New Year's Blog Resolutions

Okay, New Year's Day isn't until Friday. But I thought I'd get these out there now. Lately, my life has been just a little insane, and my blogs are two things I pushed to the back burner. I have no problem with that--for a little bit, other things took precedence. But now I want to get back to blogging, and also to improve some things about my own blogging experience.

Resolutions work better when you set a specific goal, so I'll include one.

This year, I resolve to:

Comment more
I know people love getting comments, and there are varying schools of thought on their value. Speaking for myself, I like commenting and getting comments because it feels like I'm deeper into this awesomely fun conversation we've all been having for, oh, the last four years or so. I hear murmurings of a comment challenge in January. Maybe this will be the kick in the pants I need. I resolve to leave at least 5 comments a week. At the moment, that's 5 more than I am doing.

Post more
Like I said, I haven't been blogging much lately. That's been life-related, but it would be too easy to let that non-blogging habit continue. I resolve to post at least twice a week on both blogs. My next resolution should help with that.

Review more
My policy is not to review a book unless it has That Thing. That special spark that makes me go, "Ooooh, this is something I want to talk about." All very well and good, but I've been skipping books I wanted to review but just didn't. MotherReader's 48-Hour Reading Challenge in June taught me that I can write a review in twenty minutes or so, and even the blathery ones don't take more than half an hour to 45 minutes, including links and images. Surely I can carve out half an hour each week to write a review of a book I want to talk about anyway. I resolve to post one review a week on either blog, and preferably on both.

Not sweat the small stuff
Okay, this one might seem contradictory, given all those great intentions I have up there. But I do tend to overfocus and obsess a little, even if it's in the privacy of my own mind. So this is the year I'm going to relax and not chew on things like statistics. I've always done this for me first, and I want to stop grizzling because So-and-So has more followers than I do. Or whether I've read that hot book everyone's talking about. I'll get to it. If it's that great, it'll still be that great in ten months or whenever. No goal for this one, because I can't really say, "I resolve to not freak out at least once a week."

So that's my plan for 2010. What are your New Year's Blog Resolutions?

Book Review: Lines That Wiggle by Candace Whitman, illustrated by Steve Wilson

Book: Lines That Wiggle!
Author: Candace Whitman
Illustrator: Steve Wilson
Published: 2009
Source: Local Library

Lines are everywhere! Lines that wiggle, lines that bend, tickly, sprouting, all the lines you can think of. How many lines can you find?

Rainbows, thunderstorms, and swirling water are just some of the lines that are illustrated in this book. Each line on the page is delineated with blue glitter, adding both visual and texture fun to the reading. The line goes from the word on the page into the illustration, tracing the line that the word describes--a great, creative way to connect the concept to the word.

I read this to a toddler group, demonstrating each line as I did so. Some were a little harder than others to show, but they all got into it. Use for a storytime about art or nature, and prepare to have fun!

Reading Roundup November 2009

By the Numbers
Picture Books: 8

Standouts
Writing: Jake's Best Thumb by Ilene Cooper, illustrated by Claudio Muñoz
Illustration: Acorns Everywhere by Kevin Sherry
Overall: Old Bear by Kevin Henkes

Sources
Library: 8

Because I Want To Awards
The Month With So Few Books That I Don't Really Have Any Awards Left: November