Weekly Geeks

By now, you know me. Joiner of fun things. Unable to resist a challenge. Well, I have resisted a few! I haven't joined every challenge out there!! Dewey at The Hidden Side of a Leaf, has had a great idea: Weekly Geeks, an idea that will bring the blogging community closer together, I think. And fun! I missed the last week's challenge, which was to name unknown or little known book bloggers you had just discovered, either on your own, through comments or from other blogging sites. Well, if this isn't a clever way to meet some new bloggers and join them in our community! So many new bloggers are shy, and it takes a good 3-4 months sometimes to start get regular visitors. So, even though I am late, here is my list:
1. Vickie at Vixen's Daily Reads she is in Denver, and reads very cool and fun books!
2. Bride of the Book God Very cool blog title! And she has great book reviews and reads widely, so there is something for everyone.....I just discovered that she had a post about my horror meme!!! Well, I'm delighted and blushing....thank you!

Now, onto this week's Weekly Geek challenge, *(note: ADDED later- this is from Dewey's post today, I lifted her instructions for anyone who hasn't joined or seen this week's Weekly Geek challenge yet. Please let her know you've joined!!): The theme for Week 2 is something I borrowed (yes, she said it was ok!) from Darla at Books and Other Thoughts. She says in her sidebar that if she reviews a book that you’ve reviewed, you can email her and she’ll link to it in her review. I love this idea for three reasons.

1. As a blog reader, I like that I can have my review linked in someone else’s blog.

2. As a blog reader, I like that if I’m interested in a book Darla writes about, there will be other reviews linked at the bottom of the page, so I can get other viewpoints. You can see how this works here.

3. As a blog writer, when I review a book, I often remember that I read someone else’s review at some point, but whose? And when? With Darla’s method, people tell her about their reviews, and she can see what they had to say about a book that is still fresh in her mind.

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.

I know it sounds a bit complicated, but it means that when someone is interested enough to leave their blog link post to their review of a book you've just reviewed, you add their link to your original post. It means checking back to our posts, which we all do anyway! I think this is a great idea. And it does NOT mean we have to do a search on our favourite book blogs, it just means that when someone has given us the link, we add it. So, now....I see Charlotte left me a link, and a few others over the past several months.....it's adding to our blogs another layer, I think, so we can go find other reviews of the same book more easily. As Dewey said in her post.

I'm in!.