
• Share your buying or book accumulating habits – how bad of a problem do YOU have?!?!?
• Do you keep all the books you’ve read, or do you give them away or sell them?
• Can you walk past a bookstore and not go in? If you go in, do you impulsively purchase?

Don’t let these questions restrict you…tell us all about your hoarding issues, if only to make the rest of us feel better!

I don’t think I have a problem. I know, everybody says that they are alright, but when it comes to hoarding books, I’m good. Sort of. Just a bit erratic and random.

I buy books when I see them and like them, planning to read them soon and then I don’t. On the other hand I buy books and read them right away. It all depends on the book and my mood.

I have no TBR pile, some books are next to my bed, some are on one book shelf, some are on another one. I’m not that organized when it comes to books, I’m afraid. Sometimes I want to read a book and can’t find it. So, maybe I do have a problem after all.

When I see a book store I usually go in. Just to have a look around, not necessarily to buy something.

I used to keep all the books I’ve read, but recently we started to have a severe problem with space. So, now I only keep fiction books I know I might want to re-read again. Others I swap. This month I also started to give away books here on the blog, which I want to keep doing regularly. I have two moving boxes full of books I want to get rid of right now and there are more to come. Somehow though our shelves look just as crowded as they did before. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me, it seems.

Have a look at what other Weekly Geeks have to say about their hoarding behaviour!