Category: Updates

Updates

September 2011 Update

Geoff W

I have no idea where August, went, but we are entering the second week of September and I’m not ready to say goodbye to summer. Although I love fall, and winter is my all time favorite season, there’s just something sad about saying goodbye to summer. Perhaps this is a remainder of the many years I spent working at summer camps, or the time I now get to spend on an island during the summer, but it’s just sad to see it go. But on with the update!

On the blog front, I’ve started making a few minor changes. I’ve finally completed the About Me section with a section about Me and a section about The Oddness of Moving Things. I also purchased a domain (my first!) so if you visit the blog it’s now geoffwhaley.com instead of geoffwhaley.com! And if you actually read the blog on the site rather than a reader or subscription you’ll notice when I’ve finished a book because of the currently reading section at the top of the right column (thanks to Rob at 101 Books for having the idea first).

Over the past few weeks I’d made a real dent in reading the books I’ve collected over the past two years, but have now completely nullified that progress by stockpiling books for the upcoming fall/winter from various sources. Check them out below, neatly categorized into three sections, and the very last thing is an update on the cool Goodreads graphic found last month.
Click here to continue reading.

Updates

Lunch Break Interlude

Geoff W

Today has not been the most productive of days. I’ve gotten a decent amount of work done in the office, but I’m just not motivated. In hopes of motivating myself I thought I’d take a few minutes to share a neat photo found online and my two newest book additions and neat finds on my random Tuesday off this week.

I randomly stumbled across this rather ingenious photo on a 404 missing page at Scribd. It really does sum up what I feel like when I’m trying to find my next book to read unless something serendipitously comes along and suggests what I should read next. For example, I am currently reading Madame Bovary as I missed a trivia question about the story and then realized French literature is woefully lacking in my life (I believe I’ve only ever read Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo and that was in High School)!

The second photo I took of the random things I bought while driving my sister up to Keene, NH for grad school (so it wasn’t that random, but of all days to take off in a week Tuesday really turned me around). There was a Borders still open so I went in to see if the sales were any better than those Boston had when they closed all our stores. The sales were minutely better (but the staff if-possible even more rude) and I splurged and bought a copy of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen, which I’ve read before and heard him speak and loved it (and him), and a combined A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for $11.00 total (saving like $36.00 or so. I also went to Target and bought some deodorant (I wouldn’t share this generally, but it was a double pack for $3.99 and a regular stick is $4.56 on its own!) and two neat Moleskine notebooks for $3 and a Green whiteboard/corkboard for my cubicle for $5.00.

And a final picture of my lovely corkboard hanging up in the office:

Also, last week I got my copies of The English Patient, Waiting for Snow in Havana, and Fun Home in preparation for the Boston Book Festival! I’m very excited to re-read Fun Home and even more excited to finally read the first two which have been on my book list for over three years!

Updates

August 2011 Update

Geoff W

July was a crazy busy month, but I was somehow able to read/post EIGHT books.  I actually read Tropic of Cancer and Slammerkin in July, but didn’t have computer access this past weekend so those posts were the first two of August.  I’m reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and it’s interesting to say the least.

On Goodreads yesterday I found this AWESOME stat (above) where it tells you the number of pages (or books, or the year of the books in a graph format) of the books you’ve read that year.  My current tally sits at 10, 775 pages.  Given books vary in the editions you read it could easily be off, but it’s still pretty neat.If you’re not on Goodreads, Join! And FRIEND ME!

I’m also very excited as over the weekend the Boston Book Festival announced the author lineup for the 2011 festival.  I’m probably most excited for Alison Bechdel (Heck yeah Fun Home), Michael Ondaatje, Booker Prize winning novelist of The English Patient, and Carlos Eire author of Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy.  October 15, 2011 can’t get here soon enough!

On a personal note, I work for on one of the Harbor Islands, and this month is a busy month, as are the next few! We’ve had graduations off and on over the past few weeks, a family event this coming weekend, a 4k trail run next month, a reception in October and a lot of correspondence going out by the end of the calendar year.  But one of the perks of the job, is the fact that I work for an island and occasionally have the opportunity to get out of the office and work from/on the island.

Today I was out on the island for a graduation ceremony and ended up waiting for a later ferry, and got to sit on the dock in the sun and read for a half hour (left, you can almost see the city in the upper left hand corner)  in the lovely Adirondack chairs (right).  So even though sometimes I feel like I’ll never catch up on work, or that I can’t quite complete a project to the perfection I want, the opportunity to visit the island and to interact with the countless students we serve and the donors who visit the island, and something as simple as getting to read for 30 minutes on the dock truly makes it all worth while.

Updates

One Year Anniversary! Part 3

Geoff W

The third and final post of the day! Yes, it is a bit excessive, but it’s your blogs anniversary only once a year!

Work In ProgressAs I realized the one year anniversary was approaching I began making minor changes to the blog. I switched themes to a darker, more modern theme and started cleaning up post tags and internal links to other posts. Below are other things I’ve already changed and things I want to change in the near future!

Check out what I’ve already changed:

  • Upcoming Books – I’ve recreated each of the pages including embedding an up-to-date Google document on the My Reading List page of my infamously long list of books to read (currently at 295) books. I’m hoping to clean up the Booker Prize page and to actually get some of the Suggested books read.
  • Recommend a Book – Again with the help of Google Docs, I’ve embedded a form which allows people to recommend books. I’ve not done a great job at reading many yet, but they are definitely on my radar! If you haven’t, you should recommend a book! If enough people recommend Twilight I might eventually read it (cough Alie and Tom cough).

And keep an eye out for things I hope to change:

  • Create an updated and accurate About me and About this blog page. Now it still sits as my original post from July 20, 2010 talking about the 50 book challenge.
  • Switch the blog over to geoffwhaley.com and maybe get a little crazy and try my hand at some CSS/design with a hosted website.
  • And if I get a good amount of free time and some amazing design skills, create a static homepage with a bookshelf similar to the iBooks app (I think) where you can click on the books and it’ll open up the reviews/blog posts.

My plans aren’t grandiose, and I don’t think they’ll be too complicated if I put my mind to them. I started this blog for fun and hopefully I can keep it going as long as it remain so. Let me know what you think about the changes, or if there are any others I should make!

Updates

One Year Anniversary! Part 2

Geoff W

As promised, here is post number two for the day.

This post is about numbers. Over the past year I’ve seen a lot of traffic come to my blog, starting with only 67 views in July 2010 to over 600 views in May of 2011. I’ve had over 3,000 unique visitors over the past year. I know quite a few of the visits are by spam-bots, but I’m also convinced quite a few of the visits are by students writing papers, the most common searches leading people to my site generally starting with ‘quotes from…’

After the jump you will find a list of the Top 10 visited books. I’ve removed my old ‘Quotes from…’ posts as I didn’t actually review the books and I’ve grouped all the Artemis Fowl books together as they were almost all in the Top 10. I’ve also included the Top 10 most used Tags.

I can’t believe it’s been a year, especially with how quickly I abandoned my blog for my family and friends while living abroad for two years. I guess between my love of reading and my newly found “tech” skills in my position at work I’ve become better at keeping up with my posts.

The final post of the day will be about the changes I’ve already made and those coming to the blog! I know it’s a bit egocentric and self-serving to post this many on one day, but I might as well since I’m sure there will be a streak in the near future where I forget to post or refuse to post.
Click here to see the Top 10 Visited posts and the Top 10 Tags…