Monster Review-a-Thon Mini Challenge #6

Organizing Your Bookshelves

Now that you've starting organizing your upcoming book reviews, it's time to look at your bookshelves, or e-bookshelves.

A few things I plan to do is:

Get my Kindle in order, create some different categories to put books in.

Shift my to-read shelves to create space for the books I've gotten this week and try to weed out books I don't think I'll ever get to.

Your plans may be way different then mine. Maybe it's time for a new bookshelf or time to shove some books in a box and put them in the attic. I'd love to see some bookshelf pictures when you guys complete this challenge. And if you have nothing you think you have to do, snap of pic of your miraculously awesome bookshelves and post it to complete the challenge.

Okay, so I tried really hard to get a photo of my shelves for this one, but not only could I not upload them on to my laptop, I gave myself an electrical shock in the process. So moving swiftly on from my iPhone cable mishap...

I've recently moved from my own flat back into my parent's house (where I live half the time - I spend the other half 45 miles away at my boyfriends) and that means there were two rooms jam-packed with books to consense into one. I managed to get all the books I wanted to keep on to a shelf in the correct alphabetical order... and then I gave up.

This mini-challenge was a great excuse to finally finish sorting out my shelves. Firstly, I had a huge box of books that I had to decide whether to put up to swap or to send to a charity shop. Today I actually managed to sort through them all and decide what goes where. I think the swap box will get shoved under my bed for now, but that'll do me. The others are bagged up ready for my Mum to take to the charity shop on Monday. Job done!

The next job was to sort out an empty shelf in the middle that separates fiction from non-fiction and my TBR shelves. I decided when I first moved back that I was going to use it for my book 'collections' - like classics I buy in a particular edition, or my collection of different Pride and Prejudices. Unfortunately, I'd just piled them all up on there, and not bothered to arrange them properly. But hey, now I have :) I have my Vintage classic books (the ones with the red spines, my Penguin fabric-covered classics, my Spanish fiction books, my Pride and Prejudices and my Folio Society edition of the Legends of King Arthur all nicely arranged and shiny.

I had also planned to make more room for my TBR today - it already fills up a shelf (with books shoved in horizontally above too) and there's still another bag to go up. I contemplated tackling it today but it meant moving shelves around and I didn't really feel up to it.

Still, I feel like I've done a pretty good job! Those things have been bugging me for a while and the Review-a-thon finally made me get my arse in gear! :)

Monster Review-a-Thon Mini Challenge #1

The Book Monsters are hosting a week-long event that revolves around your reviews - how you do them, what you like to write about and why you do so. There are great prizes to win, to boot! I accidentally stumbled across their blog on the very first day, so I'm taking it as a sign and joining up.

This is today's mini-challenge: 

Are you happy with your review format currently?

I was about to reply with how I don't really have a set review format, but thinking about it, I guess I do. I tend to post a picture of the book cover on the left and then a few lines as an introduction. Maybe something about what I've been up to, what made me pick up that book... you know, something personal.

Then I'll post the synopsis from Amazon (or somewhere similar) in italics, which is usually followed by my own version as they invariably get it wrong.

After that, it's on to the review! I'm terrible at writing unbiased reviews - they turn into rants more often than I'd like, even after I've gone back and edited. See my reviews of Cinderella Ate My Daughter and So Many Books, So Little Time to see what I mean.

That's usually with non-fiction though. I can find something nice to say about most fiction I read. I don't often get stuck with what to say, but it does happen. I read Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book last week though, and was completely blank even though I enjoyed reading it.

2. Scrutinize it a little more, maybe compare it to other blogs you like, anything you think you might change?

I do want to change the layout. Well, no, not the layout, but maybe implement some shinier graphics. I was actually downloading the photoshop trial before I started writing this, so I should begin doing that either tonight or tomorrow. I used to be fairly decent photoshop-wise, so I'll give it a go.

I know that the majority of blogs use some sort of rating system and I started my blog by doing that too. But you know what? I loathe marking things out of ten. It got to the point where I was giving everything three stars and it makes the whole concept redundant. I appreciate how it can be helpful to readers so I'm considering starting again, but.... ugh.

3. Implement some basic changes and tell us what you think. Or, you can tell us one or two aspects of your reviews that you like.

Haha, come back in a few days and see my new header! Or, more likely, come back in a few days and remind me to make one...

I do like how my reviews are quite personal (aside from the ranty ones, anyway). I often write about how I could relate to a book or why a book particularly affected me, or how reading the book in a particular place/time made a difference. I think my Making History review (by Stephen Fry) would be a good example. I didn't want to read it until I ended up sat on the doorstep with nothing else to read, and then I loved it.