Category: Everything Else

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Blog Improvement Project Blogging Other

Blog Improvement Project: Create a Blogging To-Do List

The first task for the Blog Improvement Project is to create a list of things on your blog that you’d like to change.

I am aways fiddling with things on my site and spend hours trying to decide what would improve it. I really need to focus on the important things instead of just tinkering with new plug-ins!

Hopefully this list will encourage me to make big changes, rather than messing around behind the scenes!

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My To-Do List

Add new header image

I like the way that my header image gives you an instant feel for the sort of books that I read, but I really need to take a better photo – without any shine!

Edit my challenge tab

I need to change the challenge page to reflect the challenges I’m doing in 2010 and to ensure it focuses on my long-term reading challenges (Booker, Orange, Pulitzer prizes)

Update my categories

Overall I am quite happy with my categories, but there are a few redundant ones, mainly in the challenges section.

Rebecca has a concise category list that I admire.

Improve Sidebars

I’d like to edit the text in my sidebars, so that it is stands out more. The  most popular post section is just a sea of words at the moment – I’d like to look at putting them in boxes, and perhaps use drop-down boxes to reduce clutter.

Rob Around Books has a beautiful set of sidebars. I wish mine were as clear as his.

Improve social media integration

I need to think about adding a twitter feed, and improving the visibility of dig/delicious links.

Paperback Reader’s new blog is only a few days old, but I’m already coveting her social media boxes.

Can you think of anything else I should do to improve my blog?

Do you waste hours playing with the settings of your blog?

Categories
Interview Nobel Prize Other Weekly Geeks

Some interesting things about José Saramago

This week’s Weekly Geek task is to find out some interesting facts about your favourite author. I wasn’t sure whether I’d participate, but once I started looking up José Saramago I couldn’t stop – he is such an interesting man!

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Portuguese author José Saramago was born in 1922 into a family of landless peasants. Their surname was De Sousa, but an error in registering his birth meant that his father’s nickname ‘Saramago’ was accidentally added to his birth certificate. The drunken registrar also wrote his birth date wrong on the form  – meaning his official birth date is two days after his real one!

Saramago is proud of his impoverished background:

“If my grandfather had been a rich landowner and not an illiterate pig breeder, I wouldn’t be the man I am today,”

At the age of 2 Saramago’s family moved from their small village to the city of Lisbon where his father became a policeman. This failed to improve their financial situation and the family had to pawn their warm blankets to have enough money to survive.

At 13, Saramago started at a vocational school, where he trained to be a car mechanic. He didn’t own any books, but his love of reading meant that he often went to the library after studying.

In 1947 his first book The Land of Sin was published, but it wasn’t until 1982 that he finally acheived critical acclaim for his book Baltasar and Blimunda.

Saramago is a member of the communist party and a proclaimed atheist. His views have caused controversy in the strongly Catholic country of Portugal and on the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ in 1991 he was forced to move to the Canary Islands.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998, but described winning as not being very important.

He is often described as being cold,” “arrogant,” and “unsympathetic.” but when questioned about his attitude Saramago replied:

“I am not a bad person,”  “I hurt only with my tongue!”

I love Saramago’s writing. If you haven’t read any of his books then I highly recommend you try Blindness.

Do you love Saramago’s books?

Categories
Interview Other

What makes author interviews good?

I would love to invite some big authors to answer questions on my blog, but I am put off doing so as I find almost all author interviews boring. Even the most interesting interviews will only have one or two questions that grab my attention. I have noticed that interviews on other blogs often get less comments than other posts.

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  • Does anyone know the secret of a successful author interview?
  • Which questions normally provoke good answers?
  • Can you point out any fantastic interviews?
  • Or, are all author interviews going to be dull to some extent?
  • Should book bloggers avoid author interviews?

I’d love to know your thoughts!

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Other

The Blog Improvement Project Starts today!

I have just posted the first task for the 2010 Blog Improvement Project: Week 1: Create a Blogging To-Do List

I hope that you will join Kim and I over on the 2010 BIP Blog.

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Other

January 2010 Summary and Plans for February

January was quite a poor reading month for me, in terms of both quality and quantity. I read 8 books and left a further two unfinished (one is a book I’ve not yet reviewed yet – I’ll leave you to guess which it is!)

The stand-out book was Uglies, something I would never have guessed had you asked me which one I’d enjoy most at the beginning of the month.

Uglies – Scott Westerfeld

Blink – Malcolm Gladwell stars4

Sacred Hearts – Sarah Dunant stars4

The Boat to Redemption – Su Tong stars4

The Infinities – John Banville stars4

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami stars3h

To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf stars3

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: v. 1 – M.T. Anderson stars3

The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery stars2

The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton stars2

Twilight – Stephenie Meyer (Book and Film)  stars1 (DNF)

Plans for February

I am going to finish Cutting for Stone and Ruby’s Spoon, both of which are fantastic so far.

I failed to read these books that I highlighted in January, so they have been added to the list again:

Small Island – Andrea Levy

The Little Friend – Donna Tartt

Buddha Da – Anne Donovan

The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe

I also hope to read some of these books:

When I Was Five I Killed Myself – Howard Buten

Blacklands – Belinda Bauer

The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger

My Father’s Paradise – Ariel Sabar

The Native Hurricane – Chigozie John Obioma

Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

The Hiding Place – Trezza Azzopardi

Red Dog, Red Dog – Patrick Lane

The Love We Share Without Knowing – Christopher Barzak

Most of them are quite short, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to manage the majority of the list.

Have you read any of the books that I plan to read in February?

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Other

Booking Through Thursday: Twisty

btt button

This week I am proud to see that my question has been selected as the Booking Through Thursday choice.

I love books with complicated plots and unexpected endings, so I asked people to recommend fantastic books with a twist in the end. I’m looking forward to seeing all the suggestions!

My favourites are:

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears

The Island at the End of the World by Sam Taylor

Little Face by Sophie Hannah

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

What are your favourite books with a twist in the end?