Category Archives: Feature & Follow

Feature & Follow (August 24) – Worst Cover on a Great Book

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than a Snuggie on a cold night. (Come on. You know Snuggies are awesome.)

This week’s question:

Q: Worst cover? What is the worst cover of a book that you’ve read and loved?

Oh good, this one’s easy. I really, really loved this book. I hate the cover. So much that I will never buy a physical copy of this book, even though I am all about physical copies, because I don’t want it on my shelves. Digital only for me.

1. I understand that the tear of blood is actually very  relevant to the plot, but ewwwww.

2. WHY IS SHE WHITE? NO. Unacceptable. (If you haven’t read it, the main character is Asian.)

(Seriously though, it’s an awesome book).

 

Feature & Follow (August 17) – Inspiring Blogger

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than when you wake up and think it’s time to get up, but then look at the clock and realize it’s still the middle of the night.

This week’s question:

What blogger inspires you?

Since it doesn’t have to be a book blog (although don’t get me wrong – I love SO MANY book bloggers), I’m going to pick Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman. I’ve read her blog for years, used her Photoshop Actions, cooked tons of her food, and own the cookbook. Oh yeah, and I won an iPad from her.  Seriously.

But the reason I admire her as a blogger is more than just because she holds the best giveaways ever. The giveaways are just icing on the cake of awesome that is Pioneer Woman. Allow me to list the awesome:

1) She’s hilarious and real. Her personality shines through in every one of her posts, be it about food, her kids, cattle ranching, or traveling the country on a book tour.

2) She posts entertaining content every single day.

3) She does this while homeschooling four children. I can’t even begin to imagine the amazing time management skills (which she says she is lacking, but compared to me, I believe this is a fallacy).

4) She’s written two cookbooks, a children’s book, and a book about the love story between her and her husband (which I read back when it was just content on her site, and it is hilarious). Again, I don’t know how she finds the time to write books, but she does.

5) She appears to be an honestly genuine and fun person, the kind I would want to be friends with if I met her in real life. (Which is something I’m still hoping happens someday).

6) She genuinely appreciates her readers, and although she is massively successful, she doesn’t let it go to her head. In all my years of reading her blog, I’ve never heard her say anything that comes across as bragging or entitled or superior. Which is probably one of the reasons she’s so popular.

 I could probably keep going, but surely that’s enough for this post. Who inspires you?

Feature & Follow (August 10) – If I Had a Do-Over

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than finding a ten-spot in the pocket of your jeans while folding laundry.

Also, just as an FYI: I’m super-behind in my commenting and following. The past few weeks have been ridiculously crazy (this week alone we had a 4th birthday and a first day of first grade in our household), and I’m barely keeping up with my posting here, much less my interacting with other blogs. I do have every intent to catch up, but if you started following me in the past couple weeks and don’t think I’ve followed back yet, feel free to remind me. Refreshers never hurt.

This week’s question:

Q: What would you do over if you were to start your blog again from scratch?

Oh, so many things.

  • I would start out on self-hosted WordPress instead of the free version.
  • I would not post eight reviews on my very first day when I had no readers, and save absolutely none for later posting when I actually did get readers (still not sure why I thought that was a good idea).
  • I would not send really annoying emails.
  • I would not request books for review on NetGalley that I was only kinda sorta interested in reading.
  • I would jump on Twitter from Day 1, but put more thought into who I followed.
  • I wouldn’t worry as much about sounding “professional” and just talk like me.

Basically, the only thing I’d do the same is I’d keep my awesome header, because I love it. And my name, which were the very first words that popped into my head after “I should start a book blog.” Those two things are really the only things I did right, all those many (okay, 4.5) months ago.

Feature & Follow (August 3) – Reading Habits

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than the cool side of the pillow on a hot night.

This week’s question:

Do your reading habits change based on your mood? Do you read a certain genre if you are feeling depressed or happy?

Totally. Of course, my default setting some form of fantastic speculative fiction. Those are my manufacturer settings, and they cannot be altered.

However, sometimes my brain malfunctions and I know I can’t handle complex world-building or intricate mythology. I just need something straightforward and simple. Then it’s contemporary or chick lit time.

Other times, when my emotions get strangely violent (oh come on, you know you have those moods too), I pick up an epic fantasy with lots of swordplay and rousing speeches. Or maybe a crazy sci-fi with explosions galore. The main point is that sometimes I just need carnage.

If I’m feeling sad and abnormally weepy, I can go one of two ways. Either I need to read something super upbeat and cheerful to snap me out of it, or, more often, I read something super-sad to push me over the edge, like The Book Thief or The Fault in Our Stars. Sometimes it takes being pushed over the edge for me to finally snap out of my doldrums. It’s amazing what a good ugly-cry can do.

Then there’s times I just need to mellow out, and I go to my “comfort books,” like Harry Potter, Ender’s Game, and the Farseer series. These are books that aren’t actually comforting — each one is complex and action packed — but books that I know I love so much, and am so deeply familiar with, that the act of reading them is soothing, in spite of the craziness in the pages.

So basically what I’m saying here is it’s a good thing that there’s lots of different types of books in the world.

Feature & Follow (July 27) – Required Reading

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are the best thing in the world after chocolate for breakfast.

Come on, you know you’ve had chocolate for breakfast and that it’s awesome.

Today’s question is:

What was your favorite required reading in school?

Ummm…so this is hard because my school didn’t require…how shall we put it…good books. 

Lord of the Rings? No.

Anne of Green Gables? No.

Chronicles of Narnia? No.

Little Women? No.

Anything by Jane Austen? No.

I had to read things like The Grapes of Wrath (which was so boring, I actually broke out the Cliff’s Notes, which I am pretty adamantly opposed to) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (which…okay, I have a story about that one, but it’s long and I won’t get into it now). I know they are considered classics and all the Classic Lit people are going to come and beat me now, probably with a copy of The Grapes of Wrath because it’s just so darn BIG, but you can’t ever convince me that either of those books is good.

Tess, in particular…well. I have a story about how this book caused a group of otherwise highly intellectual straight-A high school seniors to turn rebellious and a little bit crazy. But now’s not the time.

[One day, I need to write an entire post — or maybe a series of posts — about my senior year AP English class and our spacey teacher. It’s mind boggling, folks.]

I also don’t like The Great Gatsby. There, I’ve said it.

Anyway.

I remember a whopping two, yes, TWO, books that I was required to read that I actually liked. Both of which I read in that weird and somewhat surreal AP English class.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. (The superior Bronte sister, in my opinion.)

I love how untraditional this story is, how neither of the main characters is particularly attractive or swoon-worthy, how neither of them really feels like they need romance to be complete as a person.

And yet, it’s somehow a beautiful love story. Complex and emotional and fabulous.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Dystopian before dystopian was a thing. I honestly couldn’t tell you what it was about this book that I liked. Just that I really, really liked it.

Also, I gave my presentation on this book in a leather miniskirt and black fishnets, to be in character. Because my English class was so weird that that was normal.

Thankfully, there are no pictures. Just thought you’d like to know.