I’m a Late Geek

I am SO late. Work was insane this week and the baby is still teething. I just never found the time to write this up until today. In all fairness, I didn’t even find out about this until like Monday or Tuesday. So maybe I’m not TOO late.

These were our instructions:

1. Look through the list of blogs on the Mr Linky below and see if you can find five that are new to you. If you can’t, find as many new blogs as possible and then some you don’t read super regularly.

2. Visit those new blogs. A comment would be nice; people like comments.

3. When you’re ready, at some point by Friday if you want to be included in the blurbs next week, write a post in your blog featuring those new blogs you visited.

4. Don’t forget to come back here and leave a link to your post, so that I can get it into the blurbs!

1. Dewey herself!

I’m sure we’ve crossed paths on the great internets, but somehow I never found my way to her blog until she started this most excellent challenge. No worries, I’ll be a regular now! She reads my kind of books! Anyone who loves Le Petite Prince is a friend of mine!

2. Bookworm.

Upon my first visit, I was quite taken with Julie’s template. I’m a sucker for a great template and her’s is very pleasing to my eyes! Next, of course, I automatically click on her reading category. I had to see just what kind of books she reads! And I find this great paragraph that she’s quoted from one of my favorite reads:

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled. And during this time, these days when I read all day and half the night, when I slept under a counterpane strewn with books, when my sleep was black and dreamless and passed in a flash and I woke to read again — the lost joys of reading returned to me. Miss Winter restored to me the virginal qualities of the novice reader, and then with her stories she ravished me.

Julie just got me hooked on her blog!

3. Susie’s The Stuffed Shelf

I totally LOVE her header. Love it, love it, love IT. Really hooked me in. She loved The Tea Rose AND Interpreter of Maladies. A woman after my own heart. And anyone who can title a blog entry with “Bookstores Help Me Save Money” just has to be read. Cause I need to learn that trick.

4. Ashleigh - Random Field Notes

Okay, so Ashleigh isn’t TOTALLY new to me. But she’s just so flippin’ cool! She’s literary. She’s a crafter. She’s a dreamer. She’s fun. She’s an EGYPTOLOGIST! My goodness, but that is one of those things I used to dream of when I was young and anything was possible. I used to go out in my yard with my tiny shovel and a brush and dig holes and look for fossils. I think the best thing I ever found was an old glass bottle, but it was fun! And she’s living my dream dude! Totally love her!

5. Natasha at Maw Books.

She likes Markus Zusak. So I like her! And her blog looks fabulous. I have lots of exploring to do.

As for Week 2;

So here’s your challenge! If you’re willing, adopt Darla’s policy in your own blog. I realize this is a big commitment, so think it over first, but I think it can be really community-building.

1. Write a blog post as soon as possible telling your readers that you’re adopting Darla’s policy. Darla has people email her, but you could use a Mr Linky or you could just ask people to leave their links in your comments. But however you collect links, I would advise that you then put their review links into the actual blog post. This makes them easier for readers to find, and it’s a more “official” link for your blogging pals, who are taking their time to go find their relevant reviews for you. You may want to just say you’ll post review links from now on, or you may want to let your readers send links for any reviews you’ve ever written, or you may want to set a time limit, like reviews from the past month. If you let readers give you unlimited links, this may be time consuming at first, but after a while, you’ll just get a couple in for every new review you post.

2. As much as you can with the time available to you during the week, visit other Weekly Geeks who are adopting Darla’s policy and see if you have any reviews of books they’ve reviewed.

3. Later in the week (by Thursday is easiest for me, but by Friday is also ok) write about your experience this week: did people take you up on your offer, did you find reviews you could give to other bloggers, did you enjoy the experience, do you think you want to keep this policy, etc. Don’t forget to leave your link in the comments of this post so that I can put it in next week’s blurbs. I’m not going to link to your beginning-of-the-week announcement of your new policy, just to your end-of-the-week reflection post.

4. I would remind people for a while, at the end of your reviews, that you’re doing this. After a while, your regular readers will remember your new policy, but you might want to state it somewhere permanent for new readers.

All I can say is I’ll do my best. I am not organized by nature (and I think rather by choice as well since I have yet to really do anything proactive about that) so it will be difficult for me to be that organized. But I will try.