Armchair BEA Wrap-Up

Design credit: Emily of Emily's Reading Room

Whew! What a week. School ends next week so we are in the midst of end-of-year chaos. I wasn't sure if I would be able to keep up with Armchair BEA and had in fact never heard of it until the evening before it began. I am so glad Jen and Kellee at Teach Mentor Texts mentioned it or I would have missed out on the fun.

My blog is not only a book blog. It is also about teaching in the library and my learning experiences. Most of the blogs I typically visit are like that. We review books too, but that isn't necessarily the main focus. Promoting books and discussing books with many people is a big part of what I do, but my blog is also a place to reflect on and share what is going on with me and my students on our learning journey. What was cool about Armchair BEA is that I was able to visit many blogs that are more focused on book reviewing. I noticed some things that I should definitely add to my blog (like a disclosure and review policy) and gave me ideas for posts. I have been sort of bumbling along wondering what I should do on certain days, how many days a week I should post and all kinds of things. I  haven't truly had a plan. Many of the blogs I visited provided some direction for me and gave me inspiration for getting things planned out better over the summer. 

I also gained a new appreciation for Audrey (@audrey_gonzalez). She is a co-blogger at Rich in Color and she had the original idea for it too. As we were setting up that blog together she had a very specific plan and knew exactly what we needed and how many days we would post & what would be happening on each of the days. She had a distinct vision. I have never gotten to that point here on Reading Through Life. In a way, I am glad that I have sort of bumbled through trying many things, but I am ready to sit down with my list of ideas and fine tune my vision for this blog. Now I have some more tools to do it and many great blogs and bloggers to interact with on the way. Some that I visited were Jen and Kellee of course, Tattooed Books, Bookcase to Heaven, Icy Cold Reads, The Bookmark Blog, The Englishist, Book Twirps (who have a great YA book release post every week), and Book 'em Adventures.

I also found out about a few fun memes that I may try like Top Ten Tuesday from Broke and Bookish, Roadtrip Wednesday at YA Highway, and Waiting on Wednesday from Breaking the Spine. 

I was bummed that I couldn't be at BEA in person, but when Kelly (@catagator) over at Stacked, told about her experience, I feel like maybe I got the better deal even without ARCs or other free stuff. What I wanted was to meet some bloggers that are at various stages in the process, get some ideas for my own blogging, and have fun. Mission accomplished.