The Book Watch Blog!
Finally. After a whole day of tinkering around with the blog, and trying my hand at html, I've put enough stuff into the new blog so that I can announce it to the world.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present...
BOOK WATCH!
What is it? Well, it's the blog version of this newsletter I started last year in my workplace. I teach high school English, and getting our kids to read was always an issue. So, we figured that maybe, if we make good enough examples of ourselves as readers, the kids would take to it more. It seemed that we spent a lot of time thinking of good reading programs for the students, but in a school with 120+ teachers, it just seemed appropriate that we also target the faculty and staff for some of these reading programs.
Anyway, so I thought of starting this newsletter called Book Watch. For the first issue, I chose three books, then I surfed for short reviews of the books. I laid out the text and graphics (the book covers) using Microsoft Publisher, and voila! I had my first issue. How many did I print out? All of 2. Because, honestly, I was a start-up, and I figured that people might be more inclined to read a newsletter if I posted it up on our bulletin boards. So, one went up on the English department bulletin board, and the other outside my cubicle (which, to be fair, is a main thoroughfare in our workroom).
Thankfully, the idea caught on. If you notice, for the first issue, I hesitated asking anyone to write a review and neither did I write one myself. This was way before the days when I began blogging. (Come to think of it, I think Book Watch did prepare me for blogging, in the sense that I became more confident to write about books and stuff.) Anyways, for the second issue, I wrote a short review about a book I fell in love with during that time--Twilight. Yes, I am not afraid to say I liked Twilight. After all, with all the classics and serious reading I've done in my life (and still do, by the way), I do deserve my little bit of fluff.
I also got one of my co-teachers to write a second review. This time, my marketing strategy was to place our names more prominently on the newsletter. I wanted people to read the teacher's name first, because I thought that'll hook them more into reading the review AND make them more interested in the book if they find out who among our small community liked it. For subsequent issues, which came out every two weeks, that became the format. Every review started with "Karen's pick" or "Joel's pick." I tried to capitalize on people's curiosity about their colleagues.
And I'd like to think I was right in capitalizing on that. One of my co-teachers said that she liked finding out what our colleagues read. I thought that was great. Same co-teacher (who is my boss, by the way. But please don't take that against her, because she's also my friend.) said, too, that she had a couple of people approach her to ask about a book that someone reviewed or compliment her on the newsletter.
You know, two people approaching her probably isn't a lot, but to me, that translated to around 20 people who felt an impact because of the newsletter.
Sadly, my energy fizzled out when work started getting very hectic; Book Watch only lived for 6 issues. Then, I had to go on study leave, which meant I wasn't around to try to bully anyone to write for me. (Not like it worked a lot. Only on some of the more generous souls.:>)
This year, however, I want to bring it back. Of course, it also helps that a couple of people have asked whether we would have it again. However, since I've been into blogging and have discovered the wonderful experience of engaging in discourse with people of different circumstances, experiences, and nationalities, I thought it'd be great to provide that kind of audience and opportunity for discourse to Book Watch and its contributors.
Hence, the Book Watch blog.:) It still needs a lot of work, like pretty widgets and stuff, but at least it's a start. I've already set up a twitter account for it, and now I'm realizing how much this'll eat up my time--maintaining two blogs. Oh, did I mention I teach English and consequently, will have hundreds of papers to check? What does this have to do with the blogs? Oh, nothing...
Seriously, though, for all my attempted grumbling at how much time and effort this will take, the only reason why I'm actually doing this is because I love doing it. And, from experience, I will not begrudge the time and effort it takes me to do it. I'm just hoping I can find a way to make it sustainable.
So, do drop by and check it out. Actually, if you can even leave some suggestions here for the Book Watch blog, it'd be much appreciated. In case you're wondering, all of those reviews were written last year, between the months of May and August. So, yeah, some of the news is old. I'll have to fix that still. Also, I didn't use the (Someone's) Pick idea for the blog, mainly because I'm not sure yet if that's the way to go with a public blog as a venue. But, any input you can give me is entirely welcome.
So, this is what I do in real life--I teach, I try to come up with new projects, I read. Strange that what I'm trying to do here now is to meld my "real" life with my "cyber" life. I guess there's no help for it. I've fallen in love with both.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present...
BOOK WATCH!
What is it? Well, it's the blog version of this newsletter I started last year in my workplace. I teach high school English, and getting our kids to read was always an issue. So, we figured that maybe, if we make good enough examples of ourselves as readers, the kids would take to it more. It seemed that we spent a lot of time thinking of good reading programs for the students, but in a school with 120+ teachers, it just seemed appropriate that we also target the faculty and staff for some of these reading programs.
Anyway, so I thought of starting this newsletter called Book Watch. For the first issue, I chose three books, then I surfed for short reviews of the books. I laid out the text and graphics (the book covers) using Microsoft Publisher, and voila! I had my first issue. How many did I print out? All of 2. Because, honestly, I was a start-up, and I figured that people might be more inclined to read a newsletter if I posted it up on our bulletin boards. So, one went up on the English department bulletin board, and the other outside my cubicle (which, to be fair, is a main thoroughfare in our workroom).
Thankfully, the idea caught on. If you notice, for the first issue, I hesitated asking anyone to write a review and neither did I write one myself. This was way before the days when I began blogging. (Come to think of it, I think Book Watch did prepare me for blogging, in the sense that I became more confident to write about books and stuff.) Anyways, for the second issue, I wrote a short review about a book I fell in love with during that time--Twilight. Yes, I am not afraid to say I liked Twilight. After all, with all the classics and serious reading I've done in my life (and still do, by the way), I do deserve my little bit of fluff.
I also got one of my co-teachers to write a second review. This time, my marketing strategy was to place our names more prominently on the newsletter. I wanted people to read the teacher's name first, because I thought that'll hook them more into reading the review AND make them more interested in the book if they find out who among our small community liked it. For subsequent issues, which came out every two weeks, that became the format. Every review started with "Karen's pick" or "Joel's pick." I tried to capitalize on people's curiosity about their colleagues.
And I'd like to think I was right in capitalizing on that. One of my co-teachers said that she liked finding out what our colleagues read. I thought that was great. Same co-teacher (who is my boss, by the way. But please don't take that against her, because she's also my friend.) said, too, that she had a couple of people approach her to ask about a book that someone reviewed or compliment her on the newsletter.
You know, two people approaching her probably isn't a lot, but to me, that translated to around 20 people who felt an impact because of the newsletter.
Sadly, my energy fizzled out when work started getting very hectic; Book Watch only lived for 6 issues. Then, I had to go on study leave, which meant I wasn't around to try to bully anyone to write for me. (Not like it worked a lot. Only on some of the more generous souls.:>)
This year, however, I want to bring it back. Of course, it also helps that a couple of people have asked whether we would have it again. However, since I've been into blogging and have discovered the wonderful experience of engaging in discourse with people of different circumstances, experiences, and nationalities, I thought it'd be great to provide that kind of audience and opportunity for discourse to Book Watch and its contributors.
Hence, the Book Watch blog.:) It still needs a lot of work, like pretty widgets and stuff, but at least it's a start. I've already set up a twitter account for it, and now I'm realizing how much this'll eat up my time--maintaining two blogs. Oh, did I mention I teach English and consequently, will have hundreds of papers to check? What does this have to do with the blogs? Oh, nothing...
Seriously, though, for all my attempted grumbling at how much time and effort this will take, the only reason why I'm actually doing this is because I love doing it. And, from experience, I will not begrudge the time and effort it takes me to do it. I'm just hoping I can find a way to make it sustainable.
So, do drop by and check it out. Actually, if you can even leave some suggestions here for the Book Watch blog, it'd be much appreciated. In case you're wondering, all of those reviews were written last year, between the months of May and August. So, yeah, some of the news is old. I'll have to fix that still. Also, I didn't use the
So, this is what I do in real life--I teach, I try to come up with new projects, I read. Strange that what I'm trying to do here now is to meld my "real" life with my "cyber" life. I guess there's no help for it. I've fallen in love with both.
Comments