Bloggiesta Wrap Up Post

This was my first time participating in Bloggiesta and MAN am I glad I joined in. I've been blogging for four years, now entering my fifth although this blog has only seriously been a book blog for about 2 years now. I thought that I knew a fair amount, certainly enough for now but when I checked into some of the mini-challenges I realised how much I had to learn. For example - what is a Gravatar? Favicon? Didn't know 7 days ago but now I have both. What happens if a virus attacks your blog? Had no idea but now I have a back up in case it does happen. And oh! The Tag Monster. I finally got the unruly mess of tags under control so they actually mean something.

Anyway - Bloggiesta was heaps of fun, super helpful and has made my blog a load better. I'll be back next June for sure and if you haven't joined in the fun, make sure you keep an eye out for it here!

Bookdrum Honour!

I was casually reading the Bookdrum email newsletter a couple of days ago when I came across this:

Most Popular Profiles

The Top 5 profiles, by number of Facebook "Likes" are:

1. Saturday by Ian McEwan. Profile by Kathryn Liu

2. The Cure by Antoine Devine. Profile by the author

3. Dracula by Bram Stoker. Profile by Victoria Hooper

4. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Profile by Jenny Martin and Kat Matfield

5. Clan by David Elliot. Profile by the author

If you'd like to see your profile in the Top 5, encourage your friends to click the Facebook Like button on the profile index page. This will also plant a link on their Facebook wall, bringing new visitors to your profile.

Hey! What the... I'm number one!!! Cue happy dance (which I'm glad no-one saw!) and much whooping! The coolest thing was that the Likes had all come from people I didn't know. Very cool. Made my month.

Anyway, if you'd like to see (and potentially "Like"!) my profile, click here and check it out. 

Bookish things I have been up to offline: Feature shelves

As I said in my last post, I've staged a quiet take-over of the small collection of books that we have at the Community Center where I work. We cater to the needs of the International Community in Taipei and, being a transient bunch, people regularly leave and donate their books to us. We've got about 900 books and each and every one of them has been registered on bookcrossing as we are now an official bookcrossing zone. Also I re-organised the entire collection to be categorised by genre rather than just alphabetically by author because I'm fussy. All of this has taken months as I only work part-time but has been achieved with a lot of help from some of our student volunteers and now it's finally in order and I'm feeling pretty chuffed.

Then my boss says "Hey, you know what? Why don't I give you a budget to buy a couple of recent books every month to keep our collection up-to-date?"

Pay me to go pick out books? Do you need to ask?!

And so the idea of the Feature Shelf was born in my mind. I decided that each month I would buy books in theme and set up a feature shelf showcasing these books and any others that were along the same theme. September is "Memoir Movie Tie-In" as Eat, Pray, Love is being released in cinemas here pretty soon (October) so I figured people might like the chance to read the book beforehand. Not to mention its a personal favourite of mine - that's totally nothing to do with it! So keeping in theme I also got Julie and Julia as I figured it was a pretty popular movie but most folks I know hadn't read the book but wanted to. So voila! September's feature shelf is up and running.

All I need to do now is come up with more themes! Next month I was hoping to have a Booker Prize shelf in honour of the winner being announced but I wanted to ask you guys to see if you had any fun ideas about possible themes. Let me know what you think - I'd love to hear your ideas!

MISSION: Taipei Living 10th Edition - nearly completed.

Wow wow whee, have I ever been slack in the last month. At first I was insanely busy (brother in law got married, had the in-laws staying with us) and then that slid into a case of serious denial and writer's block. One good thing though is that in the last couple of weeks I have found myself in the final stages of my current editing project - we have a cover and the final proof copy and everything, how exciting!! The book is called Taipei Living (10th edition) and is basically an everything you need to know about living in Taipei as a foreigner. It's got info on areas for shopping, how to sort out your rubbish, where to get good coffee, how to get a driver's license, what to do if there's an earthquake, hot spring etiquette, info on the international schools and way, way more. It's a gold mine and it was an honour to be involved in bringing it to it's tenth edition. I even gave a nifty new cover and everything.

Anyway, hopefully now I have broken the barrier and posted here the drought will lift and I'll be back with more book-related stuff. Oh and for those of you who like photos, I started Project 365 over here a couple of days ago which should be fun!

Hope you're all well and talk again soon!

Now THAT is impressive...

Photo credit: Here

I was listening to a podcast that I have recently discovered, Books on the Nightstand, this morning when something they were discussing piqued my attention. A British lady named Louise Brown, a 91 year old pensioner, has made newspapers for the extraordinary achievement of borrowing and reading nearly 25,000 library books in her lifetime to date. She takes out 12 a week. A week! She's nearly exhausted her local library's collection of large print books! What a legend.

Suddenly my reading load seemed piffly by comparison and I started to wonder why. I mean, I love reading. I adore books. You may have noticed this very subtle fact from the content of my blog and if you know me personally you surely know me to be addicted to the printed word.

I concluded, after some reflection, that I just don't dedicate as much time as I should to reading (and by "should" I mean "want to"). I used to spend hours and hours reading as a kid but then, as I got older and invariably busier, I realise that reading has slipped down my priorities list without me noticing. I just haven't set aside the time I would like to for it. A big distraction for me has been the internet - Facebook, reading news articles, catching up on emails and googling random questions that pop into my head (like why do people yell "Geronimo!!" when they jump out of a plane?) All well and good, really but it has seriously cut into my beloved reading time.

So! I'm taking action. My challenge to myself is to use the internet less and do a bit more reading and try and get back into the habit of reaching for my books first when I have some spare time rather than turning on the laptop. I'm nearly two thirds of the way through Falling Man by Don DeLillo and hope to finish that by tomorrow or early next week and then I'll probably be working on another post 9/11 book (the thesis looms after all!) which is exciting.

So to all my dear books, I know I've been a bit remiss of late and not picked you up as often as I could have but I'm a reformed woman. And you have Louise Brown to thank for that!

Book Launched!!

Home and Away: Life Writing Three has now been launched!

This book is a collection of pieces from both the Life Writing and Travel Writing papers at Massey University, submitted by the students and edited by Jack Ross (the coordinator for the papers) and myself. It's a fantastic voyage through the lives and experiences of a wide variety of people, from an ex-cop's traumatic experiences of attending cot deaths to the search for an extinct NZ bird, the huia; from tales of trips to Waiheke and Tirau, to places as far-flung as South America and Asia.

This book is truly an achievement for all those involved in it - for many of the contributors it is the first time they have been published, and given the quality of contributions, I really hope it won't be the last.

Copies are only NZ$10 and can be ordered through the School Administrator for the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Massey University, or through my co-editor, Jack Ross. I am also told they are available from Bennetts - Massey's campus bookstore. If you are interested, please let me know.

Links:
New books reveal bold approach to writing life.