Tips to update my site for faster loading

Hi there! Forgive me if what I am asking is too basic. I tried searching for the answers, but came up to naught.

I need to do the following:

(1) Reduce the long lists of blogrolls on my sidebar. I have seen how other sites have only a link to each blogroll which expands with a click. I am hoping that this can be easily implemented on my site. Can someone point me in the right direction?

(2) I would also like to do with the book list I have on my sidebar. Basically I would like to have a link that says something like: “recommended reads” and with a click let it expand with the list of books, but by default it would be just the link. I hope this make sense.

(3) I am still struggling with the fact that in IE my site comes out with an error but I don’t know what the error is. Also my right sidebar looks really wierd in IE and I have no idea how to correct that.

(4) Finally, on my contact page, the contact form is not ligning up in IE although it works fine in Firefox. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!