Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Is Your Blogging Wish List of 2014?

What Is Your Blogging Wish List of 2014?

My first wish is to complete my reading and reviewing of the International Fantasy Award winners make sufficient headway in my reading and reviewing of the Hugo Award winners that I am able to start on the Nebula Award winners. I my original purpose in posting reviews on this blog was to read and review all of the novels that have won the major genre awards (plus a couple of other lesser genre awards). My plan is to eventually work through all of the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, International Fantasy, Clarke, Campbell, Locus, Andre Norton, Mythopoeic, and Prometheus winners and review all of them. Unfortunately, I'm four years into this project and I've made disturbingly little progress.

My second wish is to be able to scrape up enough resources to be able to attend the World Fantasy Convention in Washington D.C. this November. I'd like to be able to establish more contacts with authors and editors in the fantasy fiction field for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that this is one of the two genres that forms the backbone of my reading and reviewing. I'd also like to be able to form some connections with other bloggers, as right now essentially all of the interaction I have with other bloggers is the handful of exchanges in comments and on Twitter that I've had. I've got a reasonably full slate this year - I know I'm going to two other conventions and I'll be going to a book festival as well - but this is one of the premiere conventions in genre fiction and I'd really like to be able to take advantage of its proximity to me this year.

My third wish is to finally finish building the architecture of this blog. Although I'm reasonably sure that almost no one sees the background pages that I've built for this blog (because they get so very few hits), but in my mind they are an important part of the blog's structure. I have been slowly adding more author pages, award nominees pages, and cleaning up pages that have outdated formatting. I suppose I could wish for people to notice these pages and use them, but that is a secondary concern for the most part. Much of this blog is written for me, to provide me with a record of the books I have read, the authors who wrote those books, and their place in the genre. If other people read what I write, that's a bonus.

Go to Day 13: Share a Blogger Horror Story

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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - Share a Blogger Horror Story

Share a Blogger Horror Story

As far as I can tell, I've mostly been lucky as a book blogger. I haven't found anyone plagiarizing my reviews, and have had very little commenting drama crop up here. I haven't had anyone try to bully me, or say that I had somehow bullied them, or had instances of any of the other myriad interpersonal conflicts that seem to plague so many other bloggers, possibly as a result of my avoiding posting reviews in forums like Amazon, which seem to engender bitter responses from authors and fans of authors who are enraged if someone doesn't give a book they wrote (or which they simply like) a glowing review. I haven't had any serious technical problems either with my blog platform or as a result of internet shenanigans caused by hackers or others. Basically, as far as this blog goes, all has been quiet on the Western Front.

That is not to say I have not run into some troubles, but they haven't been directly related to this blog. My most memorable conflict was engendered by a review that is now posted on this blog, but was originally posted on LibraryThing for the book Pureheart (read review), which I have described as the worst book I have ever read, an assessment that I still believe is accurate. After I had posted the review, the author got her nose out of joint and wrote me a scathing message in which, among other things, stated that she had gotten Amazon to remove my review. Which was odd, since I had never posted the review to Amazon, in keeping with my general policy of never posting reviews on Amazon. She then got a friend of hers (who had written a virtually incoherent blurb for the jacket of her book) to also start e-mailing me, and as one might expect, his e-mails were at best semi-literate. I infuriated them somewhat by correcting the grammar and spelling in their e-mails, which they responded to by saying they weren't concerned with getting those sorts of things right, because e-mails were just "informal communication" that didn't need a lot of thought. Or apparently accurate spelling or grammar. This went back and forth for a while, and then they stopped, but not before I got in touch with Amazon and confirmed that I had not posted a review on their site, and, as one might expect, they had not removed the review that I had not posted on their site. This was not the only push back I've ever gotten from an author, but it was the most vociferous, and ultimately, the most humorous, especially since her book was so patently awful.

Go to Day 12: How Do You Plan on Getting More Followers This Year?
Go to Day 14: What Is Your Blogging Wish List of 2014?

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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - How Do You Plan on Getting More Followers This Year?

How Do You Plan on Getting More Followers This Year?

To be honest, other than participating in the Follow Friday hosted by Parajunkee and Alison, and the Book Blogger Hop hosted by Billy Burgess, I don't really do much to get new followers, and I don't really plan on doing anything new. I post links on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook, but that really seems like alerting people who are already followers to new content rather than an attempt to garner new followers. For the most part, I have built up what following this blog has simply by posting the best content I can on a regular basis and trying to keep the past posts organized and reasonably accessible for anyone who wants to go back and see old reviews and comments.

My philosophy is that it is better to attract readers with the quality of the blog itself rather than to engage in a collection of giveaways, contests, or other marketing efforts, and I am more likely to generate good quality content if I focus on that rather than ginning up follower totals. I suspect that those may generate some short term interest, but if the quality of the content is not high enough, you won't keep those new readers long. Like taping bacon to a cat, high profile posts that don't relate to the material you produce seem like they can generate a lot of hits for a day or two, but don't really appear to translate into long-term readership.

I am planning on going to CapClave again this year, and possibly the World Fantasy Convention, and if I get my act together, I may try to generate some readers while I am there, but that is a somewhat less than well-thought out plan at this point. I guess the short version of this post is simply that my plan to get new followers this year is to just continue doing what I have been doing for the last four years.

Go to Day 11: How Many Books Are On Your To-Be-Read Shelf?
Go to Day 13: Share a Blogger Horror Story

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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - How Many Books Are On Your To-Be-Read Shelf?

How Many Books Are On Your To-Be-Read Shelf?

The answer to this question depends to a certain extent on what you count as a to-be-read shelf. If you just count the review copies that I have, then I have thirty-six books on my to-be-read shelf. If you count the books that I have sitting in the numerous stacks that I have put the books that I'd like to get to "soon", the number increases by an addition three hundred and twelve books. And then if one counts all of the books that I have in my house that I have not read yet, the total number rises to six thousand one hundred and fifty-three.

If I apply myself, I can probably get through the review copies by the end of March or April. I might be able to get through the "soon" pile in the next two years or so. But the pile of unread books is likely to occupy me for the rest of my life. The entire publishing industry could vanish tomorrow and I'll have enough reading material for the next fifty plus years. I don't think publishers will stop publishing books though, so I suppose I'll be running the Red Queen's race for quite a while.

Go to Day 10: What New Things Will You Be Doing This Year?
Go to Day 12: How Do You Plan on Getting More Followers This Year?

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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What New Things Will You Be Doing This Year?

What New Things Will You Be Doing This Year?

I've mentioned more than one of these before in answering the various Book Blogger New Year's Challenge questions, but here is a list of things that I plan on doing in 2014. Or at least try to do in 2014.

Switching to WordPress: I've said this before, but even though Blogger is a decent platform, I'm pretty sure I've been straining its capabilities with the things that I've been making it do for this blog. I've figured out some workarounds to overcome its inherent limitations, but I'm reasonably certain that these workarounds are a stopgap measure at best. So I am going to switch to WordPress at some point this year, probably in April or May, since that is when I think I will have the time to make the switch.

Starting a Podcast: I and a few of my friends have been kicking around the idea of a podcast focused mostly on science fiction for a while now.We've done some preliminary planning, the only thing we really need to do is get our act together and begin recording and editing. I can't say for certain the date on which this will happen, but I am reasonably confident that we will do it in 2014.

Going to the Baltimore Book Festival: I've known about the existence of the festival for a couple of years now, and for various reasons I have not been able to make it to the event. This year will be different. I will be going to the Baltimore Book Festival which will be held on September 26^th-28^th this year.

Publishing My Fiction: Inside of almost every science fiction or fantasy reader is a science fiction or fantasy author trying to get out, and I'm no exception. Inspired by the example of my friend Sue London and her success with her Haberdasher series, I am going to try to get some of my own fiction published. Obviously, this is out of my control to a certain extent (unless I decide to self-publish may material), but I am at least going to get my work out there into some markets and see if anyone bites.

Going to the World Fantasy Convention: This is the most tentative item on this list, but I hope to be able to go to the World Fantasy Convention this year, as it is being held in Washington D.C. I have never been to this convention before, and its close proximity makes it very enticing. However, like the World Science Fiction Convention, this is a very pricey convention to attend even without having to factor in travel or accommodations costs (which I would not have, as the convention is close enough to where I live).

Eliminate My ARC Backlog: Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?

Go to Day 9: What Cons or Events Do You Hope to Attend in 2014?
Go to Day 11: How Many Books Are On Your To-Be-Read Shelf?

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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Cons or Events Do You Hope to Attend in 2014?

What Cons or Events Do You Hope to Attend in 2014?

I am lucky enough to live in an area within a reasonable distance of many excellent conventions. BaltiCon and CapClave in Maryland. MystiCon and RavenCon in Virginia. Philcon in Pennsylvania. In terms of larger conventions, there is also Dragon Con in Atlanta, and Gen Con in Indianapolis. Given the opportunity, I would gladly attend each and every one of these, as well as Readercon, which will be held in Massachusetts this year, the World Science Fiction Convention, which will be held in London this year at LonCon, and the World Fantasy Convention, which will be held in Washington D.C. this year. I also have a soft spot for InConJunction and Starbase Indy, both of which are held in Indianapolis. Unfortunately, I simply don't have the financial resources to attend all of these events.

As a result, sadly, I have to limit my attendance to only a few of these events. I am definitely going to Gen Con this year, as it is both the best gaming convention in the country, and I have some very nice friends who attend that I would like to see. I am also going to go to CapClave, both because it is an excellent literary science fiction convention, and it is located in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which is close enough to me that I don't have to incur the costs associated with travel and accommodations in order to attend. I went to both of these conventions last year, and both were great experiences, so I am looking forward to both of them this year.

I would like to go to the World Fantasy Convention, as it is being held in Washington D.C. this year, and is therefore local to me. It would seem almost criminal to miss the opportunity to attend the premier fantasy fiction convention when it is in my own backyard - once again this would allow me to attend without incurring the additional (and often prohibitive) cost of travel and accommodations. The only real obstacle is the expense of the convention itself, which is fairly substantial. If I can make the finances work out, I will definitely be going.

There is an outside chance that I will go to Starbase Indy, because of its proximity to Thanksgiving, and I might be in Indiana for other reasons during that time frame. I would enjoy going, because one of my favorite nerdy bands - Five Year Mission - always performs at the convention. The chance that I will actually be able to attend Starbase Indy is fairly remote, as several factors would all have to line up just right for me to do so, but stranger things have happened.

I am also planning on attending the Baltimore Book Festival, which has the distinct advantage of being a free event. Due to scheduling conflicts I have not been able to attend this event in the past, but it seems like a very well-run book festival, and the fact that the SFWA always hosts a pavilion just makes it that much more enticing.

Go to Day 8: What Was Your Favorite Book Blogger Moment of 2013?
Go to Day 10: What New Things Will You Be Doing This Year?

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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Was Your Favorite Book Blogger Moment of 2013?

What Was Your Favorite Book Blogger Moment of 2013?

Oddly, my favorite book blogger moment of 2013 relates to a book blog tour. I generally dislike book blog tours, or more precisely I dislike participating in book blog tours. I simply cannot review books to a particular schedule. There are some elements that I try to keep to a posting schedule: I post my Musical Monday selection on Monday (usually). I post my participation in Parajunkee and Alison's Follow Friday on Friday (usually). I try to post at least one book review every week (usually). I have thus far been able to post responses to the questions of the Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 in a timely manner. So I can keep to something of a schedule.

But this hides the usual disorganization that dominates my reading and writing. While I try to post one or more reviews every week, I usually can't say until that week what those reviews will be. I simply don't have the kind of organizational skills that would allow me to say that the review for, for example, the Fellowship of the Ring will be published on February 3^rd or some similar statement. The best I could usually do is predict that review would be published at some point in February, and even that is a prediction of dubious value. For the most part, I review books when I am able, fitting the writing in between the other competitors for my time - including my day job, which pays the bills. I have a tendency to make lists of projects to be done during the week that I hope to have done by a particular day, maybe by Friday. Then when Friday rolls around, I find that I've only completed maybe half of the list.

Given this backdrop, it should be no real surprise that I'm not a huge fan of participating in book blog tours. I simply am not capable of writing a review to be published on a set date. I've participated in only a few, but those few have been enough to convince me that I don't really want to participate in others. But sometimes, against my better judgment, I allow myself to get roped into one. And that is what happened last September, when I, for some reason, agreed to review Nu Logic: Rise of the Neos by Bill Gourgey for a book blog tour. Which I promptly forgot about, because that's more or less my modus operandi when it comes to scheduled events like that. For about a month I vaguely remembered that I was supposed to read and review the book by a particular date, but other obligations and commitments pushed it to the back of my mind until October 22^nd, when I went back and checked to see what date my I was supposed to post my review. And the date I had agreed to was October 23^rd.Which meant that I needed to read and review a 500+ page book by the following day. So I did.

Despite the fact that I hate book blog tours. Despite the fact that grinding through the book and then churning out a decent review in a single day was exhausting, this is my favorite book blogger moment of 2014. Because I now know that if I need to, I can do that. I'm not planning on doing it again any time soon - and I'm certainly not planning on participating in any tours for the foreseeable future - but I could.

Go to Day 7: What Are Your Top Ten Book Blogger Pet Peeves?
Go to Day 9: What Cons or Events Do You Hope to Attend in 2014?

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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Are Your Top Ten Book Blogger Pet Peeves?

What Are Your Top Ten Book Blogger Pet Peeves?

These are my top ten pet peeves, in no particular order:

1. Review requests from people who have clearly not read my review policy.

2. Review requests from people who have read my review policy, but think it shouldn't apply to them. You are not as special snowflake. Ignoring my policies is not going to score you any points.

3. E-mails from authors that contain spelling or grammatical errors. If you can't compose a well-written sentence in your e-mail, I'm not going to want to read 300 pages of your prose.

4. Book blog tours.

5. E-mails from authors asking when their book will be reviewed. For the record, this is a good way to get your book put on the bottom of the stack.

6. E-mails from authors that are addressed "to blogger" or "to whom it may concern". If you want me to review your book, at least try to pretend you have researched who I am.

7. Offers of "free content" for my blog. I write all of the content for my blog. I don't need your help. I don't want your help. I've made this clear in my blog policies that you clearly didn't bother to read.

8. The fact that I'm not wealthy enough to attend all of the Cons that I want to attend.

9. Blogs that copy or plagiarize the content of other blogs. Do your own damn reading and writing without copying the work of other bloggers.

10. Authors who write terrible books and are then shocked and outraged when their work doesn't receive glowing reviews.

Go to Day 6: What Was the Best Book of 2013?
Go to Day 8: What Was Your Favorite Book Blogger Moment of 2013?

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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Was the Best Book of 2013?

What Was the Best Book of 2013?

The best book I read in 2013 was Errantry: Strange Stories, a collection of short fiction by Elizabeth Hand. This stories contained in this collection are mostly the kinds of fantasies that exist on the edge of our world, and are filled with melancholy, regret, loneliness, loss, and yearning. Although there is no explicit theme to the collection, the stories seem to belong together as a group, each complementing the others. For the most part, the images presented in the stories feel as though one was looking through a distorted lens, and the result is both disturbing and beautiful. I've said this before, but it bears repeating - the stories in Errantry remind me of the kinds of stories written by John Collier in Fancies and Goodnights, or Ray Bradbury in Medicine for Melancholy. But the stories also evoke the fantasy style of writers like Theodore Sturgeon and Avram Davidson, but with a somewhat updated vision of the world, and a unique perspective not found in the works of those who had gone before. If you told me I could only keep one book that I read in 2013, it would be this one.

Although Errantry was my choice for best book of 2013, it was a collection of short fiction, and there are some people who simply don't read much short fiction. If I were to pick a best novel for 2013, it would be Food for the Gods by Karen Dudley, a humorous mystery novel set in mythic Athens and featuring Pelops, a celebrity chef who had previously been prepared as an entree for the Olympian deities. The novel is a well-written melange of history, mythology, and mystery, using all of the elements to deliver a fast-paced story that manages to be funny, satirical, and at times, endearing. The novel includes several handbill-style advertisements in between the chapters, ostensibly marketing some commercial aspect of Athenian society, highlighting the parallels between the over-the-top nature of Athenian culture and the over-the-top nature of modern consumerism. If you would enjoy a murder mystery, or a historical fiction about ancient Greece, or a story filled with mythological elements, or all three, then Food for the Gods is the perfect book for you. I am a fan of all of these elements, and as a result, in my estimation Food for the Gods is the best novel I read in 2013.

Go to Day 5: What Was the Worst Book of 2013?
Go to Day 7: What Are Your Top Ten Book Blogger Pet Peeves?
 
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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Was the Worst Book of 2013?

What Was the Worst Book of 2013?

By far, the worst book I read in 2013 was Dark Dawning by Auguste Dinoto, a paranoid and offensively sexist libertarian screed that imagines an oil shortage turning the United States into a dystopian police state controlled by the "Oil Appropriations Committee".

In just over a hundred and eighty pages of execrable prose, Dinoto manages to demonstrate that he is terrible at naming characters, has no understanding of government or economics, didn't do any research concerning the underlying science and technology the book's plot hinges upon, and harbors some rabidly sexist and moderately racist views. In many ways, the sexism is the most glaring defect in the book, as every woman falls into bed with the protagonist, grateful to be blessed with his mighty, manly penis. At least as soon as they give up reading those women's magazines that give them silly ideas like "women should be treated as equals and not as disposable sex toys".

Everything about this book is bad. The writing is awful - riddled with typos, grammatical errors, and simply terrible prose. The characters are badly written, cardboard cartoonish cut outs - the villains are mustache twirling caricatures, the women are sex fantasy fulfillment props, and the hero is a horrible, lazy, drunken lout who is somehow able to convince every woman in the book to have sex with him. The science in the book is laughable, and the ridiculousness of the science is only exceeded by the ridiculousness of the politics and economics. The only redeeming quality of the book is its relative brevity, and the only thing I can say about that is that it wasn't short enough.

Go to Day 4: What Are the Books of 2014 That You Won't Miss?
Go to Day 6: What Was the Best Book of 2013?
 
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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Are the Books of 2014 That You Won't Miss?

What Are the Books of 2014 That You Won't Miss?

I have even less of an idea than I had for the last question. When it comes to the books of 2013 that I missed, I at least now have a vague idea of some of the books that were published in the year. For the upcoming year, on the other hand, I have almost no clue what is due to be published, and so I have almost no chance of being able to answer this question cogently in the way that the question was intended.

On the other hand, I have a rough plan of what books I plan on reading in the upcoming year, even though the books aren't books that will be published in 2014. I have thirty-seven review copies sitting on my to-read shelf, and I plan on reading (and reviewing) them all in 2014. I am currently in the middle of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, and I will probably read some more of those this year. I intend to read and review all of the volumes of the Girl Genius series and the Order of the Stick series. I want to make progress on my project to read the various genre award winners, and to that end I will be reading The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King to finish off the International Fantasy Award Best Fiction Book winners, and A Case of Conscience, Starship Troopers, A Canticle for Liebowitz, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Man in the High Castle, Here Gather the Stars, and The Wanderer to advance my project of reading all of the Hugo Award winning novels.

There are a number of other books I'd like to get to this year as well, but may not have time to read. I have a series of books aimed at younger readers featuring a character named Matthew Looney that I'd like to read. I'd like to read and review some of my collection of Asterix books and the couple of Prince Valiant collections that I have. And there are a number of other books I'd like to read - I have a history of the First World War in Africa that I'd like to read, as well as a book about the origins of language. I'd like to read all of those as well, but I don't know if I'll be able to. I'm certainly going to try though.

Go to Day 3: What Books of 2013 Are You Sad You Missed?
Go to Day 5: What Was the Worst Book of 2013?
 
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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Books of 2013 Are You Sad You Missed?

What Books of 2013 Are You Sad You Missed?

I really have no idea. As I have mentioned before, I'm just not the type of book blogger who looks forward to new releases. Most of the time, I don't even know what new releases are due out in a given year, and frequently don't notice when something has been published. Mostly because I'm usually reading something that was published thirty or forty years ago, and have a volume of books in my to-be-read pile that makes the amount of gold in Smaug's hoard look tiny by comparison. For example, I think Neil Gaiman published a book in 2013, and if so, I'd like to read it. But on the other hand, I have several Gaiman books in my backlog that I haven't read yet, so I probably would read those first anyway.

Just to be pedantic, I have to question whether one can actually "miss" a book to begin with. For the most part, all of the books that were published in 2013 are still available for me to read, even if I didn't read them in that calendar year. Just like all the books that I have that were published in 1965 are available for me to read whenever I get around to them. I didn't so much "miss" any of the books of 2103, as I simply haven't had the time to enjoy them yet.

Go to Day 2: What Are Your Pros and Cons of Blogging?
Go to Day 4: What Are the Books of 2014 That You Won't Miss?
 
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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Are Your Pros and Cons of Blogging?

What Are Your Pros and Cons of Blogging?

This is my highly idiosyncratic list of Pros and Cons of blogging, presented in no particular order other than the Pros being separated from the Cons.

Pros:

Blogging helps organize my reading. Reading with a purpose gives me a figurative road map to follow when deciding what to read when. Blogging isn't actually necessary for this, as I suppose one could formulate and execute a reading plan on their own without the spur of blogging, but writing a blog is how I accomplish this.

Blogging helps me remember what I have read. Before I started writing about what I had read, I had a tendency to forget, and more than once found myself unintentionally rereading the same book because I had forgotten that I had read it the first time. The act of contemplating a book deeply enough to write a cogent review about it, for me, serves to cement the book into my memory. Once again, I suppose one could do this without blogging, simply by writing a personal journal about the books your read, or something similar, but blogging is the method I have chosen.

Blogging helps me be less annoying to my family and friends. I have a tendency to want to talk about and analyze the books I read and movies, and television programs that I watch, while many of the people I interact with do not. So instead of driving them up the wall, I can write about the media I consume on this blog.

Blogging has spurred me to go to conventions and meet authors and other creative people.

Blogging has introduced me to many good books and interesting authors that I probably would have missed otherwise.

Blogging provides me with a large volume of reading material in the form of review copies sent to me by authors and publishers. I could, if I chose to, never read a book that wasn't a review copy provided I accepted every book review request that showed up in my e-mail inbox. I don't do that, because quite frankly there are a lot of really bad self-published books being produced. Fortunately, I have become reasonably skilled at identifying which books are likely to be really bad, and so most of the books I do accept as review copies are at least decent, and some are excellent. (For the record, if your inquiry e-mail is badly written, I take that as a sign that I don't really want to read an entire book written by you).

Cons:

Producing a good blog is a lot of work. To be honest, producing almost anything good is a lot of work, and a blog really is no different than that. But a blog is a project that is never finished. Or at least, you can never say you have finished it unless you decide to abandon or close down your blog. There are always more books to read, more formatting tweaks to make, and so on. Writing a blog is like running a marathon that never ends.

The pressure to read and review books can turn reading into a chore. Although I love reading, and most of the books I choose to read for blogging purposes fall squarely into the categories of fiction and non-fiction that I enjoy most, the expectation's, mostly imposed by me upon myself, to grind through and review sufficient numbers of books to provide content for the blog can be wearying.

The pay is terrible. This isn't really fair, since I don't currently have much in the way of advertisements of other money generating elements on the blog (other than the Amazon Affiliate links), but the salient fact remains that my time spent blogging is for the most part unpaid labor. I suppose one could say I am being virtually compensated when a publisher sends me a review copy gratis, but the ratio of hours of work that I do compared to the value of said review copies means that I am being paid well under minimum wage to create this blog. Writing a blog is, for most people, a labor of love. The fact that I do this essentially for free does, however, make it somewhat grating when an author throws a hissy fit over a review of their book.

Blogging is incredibly frustrating at times. More than once I have written something that I consider to be well-polished and insightful, only to have it almost completely ignored when I publish it on my blog. Conversely, I have put up some posts that I consider to be merely adequate which receive large volumes of hits. And I simply have no idea why this occurs. I seem to have almost no ability to tell what people will respond to and what they will simply pass by. This is very frustrating as I watch what I consider to be my best work go mostly unnoticed, while the merely average gets all the attention.

Go to Day 1: What Are Your Blogging Resolutions for 2014?
Go to Day 3: What Books of 2013 Are You Sad You Missed?
 
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Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014 - What Are Your Blogging Resolutions for 2014?

What Are Your Blogging Resolutions for 2014?

This is the first day of the Book Blogger New Year's Challenge, and here are my blogging resolutions for the upcoming year:

Convert to Wordpress: My first resolution for 2014 is to convert Dreaming About Other Worlds to Wordpress. Using Blogger as a platform has worked reasonably well, and I've learned to work around a lot of its limitations to do things that I want to do with the blog. But doing odd things to get around the limitations of the platform you are using can get a little tiresome, and I suspect that some of the things I have done serve to make this blog a little unstable. At the very least, I'm straining the limits of Blogger's capabilities. And so my primary goal for the upcoming year is to move this blog to more congenial grounds.

Clear My Review Shelf: My second resolution for 2014 is to make a dent in my review shelf. I have a substantial backlog of review copies that I need to read and review. For a variety of reasons, 2013 was not a good reading year for me, and I was unable to get to several of the books that have been sent to me for review. I aim to rectify this situation in the upcoming year and read and review every one of the review copies that have been languishing on my shelves.

Advance Blogging Projects: My third resolution is to make progress on, and possibly complete, some of the large number of blogging projects that I have started but not completed. I started blogging about the episodes of the HBO series Cathouse a couple of years ago, and never finished getting through the series. I have also begun projects to blog about Farscape and Star Trek: The Original Series, both of which have stalled. And of course, I have my long-term project of trying to read and review all of the winners of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. My goal for 2014 is to make substantial progress in all of these projects.

Build Blog Infrastructure: My fourth resolution is to get more of the background work done on the blog. Although I have been slowly filling in the gaps in the Authors A-Z page and the Book Award Reviews page over the course of the last couple of years, the progress has been going very slowly. For 2014, I plan to complete the projects of getting them up to date.

Fix Blog Issues: My fifth resolution is to fix a number of niggling issues with the blog, mostly involving formatting of older posts and some of the fixed pages. For example, the Book Reviews by Series page is woefully incomplete at this point, and needs substantial work. I hope to take care of this, and issues like this in 2014, even though I am reasonably certain that no one but me will notice the changes.

Go to Day 2: What Are Your Pros and Cons of Blogging?

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Challenge - Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014

For the new year, Parajunkee, the reigning queen of book blogging, created the Book Blogger New Year's Challenge of 2014. The Challenge is a series of fourteen questions for book bloggers intended to be answered over the first two weeks of 2014. So, for the next couple weeks, I'll be posting an answer a day to these questions, which are as follows:

Book Blogger New Year's Challenge 2014:

Day 1: What are your blogging resolutions for 2014?
Day 2: What are your pros and cons of blogging?
Day 3: What books of 2013 are you sad you missed?
Day 4: What are the books of 2014 that you won't miss?
Day 5: What was the worst book of 2013?
Day 6: What was the best book of 2013?
Day 7: What are your top ten book blogger pet peeves?
Day 8: What was your favorite book blogger moment of 2013?
Day 9: What cons or events do you hope to attend in 2014?
Day 10: What new things will you be doing this year?
Day 11: How many books are on your to-be-read shelf?
Day 12: How do you plan on getting more followers this year?
Day 13: Share a blogger horror story
Day 14: What is your blogging wish list of 2014?

2014 Challenge Tracking Pages
7^th Annual Graphic Novels and Manga Challenge 2014
100+ Books in a Year for 2014 Challenge
2014 Dystopia Reading Challenge
2014 Everything YA Reading Challenge

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