January 16, 2007

Generous Blogging

I have too many books, too many DVDs, too many CDs. Anyone want to help me out? A while back I offered a free book to anyone who could answer a ‚Äúsimple-ish‚Äù question. Despite the lack of comment replies, a few people emailed and I‚Äôm currently working out which book the winner of that mini-contest […]

I have too many books, too many DVDs, too many CDs. Anyone want to help me out?

A while back I offered a free book to anyone who could answer a ‚Äúsimple-ish‚Äù question. Despite the lack of comment replies, a few people emailed and I‚Äôm currently working out which book the winner of that mini-contest would like.

The fact is I want to give away more, not just because of an acute lack of space (despite having given away boxes and boxes of books, DVDs, CDs and VCDs in India), but also because of a deep desire to share the works that are inspiring my thinking, writing and action. I‚Äôm not quite sure how to do it, so I‚Äôd welcome some help.

My basic idea is to give away at least a book and DVD a month, maybe more. These will be available after I‚Äôve finished reviewing them and I‚Äôd like if possible, to give them to fellow bloggers on one condition – that they blog-review the work and also in some brief way, my comment on it. Heck, if you want criticise and reject my review, that‚Äôs fine. Let‚Äôs just get some dialogue going?

So is this plan lunacy? How would you do it differently? Comments please.

Tagged Blogging, Daily Life, Theology

brodie 18 years ago

sounds an interesting idea. I guess a problem could be the delay between your reading and review and others reading and review.

jim 18 years ago

I like the idea…I need to expand my own reading list and I’m sure others do to and that might be one to go about doing it. Postage, seems like a financial issue from where you’re living, but maybe not?

Linz 18 years ago

The title of your post was “Generous Blogging” and you spoke of wanting to share the things inspiring you, so why not take the “Pay it Forward” kind of approach and ask that anyone who accepts a gift from you also commits to passing on something that has inspired them to someone else. And maybe rather than a full-scale review (which I suspect would induce hesitancy in me due to my busy schedule), ask that the person blog what it was that inspired them about the item they are giving on.

In any case – good on you for being generous.

I like the idea of doing this on a “pay it forward” basis.

Fernando Gros 18 years ago

Jim, thanks for the comment and actually postage from here is cheaper than anywhere else I have lived and very reliable, which is part of hwat got me thinking about this.

Linz, I like the pay it forward idea.

Also, I don’t want to to be such that people are compelled to write a full review, that is too taxing. However, I would make more sense to me if folks made at least some sort of comment.

Brodie – you are right there will be a delay. But the beauty of blogging is we can still strap things together, despite time delays.

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