Bloggiesta! (in which I share my Goals for the weekend, and also one of my major Failings)

So I've already posted my very own first ever mini-challenge, and now, as Bloggiesta gets going (here's the starting line), I'm going to set to work on my blog.

My goals:

1. graze through the various mini-challenges, both the old (at There's a Book) and the new (at It's All About Books). I'm especially intrigued by the Pinterest Challenge, and especially determined to intelligently follow April's SEO advice.

2. Tidy my links

3. Expand my fairy tale retelling page to include retellings of myths; possibly create one or two new pages (ghosts and fantastical schools come to mind).

4. Write four reviews to have on hand, of 1 overdue library book, 2 ARCs that came out in March, and 1 ARC I've promised to pass on to a friend (waves to Doret), and finish a portmanteau post on fantasy cats. I checked to make sure that portmanteau was a suitable word, and although I'm stretching it a bit, I think I have a case: from wikipedia--in linguistics, a portmanteau is defined as a single morph (aka post) which represents two or more morphemes (aka book reviewlets).

5. Find the unfinished book that I lost somewhere in the house (I hope--surely I wouldn't have left it in the Boston Children's Museum which is where I was reading it last...). Sigh.

6. Add a few more reviews to Amazon and goodreads (I hate giving stars, so I don't to this much, but there are some books I know are five stars that I can cheerfully add)

7. Make sure that I've emailed the publishers who have sent me books that I've reviewed. I find this challenging, in much the same way I found it challenging to hand papers in on time in college. Sometimes all goes well--I write a cogent, pithy gem of a post saying how much I love a book, and am so happy to have loved it that I whisk the link off to the publisher tout suite. This has happened at least once.

But other times, I am utterly loathe to email off that link, knowing there are probably typos and egregious errors (possibly including the name of the author or the main character), and that even if there aren't, it's clear I didn't really love the book as much as they maybe hoped I would and so it's not a nice thing to send. So I wait a bit, to see if I catch the typos, and then maybe I remember a few days later to send the link, but no-one has commented on the review, which might make the publisher sad, and at any event by then I've lost the piece of paper that came with the book, and possibly passed the ARC on to my local librarian, and my email address book lists three different people for the publisher, and I dunno which of them is still there, and all is just a disaster. (I'm exaggerating a bit, but still). Of course, when I've accepted an email request, I at least have that email, which solves one problem.

8. Create a domestic atmosphere more conducive for reading and blogging by thoroughly cleaning the house (see Goal 5) and getting the garden completely ready for spring. Build stone retaining wall and put up stockade fence to keep loud neighbors from bothering me while I try to read and blog.