Well, maybe not everything (you’ll have to stick around longer to get to know us intimately), but in honor of the Ultimate Blog Party, I thought I’d give a run-down about our site. Even those of you who are regular readers might find out something you don’t know about our site.

First thing that everyone needs to know is that I, Jennifer, am not a one-man (woman) show. No way. This blog would not be nearly as interesting if I was (not to mention the fact that I would definitely not post 7 – 10 times a week!). I truly think it’s what makes our site stand out as a book review blog. You can read a little bit about each member of our team — Lauren, Dawn, Nancy, and Elizabeth — at our Reviewer Bios page, where you’ll find out what we like to read and how to find our personal blogs.

Thanks for Stopping By

I know that most of you are party-hopping and don’t have much time, so if you like what you see, the best way to keep up with us is to subscribe.

Pick your favorite way(s) to stay connected by clicking the icons below: twitter, facebook, feedreader, or via email inbox:

All Kinds of Reviews for All Ages

• A big team made up of women who all love to read, but all love to read different kinds of books means we can cover lots of genres. Any given month you’ll find the following reviews just for you:
• Memoir — both serious and funny
• Nonfiction guides to give you the facts you need on parenting and more
• Popular women’s fiction
• Mystery and Suspense
• Light beach reads
• Christian Living
• Christian Fiction
• Historical Fiction
• and Audiobooks, too
• We review children’s books too, and between the 5 of us, we have kids ranging from 3 years old to 15 — boys, girls, reluctant readers and bookworms — so we can give expert advice and recommendations mom to mom.

How to Find what You’re Looking For

Because we post on such a broad variety of topics, we know that you might just pick and choose which reviews you read, and that’s great. Want to know how to find more of what you do like? You can click on the picture to the right of the reviewer who you feel best represents your reading tastes to get to the page of all her recent reviews. You can do the same thing by clicking on her name in the category labels right above the comment box, and below the author box. If you’re reading a memoir review, the memoir label will also be linked and you can click it to find more memoir reviews.

You can get to the same place — pulling up books by category — by scrolling down to the archives by category at the bottom of the sidebar.

You can also use our search box to search for specific titles or authors. It works really well — give it a try! That’s such an important feature, it’s at the very top of the right sidebar.

Community, Giveaways, and Recommendations

Like our mama, 5 Minutes for Mom, we seek to provide a place of community. We want to give other book-loving bloggers a place to connect. The main way we do that is by hosting What’s on Your Nightstand. On the 4th Tuesday of every month, we invite you to share a little bit about what you’re reading. You can either give some mini-reviews (or link back to your posted reviews) of books you finished in the last month, or you can make a reading plan, sharing the books that you plan to make time for over the next month.

We also host at least one book giveaway a week here on Wednesdays and one each Monday in our book column at 5 Minutes for Mom. We almost always have at least 4 book giveaways current on any given day.

Another way we seek to create community is by inviting you to post. We love to have guest contributors for our On Reading column (essays about reading) and Books on Screen (reviews of movies based on books). We also have a brand new column where we will invite those who have won books to be featured, called The Winners’ Circle.

Find out how to submit your column at our Join In page.

In addition to recommending books that we think you’ll like, we also believe that books made great gifts. So when you’re looking for a hostess gift, or a teacher’s gift, or something for any bookloving friend, check out posts specifically marked with the gift ideas label.

And whether you want to make the most of your time by guaranteeing a book you’ll love or you’re trying to pick out the perfect book for a family member (of any age), keep your eye on our 5 Star Reads page. Each book that earns our best recommendation will be tagged as a 5 Star Read and added to the page. To make it easy, we also feature the most recently reviewed 5 Star Reads right on the sidebar.

Now We Want to Hear From You

If you’re a regular reader — we are so glad to have you. We never take you for granted! Can you take a minute to let us know your thoughts? What do you enjoy about our site? What would you like to see more of? Less of?

If you are new here — welcome! We’d love for you to leave us a comment to let us know you stopped by. If you want to tell us what kinds of book reviews you’d like to see, that would be great!

Do you want to show that you love books too? Put our button in your sidebar:

She reads widely. Look for upcoming reviews of detective fiction, suspense, literary fiction, memoir, biography and other nonfiction. Her first review, Mountain of Crumbs, is up today.

Her official bio (as well as that of our other contributors) can be found on our About Us page:

Taught to read when she was 4 by two older brothers who were tired of reading to her, Elizabeth read her first “real” book (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe) at age 6 and hasn’t stopped reading since. She was the type who took 14 books in the backseat for a two hour drive, and she still takes a book with her everywhere, just in case. She is an omnivorous reader, devouring fiction, classics, memoirs, literary criticism, and more.

Elizabeth also loves to travel. In 2001, she moved with her husband and 3 children to North Africa, where her children grew up attending school in French and camping under the desert stars during school breaks. She has taught English in 4 countries. She has 3 teens and currently lives with her husband, a photographer, in Oregon.

Follow her adventures adjusting back to life in the US, parenting teenagers and working with Iraqi refugees at www.planetnomad.wordpress.com.

It hasn’t updated since Tuesday. I don’t want to keep adding new content out there that most of our readers won’t see!

If you follow us via a feedreader, please know that if you don’t see an update in over 24 hours that it’s a glitch. We post at least once a day, and usually twice a day, for an average of 10 or 12 posts a week. So if your feed reads “Children’s Classics Award Winners” day after day, click over the old-fashioned way!

I’m assuming that most people come via feed (and our reduced comments in the days since it stopped updating attest to that), but maybe I’m wrong. Will you take a minute to fill in the survey so that I’ll know?

No, no, don’t worry. What’s on Your Nightstand is not one of them. We enjoy hosting and visiting around and participating in this monthly meme.

But after being a part of the 5 Minutes for Books team since we launched two years ago, both Lisa and Carrie will be stepping aside from their roles as “staff reviewers.” I’ve enjoyed working with them, and I’ve loved the variety that they’ve each contributed to our review base.

They will each still be blogging and hopefully participating in some of our weekly Tuesday carnivals, so they won’t be strangers. You can keep up with Lisa’s heartfelt thoughts at Lisa Writes. Carrie will still be reviewing books over at Reading to Know, where she focuses on reviewing books for adults and children from a Christian worldview.

Since we are saying goodbye, we are also happy to be saying “hello” to a new staff reviewer.

Nancy at Life with my Boys has been a regular participant in our Tuesday carnivals, has written a few guest posts, and is an avid reader. I knew she’d be a great fit, and I’m so glad that she accepted our invitation. She enjoys popular fiction, historical fiction, children’s books, and a few other genres. She is also an avid audiobook fan.

I still have a few reviews of Lisa’s and Carrie’s to post, and Nancy has already accepted her first review titles, so we are definitely in transition.

So, enough about us. Tell us about you! Link directly to your post telling us what’s on your Nightstand. Don’t forget to visit around, and see what else is on everyone else’s summer reading list.

Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter.

Powered by… Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets.

Things are still in progress, but we particularly want to get the sidebars and the navbar (on top) functional. It’s not functional right now, but please let me know what you like/don’t like/would like to see.

Notice that we are also going to show only one or two posts in full to allow for easier browsing. The rest are showed as excerpts that you can click through.

Now’s your chance! Please let me know what you think about these changes or any others that you would find helpful.

Welcome — Ultimate Blog Party-hoppers — to 5 Minutes for Books! Regular readers — you might find out something new too, so I hope you read and comment.

We are a sister site to 5 Minutes for Mom, and we have a wonderful team of reviewers who each have a different favorite type of book. That means we can offer all sorts of reviews, hopefully providing you with recommendations on the type of book YOU are looking for:

Fiction
Non-fiction
Memoir
Books for Babies
Books for Preschoolers
Books for School-aged kids
Books for Tweens and Teens

You can browse all of these categories by using the Category menu on the left hand side. If you are looking for a review about a specific book, search by title using the awesome Lijit search box on the right side of the NavBar.

The best of the best is listed on our 5 Star Reviews page.

Every Tuesday we host a different way for you to Join In our community events/carnivals. Right now we are also having a Fireworks over Toccoa bookclub

In addition to doing a review and giveaway every Monday on 5 Minutes for Mom in our 5 Minutes for Books column, we do book giveaways at least twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and oftentimes we throw in a few extras. Right now, we have several giveaways open from the Magic School Bus, a poetry book for tweens and teens, to Fireworks over Toccoa audiobook to a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Check out (and enter!) all of our current giveaways now!

Thanks for stopping by. Leave us a comment telling us what types of book reviews most interest you, whether is the genre you like to read or the ages of your children for whom you are always looking for a good read.

Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter.

I also ended up “meeting” some new book bloggers, though not as many as I’d have liked. I left about 5 comments around the blogosphere.

2010 has been all about changes here at 5 Minutes for Books. We’ve changed up our community events like the Classics Bookclub and the Children’s Classics carnival (now a Children’s Classics Mystery Challenge) and we also tweaked the I Read It carnival. So far, response has been great.

But there are a bunch of other changes I’ve wanted to make to make the site more user friendly, and so I decided to join the Bloggiesta challenge at Maw Books. The idea is to take some concentrated time over a 3 day period (which started yesterday) to catch up on all that bloggy maintenance. It could be writing reviews that you’ve neglected writing, setting reviews to post, or cleaning up and organizing all of those behind the scenes things.

I have my own ideas, but I would love to hear feedback from you if there’s something that you think would make 5 Minutes for Books better. Just leave a comment.

As for my goals –

• My primary task is to make our past reviews easier to search. This is also a mini-challenge being hosted by Beth Fish Reads. One relatively quick fix I’d like to add is a menu on our navbar that will take you directly to categories of reviews. I had thought about just using our tags, but all that does is pull up a list of the reviews in order by date. That’s not very user friendly, is it? So I suppose I can make a separate page for the categories. I’d like to divide them by Fiction, Non-fiction, Children’s books, and Young Adult reviews. Some Questions: How would you like it indexed? I’m thinking alphabetically by title? Would other categories be useful?(edit: I made a plan, and I tried to download the new nav bar, but I think I need to update WP press)
• I also have several reviews I would like to write. I have at least four reviews that I need to get in draft, and if I think about it, I could probably write a few more. I would also like to write two On Reading columns (book bloggers — we are always looking for guest posters!) (edit: I wrote three reviews and no columns).
• I figured out that it would be a lot more effective for me to set up the posts in advance for the regular community events that we host. What’s On Your Nightstand? and Kids’ Picks and I Read It! all happen each month, so I’d like to get those link-up posts ready to go for the next few months at least (edit: I’ve set up posts for all 3 carnivals for at least 3 months — woohoo!)
• Our “Join In” page is out of date, since we’ve changed the way we are handling some of our Tuesday events, so I’d like to update that (edit: DONE!)

Even though I’m late getting started, this is a good day, since I will spend much of the afternoon and evening sitting beside my husband as he cheers for (or yells at) his two teams — the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas A&M Aggies.

It’s been an interesting year of life for me, and my reading time has sort of fluctuated a great deal. However, there have been a lot memorable reading moments scattered throughout the year. It’s hard to narrow down just one or two reads that really stood out from the rest but if I had to mention two books that I just really appreciated spending time with in 2009 it would be Choosing Gratitude and, (I doubt you’ll find this surprising) the third book in the Mysterious Benedict Society (click on the titles to read my reviews). I hear of people camping out in and around bookstores waiting for new releases and I have to admit I find that kind of silly. However, if I had the opportunity to camp out over The Mysterious Benedict Society, I would have. Both of these books provided their own unique experience and are ones that I would recommend to absolutely anyone without hesitation.

Personally, I’m grateful to be afforded the opportunity to read as much as I do. I’m looking forward to seeing what falls into my lap in 2010 and I look back at 2009 with fond memories.

DAWN

While I’ve had a love affair with books since before I can even remember, my adult reading habits weren’t very consistent in recent years, perhaps having something to do with the craziness of the life of a mama. But 2009 brought an opportunity for me in the form of 5 Minutes for Books, and when I became a staff reviewer in January, my reading addiction was fulfilled in greater measures than ever before. While I’ve been pleased to review all sorts of books here, from picture books to young adult fiction to nonfiction selections, my own personal favorite genre remains contemporary fiction. I tend to be drawn the strongest to characters to whom I can relate, and I was awed by the realism that I found in Katherine Center’s Everyone is Beautiful. Oh yes, I laughed and I cried, and then I laughed some more. Though a completely different reading experience, Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry has also stuck with me this year, as a book that I had been very much anticipating and one that drew me in from page one. (My gushing reviews are linked here.) Most of all, I’m just happy to be immersing myself in the worlds I find between the book covers, whether they be completely familiar or beyond my own imagination. May 2010 bring us all more books that bring us joy, make us think and prompt us to ask people, “Have you read this yet?”

MELISSA

2009 saw me challenge myself to read some genres I hadn’t delved into before. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (reviewed here AND here) was not only delightful, it piqued my interest in the WWII era. I’ve read several other fiction and non-fiction books about this time in our world’s history, and learned much in the process. I also entered the world of gothic fiction with The Thirteenth Tale (reviewed here). Both genres were foreign to me, and I’d never even considered reading something in them. I’m so glad I did!

My life is undergoing some major changes in 2010. I’m not yet sure how much my reading will be affected, but I’ll still pop in at 5 Minutes for Books on occasion to share the good reads I find.

LISA

As I clicked through the archives in preparation for writing this end of year retrospective, I was surprised by how many really good books I read this past year, some of which were my own reviews in addition to a couple of titles I read (and loved) because of my colleagues’ reviews, most notably The Help reviewed by Jennifer and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society reviewed by Melissa. Stand outs from my own pile of fiction reviews would definitely include The Book Thief, So Brave, Young and Handsome and the thriller The Knight. I thoroughly enjoyed the classics Rebecca and The Count of Monte Cristo and look forward to reading more classic literature in 2010 as part of our new and improved Classics Bookclub! In the non fiction department memoir is fast becoming a new favorite genre mainly due to titles like Finding An Unseen God and Clara’s War that stayed with me long after the last page was turned. As I look back on a year of great reads, I am glad to be a part of this site and for the opportunity to read and discuss books I love with friends who love books.

JENNIFER

I have to echo the thoughts of the other contributors here. What a great year in books. I have to say that looking back over the year, what stands out most in my mind the excellent children’s lit that I read. But the books I would mention from that category are listed on our 5 Star Reads list. I wanted to highlight some memorable books that didn’t quite make that list in this post — but please, click over and review the 5 Star Reads, specifically the ones in the 9 – 12 and tween categories.

Reading new authors and tackling new subjects is always a pleasant reading challenge. In spite of thinking that I wouldn’t like her novels, I truly enjoyed the audiobook of Home by Marilynne Robinson. A few non-fiction books have really stuck with me months after reading them: Outcasts United, Free-Range Kids, and You’d Be So Pretty If. I’m looking forward to more delightful discoveries in 2010.

LAUREN

Although 2009 was wonderful for me in many ways, it was also a difficult year because I was sick for a good portion of it. On so many nights, I was just too tired to read, and if I am too tired to read, something is wrong with me! When I look back, I am disappointed that I wasn’t able to read more, but I still read some wonderful books; and as always, I am so thankful to be able to share my love of reading with all of you!

I prefer fiction, but when I review my 2009 reading list, nonfiction titles stand above the rest. Those of you who know me understand that I am a Disney fanatic. Carrie’s review of How To Be Like Walt piqued my interest, and I found this book about Walt Disney to be both fascinating and inspiring. Five Conversations You Must Have with Your Daughter is a book that I reviewed, and it is one that I highly recommend to any Christian parent. I will be returning to this book many times in the coming years! My most recent nonfiction read, Nurture Shock, is another memorable read from 2009. I have changed some of my parenting ways because of this book, and I encourage any one who interacts with children to read it!

Of all the fiction books I read this year, Rooftops of Tehran stands out to me more than any other. Jennifer recommended this book, and I was glad that I read it, even it some parts were outside my normal comfort zone. The story was beautiful, and I appreciated that I learned more about an unfamiliar culture. If you haven’t read it, I hope you will add it to your list for 2010!

I am so excited to start this new year. I feel like my old self, and I can’t wait to dig into some new stories. I look forward to reading the reviews from the contributors here and the comments from of all you. I know that 2010 is going to be a great year for books!

What are the books from 2009 that you still remember? Have you been convinced to add any of these to your list for 2010?