Yay this is my first Bloggiesta and whilst I did not complete all the tasks I set out to do I did get through quite a lot and I wasn't even doing it the whole weekend! To check out my progress and what I got done please view the start of this post where my to do lists are and they are crossed off.

Challenges I participated in are below but the two main challenges I wanted to complete I haven't had the time to do yet, which is Organising My Review by Lauren from Lose Time Reading  and Through a Visitor's Eyes by Amanda from On A Book Bender.

Anyway, I had lots of fun and it was great how much I got done. The challenges are fantastic and they were all really helpful. I'll be referring to the old challenges to just see if there are tips & tricks and other helpful things I can gather from the past Bloggiesta.

For those that participated link to your Finishing post here and there's a feedback survey there too.

Google Reader Alternative Challenge by Jenn from The Picky Girl

After reading Jenn's post I googled Feedly vs BlogLovin, I read this great article  and after reading it I decided to go with Feedly as it was the clear winner. However, I re-read Jenn's post just prior to doing this challenge post and I decided to trial both Feedly and BlogLovin, the only reason that made me change my mind is because on Jenn's post it noted that Feedly is actually powered by Google Reader. 

I'm going to confirm with Jenn, whether it's ran by Google, because if it is, I'm going to go with BlogLovin as I want to eventually move all the apps I'm using by Google elsewhere...I don't like the fact that they just remove things (Google Reader, Google Friend Connect GFC) when they please, not even considering it's users. If it was not generating funds I would understand, but from the outraged cry of most, it seems that their popularity or lack of users is not the reason for their closing. 

So the answer for the purpose of this challenge is that I'm going to trial both Feedly and Bloglovin for maybe a month and make a decision then. I do like the interface of both, I like it's simplicity and I like how it's cluttered-free, I also like the fact that the migration from Google is easy. That's about as much of a decision I'm going to make at this point. I've signed up to both, migrated my Google Reader feeds to both, I'll just trial both.

Another alternative that Jenn didn't mention that I really enjoyed using previously on my iPad was Pulse. It was really user friendly, the interface is clean and easy but I haven't looked into the migration of your feeds from other readers. It has an Android, Mac and web interface. 

Getting To Know You Challenge by Suey from It's All About Books

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What does Anna blog about? Book Related

What attracted me to this blog? 

Design - Anne's design is what originally what made me do a double take. I visited and commented all the Bloggiesta participants, so one had to really stand out for me to take notice. This is why I'm contemplating on moving to Wordpress, there is designs like these that can easily be DIY'd. Wordpress just looks so much tidier, streamlined and polished.

Anyway, Anne's blog has such a beautiful colour scheme, I LOVE it! I also liked her typeface used for her title. I just like the entire blog and all the little stuff; the little blockquotes, the comment form etc.

Books/Genre - Most of Anne's reviews are on YA books, a genre that I personally love and blog about myself.

Fave Reviewers - Some of the fave reviewers she's got are some of my faves too.

• Did the HTML coding for the upcoming blog tours and put it on my sidebar
• Removed Google Friend Connect (GFC)
• Put Networked Blogs and Linky Followers as alternatives to GFC