Okay, before you get too excited, it’s NOT the whole thing that’s closed or closing, The Sunday Salon is just closed for new membership.
Let me explain.
When I started The Welsh Reading Challenge, it was my first book challenge, and I was doing it out of a love for my own heritage as well as giving myself a prod to read those books I’ve really been wanting to, but just not done it. I hadn’t really expected very many people to join in, though I wasn’t closed to it. So when a few people joined in, I got excited. I looked around at everyone else’s challenges, especially those who were finishing up with their firsts and starting their second ones, so I could glean from their experiences. One thing that was mentioned by a couple was that having a separate blog just for the challenge was a preferable way to keep the challenge better organized and thereby easier to navigate for participants. So during Bloggiesta I decided to take the big step and give the challenge it’s own space to live and flourish.
I’ve been working on the challenge’s blog and adding pages and content, as well as beginning to get some offers for prizes (Thanks Ceri at Americymru!). It’s been a bit of a reading distraction as I’ve been hunting up titles for the suggested reading page and worked a bit on a Welsh culture page called “Hiraeth” (which actually took a lot of reading and exploring). Even when I have been trying to read, my mind drifts to the challenge and ideas for the blog to make it more fun (Pam at Bookalicio.us made the delicious suggestion of having a Welsh movie mini-challenge and we could sit around and drool over Ioan Gruffudd among others -what others? After she invoked the name of Mr. Fantastic, I was like Homer for donuts! Mmmm… Ioan.. nom-nom-nom!), as well as informative. It’s a labor of a lot of love, and even if no one else enjoys it, I do.
So when I thought about how to do a weekly wrap post to let everyone know what books were read with links to reviews and other Welsh-related stuff, I thought immediately about The Sunday Salon. It’s a great weekly meme that many bloggers participate in, and the posts are linked through the site, yahoo tubes, as well as tweeted. I jumped out of bed and ran the five steps to the computer to sign The Welsh Reading Challenge up!
Imagine my shock when I read this message:
as of January 3, 2010, we won’t be accepting new members in the Salon.
You see, apparently this fabulous meme has grown to over 500 blogs and is more than YahooPipes can handle. LOL! How fantastic is that? To think that, right now all over the world, more than 500 people are at this moment writing a post like this one, or thinking about what they’re going to write, or reading other SundaySaloner’s posts after publishing their own. I don’t know if The Sunday Salon is the largest meme on the Internet, but it’s amazing no matter what.
So what do you think? Do you participate in The Sunday Salon? How does it make you feel to know it’s closed?
Filed under: Sunday Salon, Welsh Reading Challenge | Tagged: Americymru, blogging, bookalicio.us, culture, Hiraeth, Ioan Gruffudd, meme, prizes, reading challenge, Sunday Salon, Welsh, Welsh Reading Challenge | 11 Comments »
In the Shadow of Mt. TBR 