Weekend Reads #73: How I Organize My Blog

Weekend Reads is a weekly post in which I discuss a variety of topics and mention the books I plan to read on the weekend.

I’m behind on everything in life at the moment. My tag-filled week (last week) did not go as planned because I’m in the midst of changing jobs and for some reason, my crazy butt thinks I must catch up on everything at my old job before leaving for the new one. Smh. No one does that!

I’m trying to chill and take it easy, but I think I went overboard on that goal this weekend and did almost nothing. I was so chill that I almost forgot about Father’s Day. Btw, shout out to all the dads. I got my dad a pint of ice cream because I know that’s his weakness.

Anyway, I have a whole week off before starting the new gig so I’ll try to catch up on posts, beginning with this late Weekend Reads post.

For this weekend, I once again checked the Book Blogger Hop for a topic. The Book Blogger Hop is a weekly book discussion meme created by Jennifer at Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and now managed by Billy at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.

This week’s question was submitted by Elizabeth at Silver’s Reviews:

How do you organize your blog in terms of what is in your side bar? Do you have categories and defined sections in your side bar?

Let me preface this by saying that I’m still working on my blog’s organization.

I used to have a lot more stuff in my side bar, but have whittled it over the years. Now I mostly keep stuff there that will help visitors navigate my blog and visit my other social media sites.

So from top to bottom, here’s what’s currently there:

• A sign welcoming visitors to my blog: I got this from Squeesome, which has many free blog buttons that bloggers can use.
• A highlighted quote to link to my quotes page, which I need to update
• Follow button for those who want to subscribe
• Bloglovin’ button for those who want to follow me on there
• Links to other social media sites… I wonder if I should move this higher. I keep debating this.
• A calendar that has my word for the year. This year’s word is Persevere, which I think I’m excelling at in certain aspects of my life but not so much in other parts.
• Blog archive, for those who choose to see what I’ve done on a month to month basis
• Top posts and pages
• Post categories
• Pages
• Search bar
• Goodreads challenge progress
• Books I’m currently reading, linked to Goodreads
• Books recently added to my Goodreads TBR
• Link to my Facebook page, which I should probably move higher
• Twitter posts
• Instagram posts
• Groups and events I’ve participated in (I might remove this and make a page for it instead.)
• My favorite bookish websites, which needs to be updated
• Peeps I recently followed
• That Meta thing

As you can see, and have seen, I have a bunch of shit over there and need to edit it some. Actually, I’d like to get a new theme for blog, which I’ve been saying since last year, but can’t settle on a theme I like. I basically want something similar to my current theme — Superhero — just a bit cleaner with larger font and better formatting in the side bar that shows what pages and post categories are actually sub-categories.

But that’s something to work on some other day. I’m not even sure if visitors notice all the crap I have in the side bar.

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Anyway, here’s what I read this past weekend:

Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb

It’s the last book in the Liveship Traders trilogy and I’m still slowly making my way through it. So far it is interesting, but there’s so much politics and so much going on, so many loose threads, that I wonder how it will all wrap up. I’ve also begun to dislike characters I initially thought I’d like — Serilla, she’s quite deceitful at the moment and I flip-flop between disliking and pitying her, — and liking characters I initially disliked — Malta, who’s awesome but is in a desparate situation. I hope nothing will happen to her and that Serilla’s experience will not befall her too.

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