Spring Cleaning, Technology Style!

This week, I have been spending a considerable amount of time online. WAYYY more than normal. Why? Well, you see, I discovered a website with fantastic resources for teaching and I have been devouring it! The downside of all of this resource finding is the inordinate amount of printing that goes along with it. All of the ink it is using...and the time that it takes to wait for the documents to print.  To make use of the time spent waiting, I have had time to cruise blogs and catch up on reading posts by bloggers that I love (and some new ones too).

In the midst of my cruising, I was disappointed to find that several of these blogs were no longer active. Some weren't even found on the server any longer. Others had been changed from public to private. And still other blogs had changed dramatically. They no longer had legit posts. It was amazing how many terrific blogs had gone from great reads to constant give-aways or to primarily review blogs. I have no interest in reading these...I want content!!! It was time to clean up the list. I decided to do this systematically, so here's how it went:

• Access blogroll through my Google Reader.
• Clean out the reader itself! (it was a MESS; I neglect it as much as I do my blogroll)
• Start at the top of the list of blogs that I have followed over the past year and a half. There were 101.
• Open all of the ones that begin with 'a,' and skim over them one at a time. If the posts still interested me, or warranted more than just a quick glance...in other words, they had some meat to them...then they stayed on the list. If they didn't, well, adios! 
• Go through the entire list in the same fashion. When I was finished (after two days of skimming and reading), my list of favorite blogs was reduced from 101 to 59! Now there is much more room for me to add more lovelies to my reading list!

 So after doing this cleaning, the multiple deletions got me to thinking. Why would a blogger change styles so dramatically in such a short span of time? Hey, I know that life gets in the way of quality blog posts on occasion...well...maybe more on several or many occasions, but isn't quality always better than quantity? I realize too, that some bloggers are number hungry; waiting on the edge of their seats for the next follower to appear on their followers list. Okay, if that's your thing, more power to ya'! To me though, if a reader is on my list just so that I will follow back...not cool. I want readers to read and enjoy or gain insight from my posts. I know I am not a post writing genius by any means, but still...is the number really more important than the relationship that can develop from sincere readership? Maybe I am way off base here, you tell me...

And so the story ends...

or actually it doesn't. Not since the dawn of the Harry Potter series anyway. Nothing against Harry Potter, just all of the series books in general. I began reading Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl last week with the hope of actually reading a book with a storyline that ENDED! No luck. I get to the 563rd page to find there is a sequel. Dammit.

Now, I have never attempted to write a book, so maybe finishing a story is harder than the average reader might think. However, it is becoming increasingly annoying to never get to the resolution. I have been a novel reader since birth. Okay, not birth, but my Nanny started me reading historical romances and Christian romances when I was 10. Those stories always had a beginning, middle, and an end...all in one book, not three (or six)! As did the amazing Mary Higgins Clark books that enthralled me through my pre-teen years, or the Kathleen Woodiwiss novels from that same time period.

Is the problem that there is truly such difficulty in finishing a story...or that there is more money to be made by continuing it? That is what Chris thinks. He is probably right. He tends to be that way. Right, that is. Anywho, Warner Bros just signed a deal a few months ago to turn this series into movies. So there I have it. Money. It's all about the money...not the story. Who knew?