This week, Ruth's question to Weekly Geeks concerned how we stay organized and inspired in our reading and blogging:
Book blogging, as a concept, is essentially pretty simple: If you have Internet access and an opinion about a book, you can be a book blogger. However, actually maintaining a book blog is much more complicated -- our blogs are labors of love that require a lot of time, energy and devotion. For this edition of Weekly Geeks, I want to focus on the little things that make your blogging and/or reading life a bit easier. Do you use sites like GoodReads, LibraryThing or Shelfari to organize your books? Do you swear by Book Darts? Couldn't live without your Book Buddy? Love connecting with other bloggers on sites such as Twitter? Tell us about what makes your blog tick. Is there something specific that keeps you organized or inspired?
There was one very popular response about a source of inspiration: other book bloggers! Getting ideas about what to read next, exchanging comments about what we've read and written - it seems like it always comes back to community.
Geeks shared some of the practical things that keep their blogging and reading going, too. I'm always impressed to see how many book bloggers track their reading activity on spreadsheets. I'm an accountant in my non-blogging professional life, and I work with spreadsheets all the time - and yet it never crossed my mind to use them in connection with my reading! (There's the "inspiration from other bloggers" kicking in.)
In addition to spreadsheets, the online-library websites are very helpful too. Suey of It's All About Books and Sarah from Puss Reboots are both active GoodReads users, while Trisha of eclectic/eccentric and Jennie at Biblio File organize their books with LibraryThing.
On the blogging side of things, Kerrie of Mysteries in Paradise is a fan of XnView image software for online editing of pictures for her posts. Erotic Horizon composes posts using Windows Live Writer and then pastes them into her blogging software, and finds a lot of inspiration and advice in the Book Blogs Ning group.
Thanks to everyone who shared "tools of the trade" this week! There will NOT be a new Weekly Geeks theme posted this weekend because the 24-Hour Read-a-thon is going on all day tomorrow. But please don't forget to check back for a new WG next Saturday, October 31...will it be something Halloween-themed? You'll have to come by and find out!