Category: Other

Categories
Booker Prize Other

Who is going to be on the Man Booker Longlist 2009?

The longlist for the Booker Prize is going to be annouced next week.

Here are my predictions for books which will make the list:


The Children’s Book – A. S. Byatt


Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel


Kieron Smith, Boy – James Kelman


The Island at the End of the World – Sam Taylor


The Wilderness – Samantha Harvey


Brooklyn – Colm Toibin


Taste of Sorrow – Jude Morgan


Blackmoor – Edward Hogan


The Winter Vault – Anne Michaels

 

I really hope that The Wilderness wins the Booker Prize this year, but I have a feeling that The Children’s Book will win.

In many ways I hope that my predictions don’t come true. I’m really hoping that I discover some great new books via the list this year, and it isn’t just packed with previous winners.

Who do you think will win the Booker Prize 2009?

Who else do you think will make the longlist?

The longlist will be announced on 28th July 2009. Are you planning to read the Booker list this year?

Categories
Other

Can you read a book with bad foxing?

foxBlog Post Bingo requires me to write a definition post, so here it is!

FOXING: The reddish-brown spots found on vintage paper. The stains form over time, and as well as being unsightly, reduce the value of the book.

I don’t like reading foxed books, so will avoid them if possible. I like the paper to be crisp and white. Old books don’t have a special appeal to me, although this may be due to the number of disgusting things I’ve found in old books during the course of my work with them.

Can you read a book with bad foxing?

Categories
Other

Links I’ve stumbled across this week

Bookish News

Dovegreyreader has an interview with Sarah Waters. I have renewed enthusiasm for The Little Stranger after reading it.

Amazon are hoping to launch the kindle in the UK in time for Christmas.

How telling the story behind an object’s history can increase it’s sale price on ebay.

Stephenie Meyer was worth more than £12m to the UK book trade in the first half of 2009

Margaret Atwood is embracing new technology to avoid travelling long distances for a book tour. She has invented a new pen which means she can sign books remotely.

A Few Books Which Have Caught My Eye


Sandy discovered another great audio book, The Wordy Shipmates. Unfortunately the audio version isn’t available in the UK, so I’ll have to wait until I decide which audio download company to join. Has anyone found a great audio download company they can recommend?.

 

 

Diane described The Magicians as being an adult version of Narnia. I think I’ll have to find a copy of it soon.

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An Award

Finally I’ve just received this award from Beth Fish Reads. 

The Humane Award is to honor bloggers who are kindhearted individuals. They regularly take part in my blog and always leave the sweetest comments. If it weren’t for them, my site would just be an ordinary book review blog.

I agree that having great comments improves a blog so much. Beth Fish Reads always leaves such thoughtful comments, not just on my blog, but almost every one I look at. Thank you so much!

Categories
Blogging Other

How do you decide which is the best blog?

image14th – 18th September is  Book Blogger Appreciation Week! I wasn’t blogging at the time of last year’s event, so am really excited to find out all about it.

Nominations for the best blogs are being taken until 15th August, but I found it a really hard thing to do.

How do you decide which is the best blog?

Sites like Maw Books and My Friend Amy are incredibly well put together and they clearly put a lot of work into blogging and improving our community, but I rarely feel compelled to leave comments on their blogs as they seem to have a different taste in books to me.

I currently have 22 blogs in my favourites folder in google reader, but most of them aren’t well known blogs. They don’t have hundreds of comments on every post, fancy blog designs or hundreds of book giveaways each month, but what they do have is great taste in books and the ability to persuade me to part with my cash!

I thought long and hard about who to nominate as my favourite blog and decided that it should be the person who has caused me to buy the most books in the last year, and that is Diane from Bibliophile by the Sea.

I’m not sure it’s really possible to decide who has the best blog, as it is such a personal choice. I would love to know how many different blogs were nominated for this category and how they decide on the short list.

I then discovered there were 40 other categories to provide nominations for. I wasn’t prepared for that at all! I soon discovered that my blog reading falls into a very narrow field – I couldn’t even name a romance blog!

Some categories I found really easy, but there were a lot I really struggled with.

Which categories did you find easiest/hardest to nominate for?

Categories
Blogging Other

What do you think of adverts?


What do you think about adverts on blogs? Yesterday I added a google adsense banner to my sidebar and I have to admit that I hate it! I think it looks really ugly and I want to rip it out. Luckily I don’t have to scroll down there very much and so can try to avoid looking at it.

I am going to put up with it for one month and see how it goes. If it makes me enough money to buy a book or two, doesn’t put off people visiting my site and stops annoying me so much then it might stay, but I have my doubts.

My husband thinks that as I spend so much time blogging I should at least try to make a bit of money out of it, so I have agreed to a one month trial.

I like links to Amazon and other book selling sites and always try to use my favourite bloggers whenever I buy books – which is quite often! Are there any other types of advert which you like on a blog?

Would any amount of money persuade you to put such an ugly thing on your blog?

Have you done anything to make your blogging habit more appealing to your partner?

Will you abandon me because I have a horrible advert?

Categories
Blogging Other

The Most Useful WordPress Plug-ins for Book Bloggers

I have found lots of helpful plug-ins during my time in the blogging world, but have abandoned most of them along the way. Here are the most useful ones I’ve found:

Subscribe to Comments

This adds the little tick box at the end of your post allowing people to choose to receive all future comments on that post as an email. I love this feature – I think it really helps conversations to develop in the comments section and that is one of the best things about blogger outreach!

All in One SEO Pack

Top seo resellers is a must if you want to increase page ranking on Internet searches. It automatically generates meta tags and keywords for all your Niche edits posts and does lots of other fancy things which I don’t really understand. All I know is melbourne based SEO helps your page ranking a lot!

HeadSpace2

A meta-data manager with lots of extra features, including the ability to display special messages to first time visitors to your site. I have to admit that this one is a bit technical and I’m not using it to it’s full abilities yet, but this is a very clever plug-in which definitely needs investigating.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plug-in generates a site-map for use with the search engines. Another great one for improving your page ranking.

AZIndex

This allows you to create a page where all your posts are sorted alphabetically. I used this plug-in to create my Books Reviewed page. It is customisable so you can decide which categories are included in your list, meaning all your memes and other non-book review posts can be ignored.

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. I found it a bit hit or miss in the beginning, but the more you use it the better it gets. Using this tool means that my spam is under control without the need for word verification.

Google Analytics for WordPress available at Google WordPress hosting.

This plugin is the easiest way to set your word-press blog up for Google Analytics. If you haven’t discovered Google Analytics yet then you really should sign up, especially if you love looking at your blog’s statistics!

Contact Form 7

A simple, but flexible tool to add a contact form to your blog.

TinyMCE Advanced

Advanced editing tool for post writing, adding 40 new buttons to the toolbar including smilies, styles and visual characters.

Have I missed out any really useful plug-ins?

Do you use lots of different ones on your blog, or do you stick with the standard template?