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Most blogs have one. In fact, it’s a default page or widget in most blogging software. It’s the first thing I look for and check out when I encounter a new blog. Yep, it’s the “about” page.
The “about” page is pretty important to a blog. It gives readers and potential readers a snapshot of you and your blog. It also serves as a good reference in the future for readers to refresh on the details. Okay. It’s important. Good.
Content.
Location? Vocation? Pictures? Blog intro? Reading habits/philosophy? Contact info? Book reviewing policies? Links? There is a fine line to walk here between being informative and privacy concerns.
My “About” Page.
Here is how mine reads as of right now:
My name is Jessica, and I am a book addict. I read and read and read (as much as my career, family, and church will allow).
If you would like me to review one of your books, please leave a comment on this page or email me at thebluestockingsociety (at) gmail.com.
Not bad. Not too spectacular. To get ideas on how to add a little pizzazz to my “about” page, I did a quick tour of my blogroll.
Examples.
Matt at A Guy’s Moleskine Notebook has a list “about” page that lists his interests and activities and 100 things about him.
Eva over at A Striped Armchair has a lengthy “about” page which includes a general introduction to her and her blog and her reading tastes. Also, she links to memes she’s posted that tell a little bit more about her.
Chartroose over at Bloody Hell, It’s a Book Barrage! has a nicely crafted, alliterate “about” page.
Raych over at Books I Done Read has a rant of an “about” column that conveys all of the necessary information about her blog.
Dorothy W. over at Of Books and Bicycles has a brief “about” page similar to mine above.
Rebecca of Rebecca Reads and Karen at Sassy Monkey Reads both have conversational “about” pages that explain their personal book blog philosophies.
Christine over at She Reads Books has a comprehensive “about” page organized by topic for easy access, and she even includes a privacy statement.
Dewey over at The Hidden Side of a Leaf has an informative “about” page that was a little hard to find but full of useful information about her blog (and her extensive blog-community events) and her personal life. She has a little bit of the list thing going on there at the end, too.
Rants and Reads at The Novel World admits to struggling with her “about” page, but provides good information there.
The above examples are not exhaustive. There are many good examples out there, but these are the ones that kind of stuck out in some way to me.
Resolution.
Based on my own thoughts and my review of several blogs, I’ve established that I would like to revise my “about” page. Specifically, I am going to add more personal information like location and possibly vocation. Also, I’m going add a little intro to my blog. And, finally, I’m going to be more specific about my ARC/review policies.
I think it’ll be a work in progress, an evolution, if you will. The first phase in the evolution should occur in the next day or two. Be sure to check it out.
Questions.
What are your feelings about the “about” page? Do you have one? What do you include? What do you leave out? How often do you update or change it? (Including links to your “about” info would be helpful on this one.)
Do you check out other blogs’ “about” pages? Are you disappointed when there isn’t one? What would you like others to include?
I purchased my own domain: http://thebluestockings.com! I’ll be dual posting for a while, but please update your links and feeds (http://thebluestockings.com/feed/).
And now for some linking love: Booking Mama is having an awesome giveaway here. A great website with meme listings by day of the week can be found here. I recently won and received a copy of The Fires from Books on the Brain. Thank you! The 24-Hour Read-a-thon is quickly approaching. Alan Cheuse makes suggestions for sating that literary addiction here. My Poetry Tuesday meme for the week is about your favorites!! Come on, who can resist telling about your favorite things?
Reading and understanding poetry used to be an indispensible part of education and intelligence. However, poetry appears to me to be becoming less and less a part of curricula and the societal dialogue.
Here are some suggestions on how to make poetry a daily part of your life:
- Read a new poem every day at Daily Poetry or at Poetry.com.
- Subscribe to receive a Classic Poem Daily via email.
- Visit the Poetry 180 website and read one of the poems there.
- Purchase or borrow a collection of poetry and read one poem a day (perhaps at breakfast or before bed).
- Subscribe to The Writer’s Almanac podcast hosted by Garrison Keillor.
- Pick up a set of Magnetic Poetry and create poems while making dinner or chatting on the phone or play with Magnetic Poetry online.
Poetry Tuesday meme:
Make a resolution to make poetry a consistant part of your life. Select one of the above options or create one of your own and write a bit about your resolution and why you think it’s worthwhile to read poetry on a regular basis.
My resolution: #4. I’m going to keep collections of poetry around and try to read at least one poem a day. This will help me get through some of the poetry in my TBR pile, and it will help me to become more aware of the poetry sphere – any area of literature I tend to neglect.
I’m To Kill a Mockingbird:
Perceived as a revolutionary and groundbreaking person, you have changed the minds of many people. While questioning the authority around you, you’ve also taken a significant amount of flack. But you’ve had the admirable guts to persevere. There’s a weird guy in the neighborhood using dubious means to protect you, but you’re pretty sure it’s worth it in the end. In the end, it remains unclear to you whether finches and mockingbirds get along in real life.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” Kahlil Gibran
Reading poetry is a challenging enterprise. I have scoured the vast resources of the internet in search of some simple tools to make the initial encounter with poetry a little more pleasurable.
Websites
I found the following “The 11 Basic Steps to Reading a Poem” here.
Step 1: Read through the poem to get a sense of it.
Step 2: Identify the sentences and independent clauses (circle the periods, exclamation points, question marks, and semicolons). For some reason, people always forget that poetry is made up of complete sentences.
Step 3: Read a few lines to figure out the meter (figure out how many stresses there are in a typical line).
Step 4: Note the rhyme scheme (look for a pattern).
Step 5: Read the poem out loud. Try to follow the rhythm. If you do this you’ll hear where the poet plays with the rhythm. And you’ll hear the rhyme scheme.
Step 6: Look up any words you don’t understand.
Step 7: Re-read the poem out loud.
Step 8: Mark off any sections in the poem. These sections may be speeches given by a character, discussions of a particular topic, changes in mood, or a new stage of an argument.
Step 9: Re-read the poem.
Step 10: Figure out the tone — the emotion — of the poem.
Step 11: Re-read the poem.
A similar checklist approach to reading poetry can be found here.
An excellent three-tiered approach based on skill-level can be found here.
Books
The Poetry Foundation has excerpted the first chapter of How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch here. The 16 sections of the book deal with 16 different ways of thinking about a poem. My favorite section is Give a Common Word the Spell. I love the way poetry makes me think about words and language in a new way.
I recently purchased Rhyme’s Reason by John Hollander as a treatise on poetic form. Thus, far I have been unimpressed by the book’s organization but somewhat pleased with the content.
I also own Harold Bloom’s The Art of Reading Poetry but have not yet delved into it.
Finally, I have heard Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook touted as a must for all poets and poetry readers. It’s on my wishlist.
Any other suggested poetry resources?
I think every Tuesday is in need of a bit of poetry.
On this, the inaugural Poetry Tuesday, I want to share two of my current favorite poems. Both of them come from a project called Poetry 180. Poetry 180 is a project started by Billy Collins, former poet laureate, in an effort to bring poetry into the lives of high school students. Despite the purpose of the project, these poems aren’t just for high schoolers. There is a Poetry 180 book, but the website has all of the poems on it.
Anyway, here are my two favorites:
#23
Tour
Carol Snow
Near a shrine in Japan he’d swept the path
and then placed camellia blossoms there.
Or — we had no way of knowing — he’d swept the path
between fallen camellias.
#53
Selecting a Reader
Ted Kooser
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
“For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.
Poetry makes me happy.
So, this very cool website, www.kevinandamanda.com, makes fonts out of people’s handwriting-for free, if you’re lucky. This font that you see here is made from my very own handwriting. It’s crazy.
Anyhow, on to the books. I’m STILL reading The Sweet Far Thing. I’m now about 500 pages in. I still like it a lot, but I think, at this point, I’m just reading it to see how it ends, not for the joy of reading. And that’s okay with me, I guess.
Some elements of the book are a little aggravating though, so hold on for some light venting. Gemma, the heroine, has a bit of a problem making decisions. Any decisions-big ones, little ones, ones that might save the whole universe. Also, it’s driving me crazy that there is absolutely no one in the book that you can trust. I think it takes a special skill for a writer, of say a mystery novel, to create suspense while still maintaining appropriate sanity levels. The fact that Gemma, in this book and in the other two in the series, has absolutely no one to confide in or bounce ideas off of drives me completely insane. I know that Gemma’s aloneness is one of the themes of the book, but I think Libba Bray has taken it too far in this case. Grrr . . . Also, some of the more lubricious elements make me uncomfortable. There. I said it.
In other reading news, I have left The Golden Notebook forlornly collecting dust by the side of my bed since Saturday. Maybe I’ll be able to plug through the last 300 pages of TSFT and return to TGN tomorrow. Here’s hoping.
With the recent swarm of interest in politics and the article on reading I talked about yesterday, I’ve made a resolution to read the newspaper everyday. We currently subscribe to The Deseret News, mostly for the crossword puzzles (me) and the movie/tv news (husband). This week I’m going to spend a little time after work perusing the news sections. We’ll see if my life is altered for the better.
Cheerio.
-Jessica
