This week on Top Ten Tuesday, The Broke and the Bookish
Top five things that make my life as a reader easier:
- Goodreads. I would be lost without my Goodreads lists. The read, to read, DNF shelves are my life. I used to use a Word document. It wasn't too bad, but if I wanted a refresher on the synopsis, I'd have to go to Amazon and it was a lot of back and forth. Luckily with Goodreads it's all right there and I can even see reviews from my friends instead of strangers on the interwebs.
- Bloglovin. This is the best tool for blog reading. It keeps everything in nice chronological order, a quick "mark as red" button, and pretty pictures too boot.
- My iPad. Between my Kindle app, my iBooks app, and my Overdrive account, I've got everything I could ever need to read an eBook in any format.
- County library. Not just a city library, this pulls from all over the county. It makes getting books so much easier as there is a huge selection and they have plenty of copies of the more popular books. It's even handier that I can request online and they send the book to my local library. Easy breezy.
- My boyfriend. Seriously. When I'm almost done with a book or things are really intense, he'll take care of the dog, cook dinner, and pretty much let me just sit there and read. It's so awesome. I try not to abuse the privilege and wait for those moments where I really can't be torn away. However, I'm still not allowed to eat during meals...
- Default post formatting. I hate all my posts set up to begin a certain way. Since most of my posts involve books, it automatically begins in that format and I can just plug and chug. If the posts doesn't deal with a specific book, I can easily delete it. Makes life a lot easier.
- Scheduled posts. Sometimes I type of reviews or posts weeks in advance - I hate feeling rushed. This allows me to essentially set it and forget it (I'm apparently feeling quite rhymey today). Especially if I've read the book far in advance compared to the date it's going to go live on my blog.
- Google calendar. I would be so lost without this. I have everything posted on this calendar. Book reviews, guest posts, interviews... if it's going on the blog, it's going on the calendar.
- Weekends. I don't blog on the weekends - if you see a post go up, it was one of the many scheduled posts. I do all my blog writing during the week and save the weekends for reading only. I do read during the week as well, but a majority of it is done on the weekend. No bedtimes and I'm not dragging myself out of bed at 5:45am for work.
- Blog friends. I've made some pretty good friends while blogging and they make it fun. They all have their own personalities and likes/dislikes so I'm exposed to a wide variety of books and such. Also, it's really nice to have neardy book friends to fangirl over books with.