Follow My Book Blog Friday Hop #17

Happy Follow Friday!!

And Happy New Year!!

This weekly feature is hosted by

Rachel at Parajunkee's View 

and 

Alison at Alison Can Read. 

Rachel not only has fabulous features,

but is a web designer

'par excellence'!!

Alison has a beautiful and very

interesting blog!

You can find the rules at the links above.

Join in the fun and make new blogging friends!!

This week's featured blogs are:

Ex Libris

and

Kristin Can Read!!!!

This week's question is:

The New Year is here — and everyone

wants to know your New Year's

Blogging Resolution!

What are you going to try

to revise, revamp and redo

for 2012 on your blog?

Interesting question!  This is an issue that's been on my back burner for a while now...

I have learned a lot since I first started blogging, which obviously meant some risk-taking on my part, and it's been pretty exciting. However, I don't want to drastically revamp things at this point in time.  That's because I'm no computer geek!  True, I've managed to get this far without major mishaps, but I'm still too scared I might make a huge mistake during "a revamping session", and then all my hard work would go down the drain!  (Hey, I think being honest always pays off in the end, so I'm being very upfront here.)  Therefore, I won't be making any dramatic changes to my blog, such as switching to a new template, or completely re-designing the whole blog.  Besides, I happen to love the current template, with its cosmic blue background!  (And I love the color blue, period.  I'm not contemplating changing my color scheme at all, either.) 

I have been changing my header from time to time, as well as rearranging things in my sidebar.  I'll continue to do that.  I love to change book widgets occasionally, for instance.

One thing I've been mulling over, though, is the possibility of hosting book tours.  I'm researching a couple of tour sites, to see if I'll be able to do this.  Tours would add more variety to my blog, and I know that readers love to hear about new authors, especially if an interview/giveaway package is included!  However, time is a very important factor for me, since I hold down two jobs.  Blogging is so time-consuming!  I do love it, of course, but it does take a lot of time to keep up a blog.  Along with that comes promotion of one's blog, as well as commenting on and following other blogs, etc.  But I am seriously considering the possibility.

In regards to the blogging community, I am fully committed to following back those who follow me, as well as commenting on those blogs whose creators have commented on mine.  So I will continue to do this to the best of my ability, because I believe it's the courteous thing to do.  I will also strive to continue replying to comments made on my posts -- not only here on my blog, but on the commenters' blogs, as well.  Yes, doing this takes up more time, I know, but again, I think it's the courteous thing to do.   It's also important for me to try to comment more often on other blogs, and I will certainly work on this, since I do feel I need to do more of it.

I would also like to host more giveaways, although that, too, can be a problem because of the time factor.  However, I will soon be using Rafflecopter, which will definitely expedite this process! 

Another of my goals for 2012 is to post more reviews!  It's ironic that I would say that, I think, because I've noticed that reviews don't get that many comments.  However, I do enjoy writing them!  In order to do more of them, though, I need to read more books, and I go right back to the time problem...and I'm not a fast reader.  I've never been interested in speed reading courses, either.  Reading more slowly means that one really gets to  savor a book.  But what's a book blog primarily for, if not for posting book reviews?  So I've got to do something about reading a little bit faster...

Yet another possibility is to cook up a couple of new book memes, perhaps combining them with blog hops, although, in my experience, it hasn't been easy to get people interested in joining new book memes/blog hops.

Well, as you've just found out, I'm not planning a drastic re-designing of my blog, although I do want to add some variety to it.  You can look forward to new headers periodically.  (I might revert to an older header every now and then, too, if it's one I'm really fond of.)

I sure do hope my present followers continue to enjoy this blog, and I also hope to attract new ones!