I have been think a lot about rating systems recently, and wondered how other people’s rating system work. The scientist in me likes to use diagrams to demonstrate this – so please bare with me as I try to explain!

My rating system is shaped a bit like this:

I would rate almost all the books in the world as one star (blue). They have no interest to me, and with any luck I won’t even start to read one of these books. Occasionally I am unlucky enough to read one, but most of those books on car engines, knitting, the benefits of plastic etc. will remain on the shelves, unread by me.

The majority of the books on my blog will be 3 or 3.5 stars (orange). These are average books. Reasonable reads, but nothing outstanding about them. If I had my time again, I probably wouldn’t read them – I like to try to find the rarer 4 star (yellow) or almost impossible to find 5 star (red) books.

I think of 5 star books as being masterpieces. They are the ones which grip you from beginning to end, alter your thinking on an issue and stay with you forever. I don’t find many of these books and they account for only a very tiny percentage of all the books ever published.

What does your rating system look like?

Are you ratings evenly spread like this?

or a less severe version of mine?

….or a different shape entirely?!

I’d love to hear what you think about this!

The Blog Improvement Project task for the past few weeks has been blog post bingo. We had to look at the 12 types of blog post below, and over the past three weeks, try to write as many of these different kinds of posts as we can.

I’m celebrating as I have just completed all twelve.

Bingo!

 The 12 Types of Blog Post

1. A Link Post – Links I’ve stumbled across this week
2. A Short Post I’m One of the Best Book Blogs in the UK!
3. A List Post – 8 things to blog about when you haven’t read any books
4. An Opinion Post – What do you think of adverts?
5. A Poll or Question Post How do you decide which is the best blog?
6. A How-To Post – How to find more time for reading
7. A Long Post – Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel Q&A
8. A Review Post – Lanterns on Their Horns – Radhika Jha
9. A Definition Post – Can you read a book with bad foxing?
10. NEW: A Personal Post –I think I’ve had Swine Flu
11. NEW: A Resource Post – The Most Useful WordPress Plug-ins for Book Bloggers
12. FREE SPACE – A Prediction Post – Who will be longlisted for the Booker Prize?

I found it a lot easier to complete than last time. This is probably because I am more used to varying the type of post I do.  I found the definition post the strangest to write – I wasn’t really comfortable with writing definitions of things and although I tried to make a question out of it, I didn’t think it sat very well on my blog. I don’t think there will be any more definition posts on this blog for a while.

I apologise for failing to write a technical ‘how to’ post. I half wrote one on separating ping backs from comments, but it got far too technical for me – I had to rope my husband in, and then realised that there were so many variables depending on how you host your blog, so I had to abandon it! I still think it is an important thing to do though, so if you have the time – search for how to do it, being very specific about the way your blog is set up.

Which type of blog post do you find hardest to write? 

Suey at It’s All About Books wrote an thought-provoking post about a friend who said “I don’t have the luxury to read”, then Rebecca followed that up with an interesting post about making reading a priority. 

I thought I’d add to them by listing all the ways I manage to fit lots of reading into my every day life.

.

• Don’t watch television.
• Don’t go to the gym – build exercise into your normal life by cycling to work, taking the children swimming, going for a walk with the family. You can spend your gym membership on a few books instead!
• Read more blogs – controversial I know, but I’ve found the more blogs I read, the more books I discover that I really want to read. This means I am more likely to make more time for reading.
• Don’t iron your clothes – this is a bit extreme, but I hate ironing, so try to buy clothes which don’t need it in the first place. Then, if I know I’m not going out all day I’m not going to waste time ironing my clothes!
• Listen to an audio book while you’re driving, cooking, cleaning etc.
• Don’t watch many films.
• Try to ensure all your chores are done early, so you have lots of free time during the evening to read.
• Take a book with you where ever you go. You never know when you are going to have to wait around for a bit.
• Make double quantities when you are cooking, then freeze half – that way you only need to cook every other day.
• Subscribe to Daily Lit – that way you can read books via email. If you’re at work they will never know what is in that email!

What do you do to be able to spend more time reading?

14th – 18th September is  Book Blogger Appreciation Week! I wasn’t blogging at the time of last year’s event, so am really excited to find out all about it.

Nominations for the best blogs are being taken until 15th August, but I found it a really hard thing to do.

How do you decide which is the best blog?

Sites like Maw Books and My Friend Amy are incredibly well put together and they clearly put a lot of work into blogging and improving our community, but I rarely feel compelled to leave comments on their blogs as they seem to have a different taste in books to me.

I currently have 22 blogs in my favourites folder in google reader, but most of them aren’t well known blogs. They don’t have hundreds of comments on every post, fancy blog designs or hundreds of book giveaways each month, but what they do have is great taste in books and the ability to persuade me to part with my cash!

I thought long and hard about who to nominate as my favourite blog and decided that it should be the person who has caused me to buy the most books in the last year, and that is Diane from Bibliophile by the Sea.

I’m not sure it’s really possible to decide who has the best blog, as it is such a personal choice. I would love to know how many different blogs were nominated for this category and how they decide on the short list.

I then discovered there were 40 other categories to provide nominations for. I wasn’t prepared for that at all! I soon discovered that my blog reading falls into a very narrow field – I couldn’t even name a romance blog!

Some categories I found really easy, but there were a lot I really struggled with.

Which categories did you find easiest/hardest to nominate for?