Book Blogger Confession-- Dear Santa!

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme held on the 1st and 3rd Mondays of each month and is hosted by For What It's Worth

This weeks question:

December 17th: Dear Santa! What would you put on your blogging/bookish wish list if the sky was the limit? A new blog design? A house filled with new bookshelves? Even MORE books?

 

Dear Bookish Santa,

I've been a good reader this year. I've been volunteering at my local library every week almost all year, I have been using said library this year a lot more than I ever have before, and I've cut back on my book buying. It's this last one that has me a little upset because I miss buying books. My city lost its new bookstore and now we only have small used ones. I do use them, but I miss Borders and would very much like them to come back. I miss walking around the store, just browsing all the books. I miss the smell of the store, and I also miss going and making flirting eyes at the very, very, very cute guy behind the counter. I also miss Borders hot chocolate (did you know they used to stick a whole giant piece of chocolate on top of the whip cream? It was delicious), they also had mint chocolate mochas that were to die for. I miss those as well. Borders used to also have a awesome used online section with free shipping for Borders Plus members that saved me hundreds of dollars. Dear Santa, could you please bring me back my Borders?

 

If you can't bring me Borders, can you at least bring me a local Powells (driving an hour to the Beaverton or Portland one is costing me a lot in gas money), or at least a Barnes and Nobles? I just need a new bookstore in my city.

Also, if it's not too much to ask, I would also like a credit card just for books. But I want someone else to pay for this credit card each month. Unfortunately I do not make enough in my jobs to pay for all the books I want. I would also really appreciate a newbookcase (all real wood please, none of that cheap, flimsy wood they make most bookcases out of now). I've run out of room for all my books. Oh, I will need my room to be extended as well to fit this bookcase. So maybe just turn the whole new wall into one giant bookcase? That is, if it's not too much trouble.

 

Thank you in advance, Santa. I look forward to all the new book gifts from you.

 

Love, Ariel


*edit*
After reading a bunch of other peoples wish lists, I'd like to add in that I also want to go to ALA and BEA. I want someone else to pay for the hotel, flights, food, ect. I also want my sister to get the days off work and go with me. That way, I'd have someone to get all excited to go right along with me, like we did for Wordstock.
Also, Leakycon is being held in my home state this year and I'd really like my friend and I to go. I want the rock star passes for both of us, but once again, I can't pay for them. So I'd really like that as well.
I also want to meet more of my favorite authors, like John Green. I want to get a big group of them together with a few other bloggers and friends and have lunch or something and just hang out. It'd be a lot of fun. 

Book Blogger Confessions--Scary books and literary costumes

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme that is every on the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month and is hosted by For What It's Worth

Question:
Happy Halloween! Do you like to read scary books? Why or why not? If so, what is the scariest book you ever read and why does it deserve that honor?

Bonus question! Just for fun – have you ever dressed as a literary character for Halloween? Brave enough to show a photo if you have one?

Answer:
I love to read scary books!!! I'm always on the lookout for good scary books. I'm one of those people that get really into (most) holidays and my moods and therefore the books I read during the holidays are themed. October is definitely the month that I search really hard for good scary books even though the last few years my October has been lacking scary books. Some of the top scary books I've read are The Devouring, Sorry Night by Simon Holt, Daemon Hall by Andrew Nance, and Anna Dressed In Blood by Kendare Blake. Anna being the scariest. I had to get up and turn on all the lights while reading that book. The reason why any of these books were scary is the mood and setting I created while reading it. Just like with scary movies, if you watch it in the day, with the sun shining and the birds singing, it's going to take away from it. But watch it at midnight during a storm and it adds to it. That's how I read my scary books. In the middle of the night during bad weather (which  lets face it, in Oregon that's all you are going to get most of the time).

I used to be the biggest scaredy cat there was. When I was 4 and my parents took me to Disneyland for the first time, the only ride I didn't freak out when we went on it was It's A Small World, and then I made my mother literally go on it 13 times in a row. Yes, feel free to pity my mother for that. But as I got older, I've become more of a scary addict. I love horror movies, I love giant roller coasters, and can't get enough of scary books.

As for dressing up as literary characters for Halloween, I am one almost every year or try to be if I can afford it. Two years ago a big group of us went as Alice In Wonderland characters. I was the Queen of Hearts.

I entered this picture in Kim Harrison's halloween costume contest back in 2010 and got 2nd place! My dog was also the White Rabbit but you can't see her in the picture.

I've also been Clary from Mortal Instruments, Matalena from the Hollows series, and a few others. This year I'm moving on from literary characters to tv show characters. I'm going as Amy Ferrah Fowler from Big Bang Theory.

Just for fun, here are some of my pumpkins I've carved in the last few years.

And somehow I lost my picture of the Bella and Edward pumpkin I did a few years ago. Bummer cause it was awesome and took me over 3 hours to carve.

Book Blogger Confessions-- Blogger Envy

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme hosted on the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month and is hosted by For What It's Worth

Question: Blogger Envy: Do you have a bad case of blogger envy? Do you covet thy neighbor bloggers book hauls/follower numbers/blog design? How do you tamp down the green eyed monster?

Oh gosh, yes I do have blogger envy. There are a few blogs that I would love to run. They have amazing designs, always get the arcs I'd LOVE to have, and they have great follower numbers (and certain ones get to go to movie sets and interview the actors. Who wouldn't want to do that???). The ones I really envy though are the ones that are still having a lot of fun blogging. You can always tell which ones these are because they are perky and always have lots of comments because they still have the time to visit all the other blogs and make connections with other bloggers. And that more than the arcs and the designs is what I envy. I miss the excitment of blogging.

Whenever I start to feel really jealous of these blogs, I just remember how much work and time they put in it. Then I think about how much time I put into mine and how that time has been lacking a lot lately. I think of the money that I could spent to hire someone to help me fix the design problems I have with my blog. I think of the connections I could make with effort to help my blog, and know that there are things I can do to get my blog running the way I'd like, but know that I'm probably not going to do any of it. I've had other things on my mind lately and the blog is taking the hit.

Hopefully sometime or another, my blog will be what I'd like it to be and I can stop being jealous of other bloggers.

Book Blogger Confessions

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme hosted on the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month and is hosted by For What It's Worth

Question: Following: How do you follow blogs? Do you use Google Reader? Are you on an e-mail list? Are you more apt to follow people who have less followers? Would you follow a blog to enter a contest? What makes you unfollow a blog?

I follow blogs using Google Friend Connect. I love how GFC will show me which blogs I'm already following and will automatically sign me in when I go to comment. The blogs that I have to personally type in all my info (name, email, blog url) are blogs that I will probably not comment on. Too much effort. Same with blogs that use the captcha. If I have to guess at what that mess of letters is, I won't comment.

I also love how GFC and blogger have a giant scroll list of all the newest posts from the blogs I follow. I just have to scroll through, see which posts pop out at me and I will then go look at them. I like having all the blogs I follow in one list. I'm too lazy for anything else.

When it comes to following, I will follow all the blogs that follow me when I do the follow hops. Then when I come across blogs I like I will follow them. I don't seem to follow the bigger blogs nearly as much as I follow the newer ones with less followers. They are the ones that are still really excited about blogging and it shows. But since I'm almost at 3 years of blogging (the 25th of this month will be my blogaversary) and I've found abotu 15 blogs I like and that like my blog back and I tend to mostly pay attention to those ones. I do still comment on the other blogs I follow, I just don't go to their blogs nearly as much.

There has only been a few times that I have unfollowed a blog. Once when a blog had been hacked and was posting non-stop spam. Then a few times when the blogs switched from book blogs to other things, health blogs, political blogs, ect. I don't really unfollow blogs.

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme hosted by For What It's Worth every 1st and 3rd Monday of the month.

This weeks question:
Have you ever loved a book that you know is not a great literary gem? Maybe it's filled with spelling errors, tired cliches, and is utterly cheestastic but you loved it anyway?
Yeah, it's a little book called "Twilight." Maybe you've heard of it? lol.
In all honestly, I love books that aren't "literary gems" all the time. To me, it's not all about the writing, it's the plot, the characters, how I felt while I was reading it. That's what truly makes it great. The books I like for their literary brilliance is far and few. I'd have to say the best one is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. Ever read it? It's fantastic.


How do you handle that as a blogger who is used to critical thinking and analysis? Do you pretend you never read the book - never to be reviewed or added to your Goodreads shelf :-)?

I wouldn't say that reviews are the outcomes of critical thinking. Most reviews I read (and write) are more of the thoughts of the reader and not in depth analysis of the book. Then again, when I think about the phrase "critical thinking" I automatically think of all those English classes I took in school. When you break down every little thing from the book (and often ruining it imo) and try to decipher everything that happened in it. That is not, and should not, be what a book review is.

So as a blogger, when I come along books that aren't very well written, I might possibly say something about it in my review, but if I loved the book, most likely I'll be saying why. As for my Goodreads shelf, I never hold back in those. I don't add a whole lot of people to my GR page, it's not a social tool for me, it's the site I use to help me keep track of my books. So I don't really care who sees what books I'm adding.

Do you write a review but maybe apologize and make excuses as to why you enjoyed it or are you bold and proud of any book you enjoyed?

No. No excuses. I'm not ashamed of the books I read.

Conversely - have you read a classic, that is considered a literary gem but you just didn't get it? Are you embarrassed to admit that or do you review it anyway?

I've read TONS of "literary gems" and think they suck big monkey turds. Like Wuthering Heights. By far the worst book I've ever read and I will never understand why people like that crap. Then there is things like Paradise Lost which is horrible. I honestly fell asleep every single time I tried to read that. Just because it's a classic and considered a literary gem doesn't mean it's good. It just means that old dead white guys from hundreds of years ago decided they liked it and thought everyone should read it and we keep going with that because they are "classics." Ugh.

There is a reason I was a horrible English Lit major. I disagreed with my teachers way too often for either of our likings. ;)

Book Blogger Confessions- Making money off your blog

Book blogger confessions is a meme hosted on the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month. The meme is hosted by Tiger's all consuming books and For What It's Worth

 This weeks topic is:
Making money off your blog: There was a recent controversy about bloggers charging authors for reviews which leads to this week's question:
Almost all of us blog as a hobby in our spare time, usually for free but is there anything wrong with making money off your blog?
Should bloggers charge for reviews?
What about advertising on a blog?
When a blogger does allow book related advertising does it turn you off? Make you wonder about the honesty of their reviews?

Do you have a problem with purchase links (Amazon for example) that earn a blogger a small commission if a person purchases a book through that link?


Wow, apparently I did not hear about this new controversy in the blogging world because when I read that, it shocked me.

I do not see the harm in trying to make a little money on your blog. Blogging takes up a lot of time, both with reading the books and writing about them. Then there is all the networking that is involved with blogging and maybe the giveaways. That all takes time and maybe money so having things like Amazon purchase links is no biggy. It's not in your face and all it is is a link. But what disgusted me a little when I read about it is people charging for reviews. WTF? To me that is just wrong. I find that the deal is the author/publisher sends you a free copy of the book, and you give a review. The payment itself is the free book. To me, that is a sweet deal because most likely I would have bought the book anyways and still wrote a review for it. So I'm saving money by getting a free copy.

As for when bloggers have book related advertising on their blogs, no, that does not turn me off or have me distrusting the bloggers reviews. I'm just going to trust that the blogger liked the book so much that they allowed advertising on their blog. To me, my blog is my baby (figuratively speaking.) I have spent a big chunk of time designing (and learning html so I can design it), organizing, and networking to get it to what it is today. There is no way that I would clutter it up with advertising for something I dislike. I trust that can also go for many other bloggers. People who spend tons of money on personal designs (have you seen the prices for those? It's like $100 if not more. Yikes) wouldn't want to clutter it up either.

Book Blogger Confessions- starting over

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme that's held every 1st and 3rd Monday of the month and is hosted by For What It's Worth and Tigers all consuming books

The question for today is this:

 We have created a blogging time machine! Pretend you can start over. Knowing what you know now about blogging – what do you wish you did differently when it comes to creating your blog?

I've been blogging now for almost three years (holy crap, I can't believe it's been that long) and I can definitely think of a few things I'd do differently if I could go back.

First thing first, I'd think a lot more about my blog name and my url. When I decided to write a blog, I wasn't exactly sure what all I was going to do with it. I didn't know if I wanted it to be just a book review blog or something else. But I was watching the movie Must Love Dogs and because of my love for that movie (and my laziness to come up with anything else) I decided to go with Must Love Books. The only problem was someone back in 2005 decided to create a blog with that url, wrote one post, and never come back. So I had to pick a different thing to put in my url. I went with "labradors" instead of "books" because, well I dunno, I just did. Maybe it was because my Labrador was sitting on the couch next to me at the time or just my all around love for that breed of dog.

If I could go back and change this, I'd think about creating a theme and having the name fit with the theme of my blog. But back then I had way too much fun changing my layout about once a week. I couldn't make up my mind.

Next thing I would do is I'd work a lot harder at finding other book blogs and getting more involved in the blogging community. It took me a year to really get involved in the community and I'm sad it took me so long because I'm sure I missed out on a lot of cool things and opportunities.

And lastly, I think I would go back farther in time than when I first started, maybe a year farther back and tell myself to start blogging then. I was getting really into reading a year or two before I decided to start blogging and there are a lot of books that I wish I had some form of review or documentation for because I'm having trouble remembering my original thoughts on the book.

Book Blogger Confessions-- Memes

Book Blogger Confessions is a meme that posts the 1st and 3rd Monday of every month, where book bloggers "confess" and vent about topics that are unique to us. Feel free to share, vent and offer solutions. BBC is hosted by For What It's Worth

 Question for Monday May 21st:

Memes. Love em or hate em? How many do you participate in? Which kinds do you like best? Do you feel like there are too many?

I personally love memes. I've noticed that on almost all blogs that the posts with the most comments and activities are the meme posts. I think that when people have a set date and a set topic, people are more likely to post and to make it entertaining. It can be hard to come up with ideas on what to post about and to make it interesting enough to get people to stop and read it. But when you have something like "Top Ten Tuesday" in your header, readers are more likely to stop and take a look.

I participate in Top Ten Tuesdays and My Book Boyfriend. That is normally it and now I'm also doing this one. I love TTT because it has me thinking about past books I've read, or quotes I love, or my personal favorite I think was the pick a theme song for books post. It really had me thinking and I loved seeing the songs people thought fit books. It said a lot about the reader and the books all at once. MBB is also great because that is a smaller meme and it's almost always the same people posting each week. There is just something about small memes that are more fun. Plus this meme is full of hott guys. What's not to love about that? I love seeing people take an idea or topic, and make it their own. Seeing all the different interpretations. It's fascinating.

There are also memes out there that I really dislike. The main one being In My Mailbox. When I used to surf blogs on Sundays, all I'd see are IMM posts. That is all anyone seems to post on Sundays and this is why I have stopped checking blogs on that day. I find the IMM posts to be people bragging over what Arcs they've got recently. I know it's exciting when you get a new arc, especially if it's a highly anticipated book, but I don't want to read about you bragging about getting it. When I look at those posts, all I see in the comments are "OMG I'm so jealous!!!!!" That to me is...pointless. What is the point in posts in which all anyone is going to tell you is that they are jealous of you? I also do not really care what books you've got this week, I care about what you thought of the books.

Even though there are memes I dislike, for the most part I really do love memes. I just hope that bloggers don't try and do all of them and clog up their blogs. Maybe pick 2 or 3 and have fun with them.