Ok, so I'm putting this up as a disclaimer... my numbers for this challenge are going to go up quite a lot this week, because I'm playing CATCH UP. I only found out about this challenge at the beginning of April... and I read 100 books in that month alone. I keep an Excel list of all the books I've read, to avoid buying duplicates, so I'm going to go through my list and add all the books I've read in the past three months. I just started keeping notes on the books I've read, to remind myself what they were about and which ones should be KEEPERS, so I already have pretty decent reviews written up for at least another 150 books.
I'm sorry in advance if I overwhelm the pages of books reviews! I hate to clog it up and make you see pages and pages of "Janet85" reviews... it will probably look a little spammy. I'll try to put them all up as fast as I can, so at least it doesn't drag on of being "Janet Janet Janet".
I've got a question up about how to show a PREVIEW of my review (so that people can read the preview before clicking to view the FULL review)... once that's answered I'll start adding all my books.... so it won't be for a bit yet...
Holy Moly Thanks!
I expected your catch-up reviews to be real short or non-existent -- which would be FINE b/c it's really a task to do so many at once -- but the couple that I just glanced at were full reviews. Heck, I just want to thank you for helping get our numbers up! But to talk about the books, wow! That's great!
Penn
Come find my teammates and me at The DFWPlus Challenge Blog!
I second
what Penn said! Thanks!
The D2K Paranormal Junkies 2008 Challenge Blo
Oh sweets... the few you
Oh sweets... the few you just glanced at WERE full reviews. Those were books I read today.
I haven't yet started up on my "catch up" reviews.... I was waiting to get my question answered so I could make sure my reviews didn't look like pure spam...
My "catch up reviews" will be slightly shorter.... lately with my APRIL reviews I deliberately do two paragraphs: summary, my take, and then a rating out of 5 stars.
My "catch up reviews" will consist of comments I left for MYSELF... which summarize in short sentences the main plot, any ick factors, best parts, plus I've labelled which ones are KEEPERS... they will be a bit shorter than the other reviews. (A few of them will just have 2 sentences, others will be the same length as my regular April ones)
Well that's fine!
We'll take whatever you want to give us! :) I like your format, btw, when you're doing your full reviews.
Penn
Come find my teammates and me at The DFWPlus Challenge Blog!
Thanks, I'm trying! I
Thanks, I'm trying! I really like reading other people's reviews, so I'm trying to do good ones myself to help people decide to read 'em!
The reviews people give for Presents, Blaze, and Desire books DIRECTLY decides what goes to the top of my TBR pile!
about the "preview"
if your reviews are fairly short ... say 20 lines or less, then after you've typed up your review .... click on the blue "disable rich-text" that you'll see just below the "review" box ..... then type this on the very last line ... <!--break--> .... then click on "enable rich-text" ... then click on "preview" .. and you should see that every thing is in the small "trimmed view"
hope this helps!
PS ... I did up a few "How to" blogs back in January when the new site openned ... if you go to my Profile and then click on "more" under "Most recent blog entries" and then click on "last" you should see the series of entries ..... here's one "How I would make a short review without a book cover"
I'm glad you've decided to post your backlog! ... I'm looking forward to seeing your list
~~ KatherineT ~~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it!
~~ Quiet Canadians ~ 2008 Book Challenge Blog
I know what it is like to get behind...
I'm in the same boat - I've been so busy since late January that I've only been posting about 10 books a month. I'm bound and determined to catch up as my life as slowed down a bit. I've posted 6 books today, with probably 40 more to go!
Last year I would catch up with just lists but no-can-do this year and I do like to post the book pic too, so it takes some time even for the quick ones.
Good luck with your catch up!
~ ElleJay - Team member of Novel Obsession
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the pleasure is having lots to do and not doing it!
Catching up
I ditto ElleJay. Last year I posted as I went. This year I've been really lax in the reviewing department. I posted four today and have two more I want to get up before the weekend is over.
Don't worry about looking spam-ish. It's wonderful that you are driven enough to go through the trouble of posting them all.
Thanks for the help
Thanks for the help KatherineT!
I didn't intentionally get a backlog, I just didn't know about the challenge until April, and since I keep track of the books I read, I can easily enough back-date my books to the start of the challenge. :)
For April, I kept up pretty well. I posted my book reviews every four books or so (which ended up being once a day), since that's pretty much the only way to keep all the books plot straight in my head before things get jumbled! We'll see if I can keep that up!
FYI: I've started doing my
FYI: I've started doing my catch up now... I'm putting 'em down all in a bunch now, getting 'em over with so I'm not being a nuisance for hours/days!
WHEW.... I just added 60
WHEW.... I just added 65 books from my January/February/March "catch up".... (you'll be happy to see that I made them very detailed reviews, just like my regular reviews) ...
Sadly I've still got tons to go. :( *frown* That took a LONG time to post all those! And yikes it overwhelms the forum quite a bit.
I'll resume posting the "catch up" reviews later on, I need a break from typing like mad.
Sorry for posting so many at once and clogging it!
Janet!
what a great job you are doing!! .... I'm very impressed with your recall for details :D
I wish I could write "short" reviews .... I used to write my reviews very similar to yours when the Challenge started in 2006 ... but over time I suddenly developed "running of the fingers" syndrome (like running of the mouth but for typists LOL) ......
hey, if you wouldn't mind adding the acronym NFT (No further text) to the end of your short reviews, that'd be great .... that way people reading your reviews know that everything is there in the "preview or trimmed version" and they don't have to click "more" ...
WOW ... did you see the book counter???? ..... if you keep adding more, we'll be at our first 10,000 this weekend!!! FAR OUT!!!
~~ KatherineT ~~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it!
~~ Quiet Canadians ~ 2008 Book Challenge Blog
Are people using NFT? Several of us use NFM
which stands for No Further Message . . . same idea. I noticed that one of the NYC editors uses her initials. It gets the idea across.
Janet, if you go to my (Penn's) blogs you'll see lots of preview windows with NFM . . . I put the "break" command right after that LOL. My goal this year was to spend less time online and therefore write shorter reviews. Plus, I figure it saves other people time, too, in that they can see my reviews at a glance and go on their merry little ways.
I knew it would take a long time for you to add your backlog, even if you don't put a review in. If it starts to overwhelm you, maybe you could copy a standard message into the review field -- something like, "Catching up on backlog of over 150 . . . no review for this book. It was okay. NFM" (or "good" or whatever). And maybe if a book was excellent excellent you could take the extra time to do one of your real reviews and let us all know. Sadhbh (rhymes with "five") reads almost 1000 books each year and while she didn't take my advice, I told her that while I'd love reviews of every book what I really want are reviews of the books that I -- who only reads about 100/year -- should make time for. So it's the same idea.
Have fun with the challenge . . . don't let it become a chore!
Penn
Come find my teammates and me at The DFWPlus Challenge Blog!
Wow... I want to add my 2¢ worth
here as well. It's fantastic the numbers that you're adding to our challenge ~ and your reviews, even the short ones, certainly say enough to pique interest in the book.
Welcome aboard!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
kalyko ~ Reading: One of life's little joys and a much needed reward!
Re: Are people using NFT? Several of us use NFM
ROFL ..... too many acronyms! ... yes, Penn, I think you're right it is NFM
on one of the first sites I participated on, the format was a listing of thread subject lines, you clicked on the subject to open the discussion .... we used "nt" for no text when we said everything in the subject line and nothing in the text box .... old habits! LOL
~~ KatherineT ~~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it!
~~ Quiet Canadians ~ 2008 Book Challenge Blog
Replying to ya all
Kalyko... thanks for the comment
I told her that while I'd love reviews of every book what I really want are reviews of the books that I -- who only reads about 100/year -- should make time for.
Penn... I know what you mean. And here's what I think of that: I really want to give as much of a summary as I can for the books I read, at least a short paragraph. I read so many HPs, I write myself notes all the time to give myself the gist if I'm looking at re-reading a book or in the mood for a certain TYPE of read. But for people who don't read as many... I TAG my books as KEEPERS. If you look at my reviews, right beside the RATING I will say "KEEPER" in big letters like that. And I use the tag "Keeper" if you want to search the blogs for that keyword/cloud. Last night I added 60 odd books... and 10 of them were keepers. I almost should have a BLOG here at eHarlequin which I favourite and update with all my keepers regularly.... and that's the list that people who read my reviews but only want to read a FEW should look up.
KatherineT... ok, NFM, I'll try to remember to use that. I can be pretty anal, so once I DO make it a habit, it will be consistently used. (funny... I wish someone had told me right away NFM meant that! I read a few reviews by Sadhbh and other people using that, and i thought it meant NOT FOR ME)
Penn... I compiled a KEEPER list
Hey Penn... I compiled a KEEPER list... which I favourited, and will go back and regularly update with books I consider keepers.
That way people know which books I seriously highly highly uber recommend!
http://community.eharlequin.com/content/janets-keeper-list-regularly-updated
Thanks so much!
I'm sure I'm not the only one who will appreciate that!
Penn
Come find my teammates and me at The DFWPlus Challenge Blog!
Janet - since I'm the one who was pushing you into blogging
about them, I'm happy
and if I don't worry 
about saturating the challenge blogs or the servers, why would you ? 
Penni - I know you'd be perfectly happy if I skipped everything but the great and the excellent, but the length of my blogs actually does reflect the ratings, the ones I don't like get long blogs because I have to explain why I don't like them, the ones I think are great and excellent ditto, but the ones in the middle get correspondingly shorter comments
Hugs
Sadhbh
May's Member of the Month
Dream Team 2008 Challenge blogs
re: Sorry in advance
Wow, nice work...I've been a complete reading slacker this year so it's inspiring to see folks like you and Sadhbh posting your reviews.
If I don't worry about
If I don't worry about saturating the challenge blogs or the servers, why would you ?
But you didn't post 60 books at a time. :P You post like 15? I just felt bad for anyone trying to post their book reviews at the same time as me, because they definately got BURIED in the 5 or 6 pages of "Janet85 reviews" that were pretty much nonstop. They would have to do a lot of scrolling through "Recent Posts" to find threads they were looking for. Pooey!
But anyhow.... I think I'm gonna have to do about 50 at a time, it was just insane sitting and clicking and filling in all the boxes of a review, over and over again, typing at fast speed. (I didn't even wait for the tags to get auto completed for me, you know if you type three letters of an authors name, the rest pops up? I didn't bother waiting, I just threw down the author's name manually. It saved two seconds and a click)
Penni - I know you'd be perfectly happy if I skipped everything but the great and the excellent, but the length of my blogs actually does reflect the ratings, the ones I don't like get long blogs because I have to explain why I don't like them, the ones I think are great and excellent ditto, but the ones in the middle get correspondingly shorter comments
I don't know why exactly I give my reviews whatever length I do... but all that makes the GOOD ones stand out from the bad.... is that the KEEPERS are marked to stand out as much as they can. The bad, well I use the words "ICK FACTOR", and try to politely say "skip it, read another book"
acronyms
I made up a list of aconyms and many member of the community helped because last year I was stumped what a lot of them meant too http://community.eharlequin.com/content/blogging-acronyms Sam Hunter has one posted too and there are some on the FAQ page.
Great to see those numbers rising.
Christa ~ Quiet Canadians ~ 2008 Challenge Blog
My Shelfari Page
Most of them are general
Most of them are general internet slang which I knew already.
I like the BICHOK one! LOL
This one here is random.... Sisters Lusting after the Brothers?
SOTB= Sisters of the Brotherhood, LATB= Lusting After The Brothers, SLATB=Sisters Lusting After The Brothers
Brothers
A lot of readers were reading J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood books last year and started a group of acronyms
Christa ~ Quiet Canadians ~ 2008 Challenge Blog
My Shelfari Page
Still more to come... Hey
Still more to come...
Hey guys, just letting you know, I've only posted 60 odd backlog books, still got about 100 to go. :(
And I will post the backlog, but I'm madly enjoying reading new books right now! So I'm too lazy to devote a day to catching up on backlog, when I'm just reading like wild yummy new books.
Turn that frown upside down!
Hey! We WANT your backlog! We can handle it LOL.
Penn
Come find my teammates and me at The DFWPlus Challenge Blog!