Mini-Challenge #5: Organizing Upcoming Reviews

Kate and Kristen over at The Book Monsters are hosting Monster Review-a-Thon. The purpose is to review as many books as you can during August 7-13. There will be plenty of mini-challenges and prizes throughout the week.

Today, your mini-challenge is to work on organizing your upcoming reviews of books you haven't read. Create an organizer... update... reorganize. The choice is yours. We'd like to see what you do to organize and how you think you'd improve it.

Organization is a big thing for me, especially since I work, go to school, and have a daughter to juggle along with my blogging. I've found that if I just have stuff written down it makes things run so much more smoother. Some things I do to keep myself organized is:

• Calender: I keep track of scheduled reviews, features, interviews, and other blog related events. This also helps me know what extra stuff (like accepting review copies) I can or can't do per month. By having everything down in the same place also helps me know what days I have open that I can post whatever it may be.
• Spreadsheets: I have a spreadsheet for my review copies organized by their publication month. This is a great tool for me because I can keep track of which books I've read and reviewed and which books I still need to read and review.

I updated my spreadsheets and Google calendar, which was farther behind than I thought...oops. One thing that I am going to give a try, is a review guide. I think Kate and Kristen had a good idea to have a spreadsheet dedicated to which books they would like to try and have reviewed each month. I'm always up for setting goals for myself. So I created a Review Guide based on a book's publication date. I plan to try that out for awhile and see how it works for me.

Mini-Challenge #4: Updating Review Lists

Kate and Kristen over at The Book Monsters are hosting Monster Review-a-Thon. The purpose is to review as many books as you can during August 7-13. There will be plenty of mini-challenges and prizes throughout the week.

Today's challenge is to update / reorganize your review lists, or create one if you don't have one made already. I have a review lists that I try to update every time I post a new review, but sometimes I don't always have the time. I wasn't too far behind, which is good.


I got my review list updated to today and I even reorganized it. Along with my review list, I also have an featured author page that I updated as well.

Mini-Challenge #3: Setting Up Future Review Posts

Kate and Kristen over at The Book Monsters are hosting Monster Review-a-Thon. The purpose is to review as many books as you can during August 7-13. There will be plenty of mini-challenges and prizes throughout the week.

For mini-challenge #3, your goal is to go through your review, needs review, or whatever else pile you may have and set up some future posts.

I'm big on scheduling posts because its just so much easier on me. But lately, I haven't had a chance to schedule anything, so this challenge was a great way for me to get caught back up. I scheduled all the reviews I had written, and some interviews. I also scheduled some other posts unrelated to reviews.

Mini- Challange #2: Cross Posting Your Reviews

Kate and Kristen over at The Book Monsters are hosting Monster Review-a-Thon. The purpose is to review as many books as you can during August 7-13. There will be plenty of mini-challenges and prizes throughout the week.

As reviewers, we tend use multiple book related sites: Goodreads... Amazon... LibraryThing... and these are just the tip of the iceburg. Each site has their own benefits and reasons for why we use them. But if you are like us, then you have a really bad habit of putting off adding them to other sites.

That is where today's mini-challenge comes in. Your mini-challenge... if you choose to accept it... is working (or starting) in cross posting your reviews.

Along with posting my reviews here, I also post them at GoodReads and Amazon too. I have a tendency to wait until my reviews have piled up before I go and add them to any other site. Today, I worked on posting my most recent reviews on GoodReads and Amazon. I was able to get all of them posted, except for the ones that I have written this week. I hope to get those up as well.

Monster Review-a-Thon: Update #1

Kate and Kristen over at The Book Monsters are hosting Monster Review-a-Thon. The purpose is to review as many books as you can during August 7-13. There will be plenty of mini-challenges and prizes throughout the week.

Today was the first day and here are the reviews I got written and scheduled:

• Arson by Estevan Vega
• Blood Feud by Alyxandra Harvey
• Candy by Kevin Brooks
• Firelight by Sophie Jordan

Mini-Challange #1: Rethinking Your Review Format

Kate and Kristen over at The Book Monsters are hosting Monster Review-a-Thon. The purpose is to review as many books as you can during August 7-13. There will be plenty of mini-challenges and prizes throughout the week.

Welcome to the first mini-challenge!

Kate and I are always thinking of ways to make our blog better and lately we've been thinking about our formatting. So we thought we'd have you rethink yours as well. You don't have to change anything if you don't want to, but here are some questions to answer. Post them on your blog today, tomorrow or any day during this review-a-thon and then link up back here so you can have a chance to win a book from the Prize List.

1. Are you happy with your review format currently?
2. Scrutinize it a little more, maybe compare it to other blogs you like, anything you think you might change?
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.

Currently, my reviews are split up into two sections:

1. The book information where I include the title, author, publisher, release date, # of pages, series title, source I received book from, my rating, a summary of the book (usually from goodreads, the dust jacket, or amazon), and a pictures of the novel. Sometimes, I add the author's and publisher's website as well.

2. My review or thoughts on the book.


I'm rather happy with the way I have my review format set up, especially the book information. In my reviews, I share my thoughts before and after reading the book. I've been thinking about adding some of my favorite quotes or paragraphs from the book into my reviews - there are some quotes that really pop out to me and end up making me think even after finishing the novel, and I think it would be neat to share some of those with my readers.

Monster Review-a-Thon

Kate and Kristen over at The Book Monsters are hosting Monster Review-a-Thon. The purpose is to review as many books as you can during August 7-13. There will be plenty of mini-challenges and prizes throughout the week.

I think this is a fantastic idea and I will be definitely participating. I have quite a few reviews that need to be written and scheduled. Below is a list of reviews I plan to write during the week:

1. Across the Universe by Beth Revis
2. The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney
3. The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney
4. Angel Star by Jennifer Murgia
5. Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken
6. Guardian of the Gate by Michelle Zink
7. I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore
8. Claire de Lune by Christine Johnson
9. Siren by Tricia Rayburn
10. Graceling by Kristen Cashore
11. Hearts at Stake by Alyxandra Harvey
12. Rampant by Diana Peterfreund
13. Shiver by Maggie Steivfater
14. Linger by Maggie Steifvater
15. Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert
16. Broken China by Lori Aurelia Williams
17. Shine by Lauren Myracle
18. Ten Things We Did (and probably shouldn't have) by Sarah Mlynowski
19. The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell

I plan to read like crazy up until the start of Monster Review-a-Thon to add some more reviews to my list.