2011 BBAW Daily Topic #5: Blogging

Posted by Anastasia on September 16, 2011 22 Responses »

Sep 162011

Today’s post is about blogging:

The world of blogging is continually changing. Share 3 things you are essential tried and true practices for every blogger and 1-3 new trends or tools you’ve adapted recently or would like to in the future.

I tried to think of things that newbie bloggers both a) might not already know and b) might not have already been told. It was really hard! I’ve come up with five things, though, that I think are useful to know and haven’t been said too many times before. Unfortunately they don’t really fit with the prompt above, but, well. We can’t have everything.

1. DO go to as many book events as you can and/or that you’re interested in. I know some of you live in places that don’t have a lot going on in the way of book events, so, if you can, save up for a big one like BEA or ALA and go to that. Not only will it be awesome, but being around so many book lovers will make you feel like you’ve returned to the mothership.

2. DO be proactive in stuff. If you want a book, an interview, to write a guest post for another blogger, for more people to join in on your meme or event or challenge, or anything that involves people other than yourself getting in on it– be proactive and ask! Through email, preferably (it’s more professional). Politely, of course. And don’t be too upset if you’re turned down. It happens.

3. DO keep track of your books in some way. You probably all do this anyway, but having a catalog of your books (or even just of books you’ve read) will be really helpful later on when you’re wondering how you ended up with three copies of The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.

4. DON’T be afraid to make friends. Book bloggers are, on the whole, very nice people. If you want to be someone’s friend, do what I said in point no. 2: be proactive! Talk to them on Twitter, comment on their blog, be nice to them and soon you’ll no doubt have a new friend. Don’t worry about “cliques” or whatever– there aren’t actually cliques of people wandering around being snobby. Really! (Not that I know of, anyway.)

5. DO ask questions. Even older bloggers have questions about how stuff works, so you newbie bloggers shouldn’t feel bad about asking about things, either. Even if it’s questions that’ve been asked a million times before!

Happy end of BBAW, everyone! I’ve been trying to visit people who’ve commented here, but I’m a bit behind (understatement!). Still, if you’d like me to visit your blog– leave a comment here and I promise I’ll come over for a visit!

If you’d like to read my other BBAW posts, here they are: Day 1 | Day 3 | Day 4

2011 BBAW Daily Topic #4: Readers

Posted by Anastasia on September 15, 2011 28 Responses »

Sep 152011

Today’s topic is about readers:

Book bloggers blog because we love reading. Has book blogging changed the way you read? Have you discovered books you never would have apart from book blogging? How has book blogging affected your book acquisition habits? Have you made new connections with other readers because of book blogging? Choose any one of these topics and share your thoughts today!

It’s actually been kind of interesting how much my reading has changed since I started book blogging. If you look at my reading list from 2008, I read a total of 163 books, most of them graphic novels and YA. If you look at last year’s list, I read 238 books and the genres were all over the place. Also, I’ve started getting a lot more review requests than I did in my first year.

So, basically:
- I read more books total now
- I read a wider range of genres (which is either good or bad, depending on how I feel)
- I read more newer books

The first two points are pretty much fine with me (I do enjoy reading more/different books) but the third one is a bit troubling. I don’t want to read only new books, after all. I’ve been trying to read more stuff published pre-2000 but the newer stuff is overwhelming. Partly that’s because of the review copies, but also it’s because I get wind of so many interesting new books from other bloggers that I want to read, too. I don’t think I’ve ever paid as much attention to what books are coming out when as I do now that I’m a book blogger!

Sort of related to that, I think I’m also more deliberate about what I read now. The library is far away and all my books come from either my buying them or accepting them for review (or winning them in contests!). The books I read now are once I picked out for myself because of deliberate, specific reasons– not just because the cover looked cool. I may not remember the reason once I actually get around to reading the book, but it was there.

I’m assuming the more I blog the more my reading will lean towards newer books, but I don’t see myself reverting to only one or two genres and/or reading fewer books…unless something drastic happens, I guess! (I get a job, maybe? Please let it be so.)

[Sidenote: I'm actually kind of thinking of starting a series next year where I highlight truly forgotten childrens/YA/etc. books. Like, I have a few in my collection now that I'm pretty sure haven't been talked about since they were first published. If I can do it right, I think it might be interesting. What do you think?]

2011 BBAW Daily Topic #3: Community Part II

Posted by Anastasia on September 14, 2011 40 Responses »

Sep 142011

Today’s discussion topic is about community again:

The world of book blogging has grown enormously and sometimes it can be hard to find a place. Share your tips for finding and keeping community in book blogging despite the hectic demands made on your time and the overwhelming number of blogs out there. If you’re struggling with finding a community, share your concerns and explain what you’re looking for–this is the week to connect!

To be honest, I’ve been struggling to dig myself deeper into the blog community. I volunteer for stuff, sure, and I try to comment/Tweet at people/etc., but I still kind of feel like an outsider. Probably part of that comes from the fact that I don’t have a defined niche for my blog. I’ve got lots of crossover interests but I don’t really fit into any one defined kind of blog, you know? So I’m left sort of floating out in space while (it seems) everyone else is in their YA/classics/non-fiction/paranormal romance spaceships of amazingness.

I mean, I guess I could make my own spaceship, but it’d be a party of one in there and that kinda sucks. Even sending out messages to other spaceships isn’t all that fun when they go off to explore Saturn or something and I’m not invited to tag along.

I think the key to feeling more included might be to bring more community stuff back to my own blog, but I haven’t really worked out how to do that besides discussion posts (which I’m rubbish at). More events, maybe? (Also rubbish at that, by the way.) Videos, maybe! I don’t know, really.

Or maybe the key to feeling more included is in offline community stuff. Like, should I join a book club? Go to more book events? Meet up with book bloggers for coffee or something? That might work! I’m going to try doing some of that when I move to California. Not only will I be nearer to more book stuff but I’ll probably also feel like actually leaving the house once in a while.

What about you? Do you feel like you’re a crew of one in your own lonely spaceship? How do you keep from feeling lonely out in the vastness of book blogging space?

2011 BBAW Daily Topic #1: Community

Posted by Anastasia on September 12, 2011 39 Responses »

Sep 122011

I decided to do the daily topics for BBAW this year because…well, why not? Except I’m not doing Tuesday’s post because I forgot to sign up for an interview. Whoops.

Today’s topic is about community:

While the awards are a fun part of BBAW, they can never accurately represent the depth and breadth of diversity in the book blogging community. Today you are encouraged to highlight a couple of bloggers that have made book blogging a unique experience for you. They can be your mentors, a blogger that encouraged you to try a different kind of book, opened your eyes to a new issue, made you laugh when you needed it, or left the first comment you ever got on your blog. Stay positive and give back to the people who make the community work for you!

First person who commented: Shana @ Literarily (blog no longer exists, unfortunately)
First person to inspire me to improve: Kim, because of her Blog Improvement Project (she’s also the first book blogger I met in person if we’re not counting Alison, which I’m not because she wasn’t a book blogger when I first met her so there)
First split review done with: Alita (and we’re doing another in 2012!)

People who make me want to expand my reading horizons: Amy, Rebecca, Eva, Iris
People who wouldn’t let me in the bunker even if I brought them brownies: Cass
People who are very good at giving advice: Clare, Vasilly, Memory
People who always cheer me up: Jenny, Tasha, Sharry, everyone I’ve already linked to up there (EVEN CASS )
People who I adore and want to succeed in whatever they do: all of you!

Thanks to everyone who has ever visited me here at Birdbrain(ed), left me a comment, talked to me on Twitter, emailed me, and/or just thought good things about me. You’re awesome! Keep being awesome! And I’ll see you again on Wednesday for another BBAW topic (or later today for a book review, if you’d like).

The Sunday Salon (Sept. 4): The RIP VI challenge

Posted by Anastasia on September 4, 2011 12 Responses »

Sep 042011

I haven’t done challenges at all this year, mainly because once I sign up for them I keep forgetting to actually do them. The R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril VI challenge is different, however, because I’ve been meaning to participate in it every since I started blogging, but somehow I always forget to keep an eye out for it and then I miss the sign-ups and then it’s mid-October and way too late to join anyway, and everything is terrible in that mild “it’s just the internet” sort of way. Continue reading »

REVIEW & Giveaway: Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves

Posted by Anastasia on June 30, 2011 14 Responses »

Jun 302011

57. Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents by Elisabeth Eaves
Publication: Seal Press (May 24, 2011), ebook, 304pp / ISBN 1580053114
Genre: Travel Memoir

Read: June 6-20, 2011
Source: TLC Book Tours

Summary from Amazon:

Spanning fifteen years of travel, beginning when she is a sophomore in college, Wanderlust documents Elisabeth Eaves’s insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures. Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance. In the jungles of Papua New Guinea, she loses herself—literally—to an Australian tour guide; in Cairo, she reconnects with her high school sweetheart, only to discover the beginning of a pattern that will characterize her life over the long-term: while long-distance relationships work well for her, traditional relationships do not.

Wanderlust, however, is more than a chronological conquest of men and countries: at its core, it’s a journey of self-discovery. In the course of her travels, Eaves finds herself and the sense of home she’s been lacking since childhood—and she sheds light on a growing culture of young women who have the freedom and inclination to define their own, increasingly global, lifestyles, unfettered by traditional roles and conventions of past generations of women.

Review

Seal Press is one of my favorite publishers, though I haven’t read nearly enough of their catalog. Nevertheless, the books I have read have been interesting in that a) they’re all written by women about women, and b) those women aren’t afraid to talk about things that are considered more…I don’t know. Hidden? Un-womanly? Unusual?

With male travel writers, a lot of the times their memoirs are about who they slept with and what extreme thing they did in a foreign country. With female travel writers, their memoirs tend to be more about the spiritual/internal changes travel brings to them and the friends they made. Romance is secondary to everything else, basically. Elisabeth Eaves’ book is unusual in that she doesn’t shy away from writing about any of it: the sex, the men, her extreme adventures, AND the emotional stuff.

To be honest, it did throw me off at first. EE is very blunt about her sex life with the various men she meets, and I’m kind of prudish about real people’s sex lives. It also threw me off because, like I said in the previous paragraph, I lumped “(near-)graphic sex” with male travel writers– and my thoughts about EE, a woman, writing about her travel-sex life, were almost “omg should she be writing that?” Almost like she was breaking some rule or something stupid like that. Luckily I had an epiphany, of a sorts (why shouldn’t she write about that?), and the rest of the book was smooth sailing.

By about 20% in I really grew to love Wanderlust. In the beginning of the book, which is EE’s teen-early twenties, there isn’t much introspection. It was constantly “and then I ran away from [whatever]” and I was wondering if she even knew she was doing it. She knew. She just took a while to tell me that she knew; once the introspection and analysis of WHY EE kept running away from “real life” started, the book because a lot more interesting to me.

I really liked that EE tied in the idea that wanderlust is not just a love of travel. It’s also a compulsion, an addiction, and it doesn’t just apply to flying to a new country. EE’s wanderlust is sunk deep within her veins, so that she can’t help wandering even in her love life, and the conflict between what EE really wants and what she thinks she should want is really sad.

There are some other good things in Wanderlust besides EE’s internal conflict about staying and going, but I think I should let you find them out for yourself. If you like travel memoirs but don’t want the same old thing, you’ll probably like Wanderlust.

Rating

Recommended for all travel memoir fans.

Buy

Get your own copy @ Amazon or BookDepository.com and support Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog through the power of affiliate earnings!

Giveaway!

If you want to try your hand at winning a copy of Wanderlust, the publisher/TLC Book Tours has graciously allowed me to give away a copy to a resident of the US/Canada! So:

Rules
1. One (1) winner will win one (1) copy of Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves.
2. US/Canada only.
3. The giveaway will run from now, June 30th, ending at midnight EST on July 14th.
4. The winner will be chosen using Random.org; you have 48 hours to get back to me after I email you or someone else will be chosen. The winner will be announced here at the blog on July 16th, assuming everything goes well.
5. You can get an extra entry by sharing the contest link somewhere. Yay!

Fill out the form below to enter the contest!
THE CONTEST HAS ENDED. The winner will be announced soon!

Nerds Heart YA 2011, Round 1: Finding Family vs Toads and Diamonds

Posted by Anastasia on June 21, 2011 8 Responses »

Jun 212011

This is my second year judging for Nerds Heart YA, and this time I’m judging with Kristen of Bookworming the 21st Century. I must say that I really enjoyed the books I judged! Both of them were really good, but while I liked both only one was a clear winner (well, obviously). Continue reading below for my thoughts on both books and our decision on which book will move forward.

55. Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson
Publication: Henry Holt and Co. (March 30, 2010), Hardcover, 288pp / ISBN 9780805089684
Genre: YA Fantasy

Read: June 9, 2011
Source: Borrowed

Summary from Amazon:

Diribani has come to the village well to get water for her family’s scant meal of curry and rice. She never expected to meet a goddess there. Yet she is granted a remarkable gift: Flowers and precious jewels drop from her lips whenever she speaks.

It seems only right to Tana that the goddess judged her kind, lovely stepsister worthy of such riches. And when she encounters the goddess, she is not surprised to find herself speaking snakes and toads as a reward.

Blessings and curses are never so clear as they might seem, however. Diribani’s newfound wealth brings her a prince—and an attempt on her life. Tana is chased out of the village because the province’s governor fears snakes, yet thousands are dying of a plague spread by rats. As the sisters’ fates hang in the balance, each struggles to understand her gift. Will it bring her wisdom, good fortune, love . . . or death?

Review

Toads and Diamonds is set in a fictional version of historical India, with gods and people that sort of resemble the ones in our world, but not really. It’s also a retelling of Charles Perrault’s Les Fées, who you may recognize as the dude who popularized stories like Bluebeard, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. Luckily, Toads and Diamonds does what The Goose Girl did for the original goose girl story: it makes it way better and way more interesting. It has character depth, and self-actualization, and character growth! Diribani and Tana are two of the strongest characters I’ve ever read about, and yet they were still vulnerable to dangers both inside and out. Also, it has romance! Yay!

The only downside to Toads and Diamonds is that I thought Diribani’s troubles, when compared to Tana’s, seem almost inconsequential. Tana has to deal with plague victims, near-death at least twice, and shoveling horse poop. Diribani has to deal with danger to her spiritual beliefs– and to her heart. Both are powerful stories, but I can’t help but think that Tana had the upper hand in emotionally impacting the reader (i.e. me). Plague and death is just always going to affect me more than the push-pull of living in one culture while belonging to another, and so I sympathized with Tana and her snakes way more than Diribani and her flowers.

Plus, the villain was basically non-existent except for right at the end. In fact, I don’t think the villain was even that important, for all that he kept throwing wrenches into things.

Still, despite what I saw as an imbalance, I really liked Toads and Diamonds. It’s a fantastic fairy tale retelling and I definitely recommend it.

56. Finding Family by Tonya Bolden
Publication: Bloomsbury USA Children’s Books (August 31, 2010), Hardcover, 192pp / ISBN 1599903180
Genre: MG Historical Fiction

Read: June 14, 2011
Source: Borrowed (special thanks to Kristen for letting me borrow her copy!)

Summary from Amazon:

Delana has never known her parents. Raised by her Aunt Tilley and a reclusive grandfather, Delana has led a sheltered existence, nurtured on her aunt’s wild family histories. But when Aunt Tilley dies, Delana confronts her pent-up curiosities and embarks on a quest to unravel her aunt’s fictions and draw out her mysterious grandfather. In searching for her true history, Delana finds herself, and a home in the one place she never thought to look. This moving fictional story is imagined from real antique photographs that author Tonya Bolden has collected. Bolden’s well-researched historical details about 1905 Charleston, West Virginia lend authenticity, while spare, lyrical writing make this young girl’s coming-of-age resonate.

Review

Finding Family an adorable and heartbreaking book. Delana’s story is about growing up, and when you grow up sometimes you find out the truth about things you didn’t even know there was a truth for. That can have devastating consequences, but luckily Delana is strong enough– and has a solid support structure in her family– that she isn’t ruined forever. In fact, she gets stronger! Character growth, yay!

One of the best parts of Finding Family was the integration of actual antique photographs. It just makes the whole book seem more real, and like the people Delana talks about could have actually been people living back at the turn of the century. That gives it an edge that most YA/MG historical novels don’t have.

Like I said, though I enjoyed both books, only one could move forward and I knew which one I wanted it to be. Luckily my judging partner agreed, and so we’ve decided that Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson will be moving forward!

Congrats to Toads and Diamonds, and here’s hoping it does well in the next round!