Thoughts on Thursday: Time and Tasks and Sites and Books

There are things I used to do here that I don’t seem to do any more, for various reasons, although the “various” seems boils down to “time,” or lack of it, in one way or another.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked here about current events in the world outside social media and blogging (you know, the one where issues are real--where blogging and social media are just some of the tools we use to discuss those issues, and not the subject of the discussion). In fact, on checking to see when I last tagged a post with "news traffic and weather", I discovered that I haven’t used that tag since the end of 2012. I’m a little alarmed by this, although I don’t suppose I should be. I did make the choice to scale back my posting earlier this year, and that included deliberately limiting my range of topics as well. I’ve been reacting to books and popular culture, posting pictures and talking about travels--and although I set the limits myself, they’re starting to feel...well, limiting. I’m gradually reclaiming some of my time for blogging, and eventually, I’d like to get back to using some of that time to talk about the world outside our books and Facebooks. And events out there certainly provide plenty to talk about, don’t they? I’ve been pretty good on the Reading this year--and will always self-identify here as a book blogger--but now that I have time to notice, I’m missing the ‘Riting and the Randomness.

I don’t do link roundups very often any more either, mostly because I share them on social media instead. Those links all get collected on my Rebelmouse page, if you’d like to follow that. (And maybe you’d like to get one of your own while you’re at it? If nothing else, it gives you an easy place to see everything you’ve shared, everywhere!)

It’s so easy for these things to get lost in the Twitter stream, isn’t it? And it’s not just links we might be missing. The new site BookVibe collects all the tweets where someone you follow has mentioned a book title--you can catch up on what your favorite readers are reading and talking about, and find new books to add to your wish list! Recommendation engines may be good for some people, but I’m more likely to follow up on the books I hear about via personal opinions and suggestions--I’ve already hooked my Twitter account up to BookVibe (thanks to the Book Riot Podcast for letting me know it exists).

Of course, once you find out about these books, and acquire these books, there’s the question of where to put these books--a matter of space more than time. Some of my offline time is currently being spent on book space; I have a major purge in progress, which should make a good dent in the population of TBR Purgatory--I’m trying to be really honest with myself about whether a book is really not going “to be read” after all. (And truthfully, some of the decisions aren’t that hard to make; the bigger chore will be actually pulling all of those books back out of my LibraryThing catalog.) I’m not entirely sure yet where they’ll all end up once they’re off my shelves. I may ship some off as donations to Better World Books. Some galleys may be listed on The ARCycling Program (thanks to the Book Bloggers Google+ Community for letting me know that exists!). I hope to find personal takers for many of them. And we want to get some new bookcases soon, so what’s left will end up with a nicer--and roomier, at least at first!--home.

You know, considering the size of that task, I may not be reclaiming all that much blogging time just yet, after all.

Where do you find your books, and what do you do when you find you've got just too many of them?