As I am sure many of you can appreciate, it can be pretty hard work generating two book reviews each and every week between two people and a wonderful, assorted cast of volunteer reviewers.  Unless your entire life revolves around reading and reviewing the 1001 Books, of course.

Both of your editors are busy mums; one of us works and the other is about to start home educating her eldest child.  We both love to read, but time is not always our friend.  While we are not yet on the bones of our reviewing bottoms, we can foresee a time when the steady stream of reviews will slowly run down.

Personally, I (Ms Oh Waily) have a lot of non-1001 Book reading coming up in my future.  Small children and their educational needs wait for no woman nor her personal quest to read some of the best literature in the world.  So here I am, writing our very first request for the volunteer equivalent of a staff writer to join our “permanent” staff of two.

We are looking for reviewers who are willing and able to commit to writing one or two reviews each month.  Regularly. To a deadline.  For a reading public.  If you are interested in contributing in an ongoing, regular way, we would love to hear from you.

What’s in it for you?

Well, you may be getting a new reading audience.
If you aren’t already a regular blogger this might be a “lite” way to see if you’ll enjoy the process of a regular posting schedule.

And, of course, you get to work with us.

If you want to have a chat about it, drop us an email at 1001booksbeforeyoudie at gmail dot com or a drop us a message over at the Facebook page.

 

Just a reminder that we have created a Facebook page to marry up with this blog.  Each entry from the blog is posted up on the page so if you are a social media socialite then you may prefer to get your book fix that way.

We also occasionally post interesting, funny, or appropriate status updates over at Facebook that don’t make it here to the blog as they are more suited to the quick-sharing nature of the Facebook format.
For instance, a few days back we shared an article about John Updike’s 6 Rules for Constructive Criticism and a few days prior to that we shared an image of a wonderful free library in Bogotá (Colombia).

Today we also began a weekly status update inviting our Facebook readers to visit our Review Crew at home at their personal blogs, where many write about non-1001 books too.

If you visit the blog to read the reviews, simply scroll down and click the like button on the Facebook plugin.  Otherwise you can always do a search for us over at Facebook the next time you login to see what your friends are up to.

We hope you’ll join us over in the social media world, so you can share in and enjoy the little non-book review snippets that pass over our digital desks.  We look forward to seeing you in the comments, here or at Facebook.

We have recently been “reblogged” for the first time here at 1001 Books.
Three posts have been taken.  No request to reproduce them was received before the arrival of the comment telling me that they were up on another blog.

Now, I’m of the opinion that you should ask before you take.  But I’m old, and funny about basic etiquette and good manners.  I imagine that my viewpoint is not the only one to be had out here on the world wide web.  So, before I go put on my stomping boots and ask that the site removes the book reviews in question, I would like to canvas the opinions of our readers and reviewers.

I will also be leaving the final decision regarding what approach to take to the reviewers affected by the reblogging.  I will contact you shortly.

In the meantime, as this is a collaborative blogging effort here, I want to get a feeling about how you all view this new trend in the blogging world and how you would like us to handle any future occurrences.

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment with your opinions.

I was sitting here at home today, doing my usual catch-up blogging, and I began to think about which book from the list should be the next to come home from the library with me.  It is quite a daunting prospect, choosing one book out of 1200+.  But one book it must be.  Mostly because I have a terrible habit of trying to read multiple books at once and never quite finishing some of them, but also because I seem to have reduced reading time for myself at the moment.

While I was pondering this problem my mind wandered away from me, as it frequently does, and ended up in the vicinity of our reviewers and readers here at 1001 Books.  I began to wonder which book from the list you would absolutely recommend in a heartbeat.  A book that spoke to you, that you loved to read and that you think of fondly even days, weeks, months or years after having finished reading it.

Then I thought to myself, “Well, why not ask them?  Someone is bound to be reading the blog at some point, and they are bound to have read at least one book from the list.  Go on.  See what happens.”

So here I am.  Asking you.

Which book from the 1001 Lists would you unreservedly say “you really should read this“?

Feel free to argue amongst yourselves in the comments below.  A curious reader would like to hear your opinion.  Oh, and if you can include your reason for loving the book – that would help me choose too.

As you may know from reading our earlier post we at 1001 Books are an affiliate for the online bookseller, The Book Depository.
As such we receive notification of upcoming sales and promotions.  And being goodhearted bookish citizens, we are here to share news on the latest promotion.  It is about to begin as I type and extends over a 24 hour period.  The discounts on offer are very tempting, now to find the perfect book…

I have not personally taken part in a 24 hour of offers sale here, but I’m sure that there will be something in the sale that will be perfect for your reading.  And as today’s quote quite rightly points out, books first and then food and clothing.

Happy reading (and saving) everyone.