Fall Bloggiesta Wrap-Up

What a great Bloggiesta weekend!  I got all but one of my to-do list items accomplished, and I had a good reason for missing that one:

• Re-record my Brighid chant so that both parts are in one recording - this didn't happen because of allergy issues that left my voice in pretty rough shape all weekend.  I'll record at a future date when I don't sound so much like Eartha Kitt.*
• Clean up my Google Reader subscriptions list (again...)
• Look into installing Disqus for comments
• Contact Jen about getting her ad for my sidebar
• Comment on lots other participating blogs and make new blogging friends

I also completed 3 mini challenges:

• Blogging Notebook
• Grade Yourself!
• I learned how to create blog templates in Blogger in the Organization and Scheduling Posts mini-challenge

Due to bad timing, I missed all of the Twitter parties.  Too bad!  Those are really fun.  Next time, next time.

If you are here via Bloggiesta, I hope you stick around!  My blog focuses on neo-pagan music (music by and for the neo-pagan community).  I post a weekly feature called "Monday Music Break" that highlights music by pagan artists on both the local and national scale (I usually feature one artist per week).  I also post the chants I write.  On a more mundane level, I post about general lifestyle stuff, like things from pinterest or pretty nature photos.  Although my blog is pagan music blog, I don't ever want to be pigeon-holed to a purely pagan audience, as I believe the artists I feature can have a much wider appeal - that's part of the reason I started the blog in the first place.

I know most of the bloggers participating in Bloggiesta are book bloggers.  While I am not a book blogger, I am a bibliophile, although perhaps not as avid a reader as I was in high school and college.  I joined Goodreads awhile back so I've been posting reviews of all the books I read on there.  Here's the last few books I've read, if you're interested:

Colleen's bookshelf: read

Dreaming in Cuban

by Cristina Garcia

This book was lovely - poetry in novel form!

The Evolutionary Void

by Peter F. Hamilton

Thirteen Reasons Why

by Jay Asher

Oh my god. Phenomenal. This book tore me to pieces, slowly with each flip of Hannah's tapes. I still can't believe I didn't cry until the very end. I felt like I could empathize with every false rumor, with every fake friendship, wit...

The Secrets of a Fire King: Stories

by Kim Edwards

I wasn't a fan of all of the stories in this compilation (especially not "The Rat" - EWW), but I appreciated the compilation as a whole, and I feel like I have a better understanding of Kim Edwards as a writer.

Forever Free

by Joe Haldeman

This is a sequel to The Forever War, and was definitely as good as the original. It was nice to see what happened with Mandella and Marygay, and how they and their fellow vets handled life in a world ruled by Man. Even though this book...

* "Why do we even have that lever?!"