Category: Other

Award! Premio Dardos

I received this amazing award from Beth Fish Reads. Her blog is great, and one of the few I visit every day. If I was allowed to, then I’d give the award back to her too.

I’m thrilled to receive it, as I have never had an award before! I almost feel like I belong in the blogging community now, and it has given me more energy to continue blogging away through 2009. Thank you Beth Fish!!!

This award acknowledges the values that every blogger shows in his or her effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values every day.

The rules to follow are:

1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.

2) Pass the award to 15 other blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Unfortunately I have been very bad at visiting people’s blogs regulalry (something I’m trying to address in 2009, partly as a result of the Blog Improvement Project) I have tended to jump from one blog to the next, reading loads of posts, but not returning to the same ones, except in a few cases. So I don’t feel I can award this to 15 different people.

The few blogs that have come to my attention, as great places that I return to again and again are:

An Adventure in Reading

So many precious books, so little time

The Magic Lasso

Thoughts of Joy

I’d like to thank the above bloggers for inspiring me to add a varied selection of new books to my reading pile – I’ll be back to read more posts very soon!!!

Chunkster Other

The Chunkster Challenge

I love reading long books – they tend to have more depth, and a more interesting plot, so this is a great challenge for me.

The rules for the Chunkster Challenge are:

*A chunkster is 450 pages or more of ADULT literature (fiction or nonfiction) Don’t complain folks, I read all thousands of pages of the Twilight series and they were good, but not a challenge. A chunkster should be a challenge.

*If you read large type books your book will need to be 525 pages or more I asked around and the average LT book is 10-15% longer or more so I think that was a fair estimate.

*No Audio books in the chunkster. It just doesn’t seem right. Words on paper for this one folks.

* You may start any time after signing up. You must complete your reads before or on Nov 15th.

*Short Stories and Essay collections will not be counted.

*Books may crossover with other challenges (see option 4 for a collaborative effort with TBR challenge)

*Only option 4 requires that you make a set list of books to complete the challenge

Those are the basics. Here are your options:

*The Chubby Chunkster – this option is for the reader who has a large tome or two to read, but really doesn’t want to commit to more than that. 2 books is all you need to finish this challenge.

*Do These Books Make my Butt Look Big? – this option is for the slightly heavier reader who wants to commit to 3-5 Chunksters over the next ten months.

*Mor-book-ly Obese – This is for the truly out of control chunkster. For this level of challenge you must commit to 6 or more chunksters OR three tomes of 750 pages or more. You know you want to…..go on and give in to your cravings.

And lastly, in an intriguing collaboration with the wildly popular Miz B of the TBR Challenge we have:

*Too Big To Ignore Anymore – this option is for those chunksters on your TBR list. You may select any number of books over 450 pages but you must LIST THEM to complete the challenge and they must be on your TBR list as well (honor code folk, I don’t have time to be the challenge police)

I’m going to opt for the *Mor-book-ly Obese option, as I love chunksters, and this will encourage me to read more of them.

My Chunky Reads are:

The 19th Wife completed 5th Feb. 2009

The Moonstone completed 21st Feb. 2009

Other Uncategorized

Can anyone recommend a happy/uplifting book for me to read?

Post author By Jackie
Post date January 7, 2009
15 Comments on Can anyone recommend a happy/uplifting book for me to read?

I have had a run of books full of tragedy and death, and looking at the books on the top of my reading pile it looks like I have more to come. Can anyone recommend something that won’t be added to my list of depressing books read in 2009?

Thanks in advance!

Blog Improvement Project Other

Blog Improvement Project Week 1: Setting Goals

Post author By Jackie
Post date January 7, 2009
7 Comments on Blog Improvement Project Week 1: Setting Goals

This is the first week of the Blog Improvement Project. This week’s task is to set goals for our blog, and by focusing on what we want to achieve we will hopefully become better bloggers.

The main reason I set up this blog was to try to find people with similar reading tastes to me, in the hope that I could find great books to read that I otherwise would not have come across.

I also enjoy writing book reviews, as I have found that in writing them I appreciate the book more, and often realise things that I didn’t when originally reading the book.

With these fairly modest objectives in mind (after-all there are only so many books I can read/review each week) I set off to read the guide for reviewing your blog at problogger. Many of the questions are difficult for me to answer, as I have only been blogging for a few months. Some of the others generated more questions than answers. For example:

What do I want people to do once they’ve read my blog?

Go and buy the book I’ve just recommended? Leave a comment, to let me know their opinion? Tell all their friends about how wonderful my blog is? All of the above?!

The main thing I’ve learnt, is that there is a lot more to blogging than I first thought. If I want to increase the visibilty of my site then I need to be more active in the blogging community, learn more about the technical side to blogging, and write about more things that other people are interested in. Hopefully this blog improvement challenge will encourage me to find the answers to these questions, and by the end of 2009 this blog will be a much more interesting place to visit!

Friday Finds – Count the Petals of the Moon

Post author By Jackie
Post date December 26, 2008
No Comments on Friday Finds – Count the Petals of the Moon

I saw Count the Petals of the Moon Daisy, by Martin Kirb, listed as someone’s favourite read of 2008, so had a quick look on Amazon, and saw it had some great reviews. I’ve added it to my wish list, and will try to get hold of a copy in 2009.

Has anyone else read it? If you have, please could you put a link to your review in the comments section. Thank you!