I'd like to take a look at the 12th Carnival of Children's Literature, but I feel that first I should mention The Edge of the Forest, which I actually did visit soon after it was published. (Last week, I think. But what is time, anyway?)
I was particularly interested in the What's In Their Backpack? feature, which this month was an interview with Elizabeth Bluemla of The Flying Pig Bookstore. Pay particular attention to what she (and interviewer Kim Winters) have to say about teen readers and problem novels. (Then you might want to visit the open discussion at YA Cafe again to see what those people have to say about what teens would like to see in their books.)
I checked out Pam Coughlin's how-to article Be a B-List Blogger. Pam notes that the best blogs update several times a day. This kind of freaked me out because I'm already snowed under with Internet reading, and most of the thirty blogs I visit nearly every day update only once in twenty-four hours.
I'd like to get started reading Margo Rabb's blog tour because I kind of knew her when we both hung out at Readerville. But I tend to avoid reading interviews and even long reviews unless I've read the book the author is promoting or that is being reviewed because I just don't have time. There's a interview with M.T. Anderson floating around the kidlitosphere that I would like to read because I'm a Lederhosen fan. (Octavian who?) I still haven't read 7 Imps' interview with Susan Thomsen, and now they've got one with Jen Robinson I'm not going to be able to get to for a while. (I knew she was an engineer, by the way.)
I've started using JacketFlap's personalized blogreader hoping I could save time by just going to the blogs JacketFlap tells me have updated since the last time I was there. But I don't actually trust JacketFlap. What if it's wrong, and I miss something?
Part of what I like about blogs is that the bloggers preread articles and books I wouldn't find on my own and tip me off about which things I should be looking into. Now I need someone to preread my blogs for me.
Don't worry about blogs updating more than once a day in our little corner. The top blogs in the whole blogging world are generally the ones that update several times a day. They also tend to be making money.
ReplyDeleteFuse#8 was the only blog I knew in kids lit who used to update throughout the day, but now she does multiple entries, but posts them all at once. Kelly and Leila also occasionally post more than once a day, and I think that's it. Like you, I can only hope that it doesn't become a trend because I can't keep up with all the blogs as it is now.
Thanks, MR ;) I do post whenever something comes up, but only because my life situation allows it. (I think Leila's situation is similar.) But, I'll never match Fuse. I just don't have the stamina.
ReplyDeleteGail: Have you used the MyJacketFlap feature in Jacket Flap? It's where you basically take your blogs on the blogroll, that you read everyday, and mark them within Jacket Flap. Then you can read just those ones. That feature ALWAYS works. Sometimes the feed for ALL goes down (esp. over the weekends), but overall they do a great job not missing anything.
I write this as if I've actually done this. Basically I marked up to "C" and stopped. One day this week (it seems to be an "organization week" for me) I'm going to go in and mark all my favorite blogs C-Z.
Gail, I can confidently say that our New blog posts feature at JacketFlap works very well. I agree with Kelly that the MyJacketFlap method is a great way to keep up with your favorite blogs. We switched over to a new dedicated feed server this past weekend and are now updating the RSS feeds every few minutes for the 283 "public" blogs currently in our system as well as another 62 blogs that our users have added to their MyJacketFlap pages that aren't in our public blogroll list. We also archive every blog post for all of the blogs in our system. You can click on the calendar on the right-side of our blog reader to see the posts from any day in the past if you want to be sure you haven't missed anything. I personally have 43 blogs in MyJacketFlap that I read every day (including yours). I could never keep up with all of them without it!
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I have created my own personal blog roll at JacketFlap, but I wasn't aware that I could add blogs that weren't part of your system. That would be helpful.
ReplyDeleteFor those who have tried both...do you prefer MyJacketFlap over Bloglines? Occasionally, Bloglines will show posts that I have already read. In an extreme case, Fuse#8's "A Cat Headed Poodle Walrus" from 10/30/06 post shows up every day. I don't know why. Maybe Bloglines is possessed.
ReplyDeleteThis is embarrassing, but I never actually figured out how to use Bloglines. I'm part of it so that others can access my blog via Bloglines, but I don't go there myself.
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