Books & Blog Carnivals
Should PinesAboveSnow host a nature book blog carnival? My blogging mentor says yes, having just hosted his first, a far-ranging gathering of posts on political conflicts large and small over at Talk-Lab. Now Mike over at 10,000 Birds has posted Top Five Ways Blog Carnivals Make Blogging Better. Carnivals, says Mike, increase traffic and links to your site but also nurture more personal connections and even lead to the development of community. As he puts it, “Many successful blog carnivals provide the nucleus for genuine online communities that often translate to gratifying offline networks.” Since creating an on- & off-line community of nature book aficionados & activists is one of my goals of PinesAboveSnow, maybe a carnival would be a good idea.
I’d be delighted to hear what others think about the possibilities of a nature book carnival. At the moment, I’ll just keep my eyes open as I click around the blogsophere (especially at existing carnivals) for good book-related writing out there. Today, I found via Tangled Bank a review of Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action by J. Matthew Sleeth. Posted by Jeremy at Voltage Gate, the review turns a skeptical eye on the recent flurry of evangelical conservatives converting to the environmental cause. While Jeremy applauds the book’s anti-materialist ethical stance, he cringes at its anti-science undercurrents. He writes, “Without good science, however, we have no basis for making any decisions regarding the environment, moral or not.” Given the growing numbers of fundamentalist churches espousing green-er views, and the deepening need to work with everyone toward environmental solutions, this is an especially welcome analysis. Also welcome will be the series of reviews of popular conservation and ecology books being promised by Voltage Gate. I’ll keep checking in for ‘em.
And I would be remiss not to mention a carnival with a post from PAS, Learning in the Great Outdoors. You’ll also find there posts on how to do some nature writing of your own, via journaling, and environmental book recommendations from an experienced educator, plus a link to yet another blog carnival, Festival of Trees. With so much cool stuff out there, it’s no wonder I need your help to find good book reviews and other writing about writing out there. Thanks!
1 comment:
I think you should definitely host a blog carnival! I confess that when you first posted this question, I had no idea what a blog carnival was. Then earlier today Courtney Tuttle at courtneytuttle.com listed blog carnivals as his #2 suggestion in a list of things to do for successful blogging. I checked out http://blogcarnival.com and signed up. Even aside from whatever promotional benefits we can get from using blog carnivals, I think they're a terrific expression of the community spirit that's a big part of the fun of blogging. If you host one, I'd love to contribute.
In fact, I'm thinking of hosting a couple of blog carnivals myself, one on favorite gardening tools and another on gardening with native plants.
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