Category: Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Bookish Websites/Organizations/Apps, etc. (aside from book blogs — things like Goodreads, Project Night Night, Paperbackswap, etc.)

Oh my, this will be fun!! Here goes:

1. PAPERBACKSWAP! Fore sure, this has to be, first and foremost, my absolute favorite bookish website! I am unbelievably addicted. In July I will have been a member there for 4 years. And let me just tell you, this one website has singlehandedly grown my TBR pile into a TBR mountain of amazing proportions. But I love it! And for the most part, aside from two transactions that I can think of, I have had really good luck with this website.
2. Bookmooch. I am a recently new member of this website. I was a member of Frugal Reader before they shut it down unannounced (and to the chagrin of many members) and I am a ex-member of swap.com. (My problem with that website was HAVING to give my credit card to them to put on file – not a good practice, in my opinion). Personally, I like to be a member of a secondary swap site because a lot of my books are pretty common best-sellers that tend to not move quickly on PBS. But those same books will move rather quickly on Bookmooch it seems (and I was always sending books out on Frugal Reader – I really was bummed about that site!)
3. Shelfari. I use this website in conjunction with a Yahoo group that I am a member of in order to show my books available for trade at any given time. I am not good about keeping it up-to-date – which wouldn’t be so difficult if I didn’t bring books into my house left and right. It’s a neat website that I find very easy to use and browse.
4. My local library’s website – mclib.net – is another favorite of mine. I am able to search the catalog from the comfort of my own home and place books on the wait list. I love the wait list! My town is not known for its good bookstore selection, whether new or used, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that my local library is a wonderful library with lots and lots of NEW releases!
5. I have downloaded the Nook app onto my iPhone. I absolutely love that I can access my Nook books at any time from my phone. However, I must say that I am incredibly guilty of never even using the app. HAHA! However, I have it whenever I’m ready to use it 🙂
6. I am a casual user of Goodreads and Library Thing. For a while I was really using Goodreads religiously. Then I got behind. And I never caught myself back up. I need to do that because I really like how it has the pretty much unlimited shelf building possibilities. Library Thing, although my account was technically opened in 2008 I have not really made use of it before this year. I am seriously considering purchasing the lifetime membership and starting to do everything over at that website because I do like it. Plus I enjoy looking through the LT Early Reviewers options. Although I have yet to receive a book it’s lots of fun to go through what’s coming out soon.
7. FictFact.com . I stumbled across a reference to this website late last year on someone’s blog (wish I could remember who had it linked on their site, but it’s not coming to me right now). This site lets you track all the book series that you are reading, or want to read. I highly recommend this one. I love it. I can quickly check which book is next in a series and it also allows me the option of “skipping” a book if it’s a series I’m not really following religiously (i.e.: the Kinsey Millhone series).  Plus they’ve got a spot where it shows a calendar of up-coming releases for your series. Love this site, seriously! SIGN UP FOR IT! NOW!
8. fantasticfiction.com . This is my go-to website every single time I want to look up something from a particular author. Sometimes I like to just go on there and browse using the “similar authors” section at the bottom of each author’s page. This is definitely a great resource in my opinion.

Well, I think that’s all that I have. I hope to find some new resources reading through everyone else’s lists!

Top Ten Reasons I Love Being A Book Blogger/A Bookish Person

Okay so I haven’t participated in one of these in forever and I thought I’d go ahead and jump on in with this week’s question. I don’t know that I will be able to come up with ten, but we will see.

1. Last night I was in Wal-Mart grocery shopping, as we were passing the book section I saw this little girl who was probably 8 begging her dad to look at the books. Being a book lover myself, I get butterflies in my stomach every time I see a child wanting to read. With all the TV, video games, movies, blah blah blah, it warms my heart to see a child who wants to look at books. I love that.
2. I love interacting with other readers on my blog and other people’s blogs. Commenting back and forth is such a wonderful experience when you’re talking about books. I love that!
3. I love all the great books that I find out about that I might not have ever heard of otherwise through various people’s blogs. It has really expanded my reading horizons.
4. Being a little OCD about organizing my books, I really love that there are all kinds of different books sites out there – Goodreads, Shelfari, Library Thing. I use all three sites in one form or another and love being able to organize them in different ways than I have on my shelves.
5. PaperBackSwap. Do I really have to elaborate on this? This one site has single-handedly grown my book collection into unimaginable proportions. I can’t stay away from it. I am addicted. (Oh and I’m a member of BookMooch as well).
6. Yahoo groups have some really great reading groups. MostlyBooks is probably my favorite. But there’s also ANovelChallenge which is the sister group to the ANovelChallenge blog.
7. Reading Challenges. I am addicted to those as well. I try to keep my participation to as few as possible because I always feel like a failure when I don’t complete a challenge (even though, I know that that is not the case at all).
8. I love that there are people all over the world who have various blogs and talk about their love for books. Me being in the United States I was in shock and awe when I first found out that there are people all over coming together in the book blog world to share their love for books. That’s a wonderful thing in my opinion.

Well, I think that’s it. Some of these I don’t think I really explained myself in the best way possible, but this particular post was hard for me to put words to my feelings on all these things. I love being a bookworm, it is something that I am proud of. I love that I can bring my love for books out through the posts on my blog for others all the world over to see. The book blog community is wonderful and I am so glad that I am a part of it. 🙂

Top Ten Bookish Pet Peeves (all those things that annoy you in a story, with book covers, bookstores, etc. My (Jamie’s) personal pet peeve–stickers on my books!)

I love this week’s topic!! I only came up with nine, though. Here goes:

1. GRAMMATICAL ERRORS! I hate, hate, HATE grammatical errors. I was on the high school newspaper for three years (the feature editor the last year) and then I was a history major in college (lots and lots of papers to write). I am a huge stickler for grammar. I am almost always guaranteed to find an error if there is one, and I am very quick to point that out in any review that I post. Now, the ARC’s and other uncorrected proofs that I have been able to read, well, I take somewhat of an exception for those – I will notice the mistakes, but I always hope that they will be fixed before the final product is released. I should have been a copy-editor, pretty sure I missed my calling there 🙂
2. My local (national) bookstore (I will refrain from calling them out) is terrible for having the most unorganized shelves. Books will be strewn on the floor, in the wrong spots, upside down on the shelves, it’s just a total mess. And this is not just during the mad rush of the holidays, this is 365 days of the year. It makes me feel as if they do not even care for their books. It’s really a shame, actually. It really makes me hate going into that bookstore, and I love bookstores! Just not that one.
3. Dog-eared pages. My grandmother does this with every book she reads and I have been known to do it once or twice in my life, but it actually pains me to do so. The page will never lay flat once it has been dog-eared. It just irritates me.
4. Stupid women characters who are blinded by lust. So yeah, I’m not much of a romance reader, and part of that stems from the fact that most of the women characters that I have encountered in romance novels are irritatingly stupid. They get all caught up by some man who sweeps them off their feet, and then they proceed to put themselves into increasingly dangerous positions. I want my women characters to be smart and witty, not dumb and blind.
5. Flowery dialogue. What do I mean by that? Well, I am a “just the facts, ma’am” type of gal. I don’t need a lot of fancy words and lyrical paragraphs. I want it straight forward and blunt. I find that anytime I read a book that could be considered “lyrical”, well I tend to skip over paragraphs after the first line because I don’t care. I don’t want all that description. Just spit it out.
6. Books that are hyped up. I fight the urge to read those books because I know, invariably, I will be let down. Take The DaVinci Code. I read it 3 years after it came out. The first Harry Potter book – yeah, read it after about the 3rd movie came out! For whatever reason, I just never want to read the “popular” book. I rebel against them. And you know what? About 98% of the time, I end up not even liking the book.
7. I read a lot of books that are part of a series (actually, I’m slightly addicted to series reading) and here lately I’ve been reading a lot of books that are part of a series pretty much back-to-back. In doing that, you notice a lot of things. Here recently, I read the first three books in the Diane Mott Davidson Goldy Schulz series. In the first part of the second book we are introduced (briefly) to a new boyfriend in Goldy’s life – well at the end of the first book she was involved with the cop. It didn’t appear that much time had elapsed, but I didn’t understand where the other boyfriend came from. It was from left field, and it actually irritated me. Also, last year I read a lot of the Patricia Cornwell Kay Scarpetta books (though I’ve now given up on that series) and I noticed that Ms. Cornwell was almost always setting her books around Christmas: why?!  (Oh and don’t even get me started on what she did with Benton Wesley’s character). Little intricacies like that a reader notices, and things like that tend to bug me.
8. Books that are too long. Yep, you know these – the books that are 500 pages long, but honestly, some editor could have cut at least 100 pages out. I’ve even had a book like that already this year! I guess it boils down to my preference of having short and sweet dialogue. I don’t know, but it does annoy me to no end. 
9. One of my biggest pet peeves: having to re-read a few paragraphs just to figure out who is talking! Transition sentences, people! Transition sentences (and sometimes paragraphs) was pounded into my head as a history major in college, they are so important! But it appears that they are not important in fiction. And honestly, I can understand why, but really? If a reader has to go back a few sentences and count out “he said, she said, he said, she said” just to figure out who is talking – it’s pretty bad. That should never happen.



Top Ten Books I Just HAD to Buy…But Are Still Sitting on My Bookshelf (You know you have those..:P )

Oh yes, I do have those! I even have 10 of them! When I originally saw this topic, I doubted that I even had 10. I got up to 8 and then realized that there were two others on a different shelf 🙂 So without further ado, here’s my list:

In alphabetical order by author:

1. Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 by Michael R. Beschloss
        ~I was a history major in college and when I saw this book on sale at my local Borders (which has been gone from my location for two years now….) I snatched it up. Still unread two years later…..
2. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi
        ~I am a true crime junkie. I have seen a lot of TV shows about the Manson murders. As I would consider this a “classic” in the true crime genre, I had to have it.
3. Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo
        ~I heard about this book EVERYWHERE in the book blogosphere. I HAD to have it. I bought it. And it’s still unread.
4. Killing Floor by Lee Child
        ~About a year ago I went nuts finding books that were part of new series that I was interested in trying. This one was actually really appealed to me and I had to have it. Well, I have it. Unread.
5. Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek 
        ~History Major. Love anything in American History between 1950 and 1975. Had to have this book. Still unread.
6. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
        ~The description of this book intrigued me so I tracked it down at the local used book store. Then I started seeing some slightly negative reviews on it in the blogosphere, so I never got to it. Now, it still is on my shelf, unread, a couple of years later.
7. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
        ~I searched high and low for a good used copy everywhere I went for a long time (I didn’t want to order this book of PBS and get stuck with a possible tattered copy). I finally got fed up and bought it brand new (a rarity for me) – and I have yet to read it…..
8. All the Pretty Dead Girls by John Manning
        ~Bought this one new at the bookstore that I mentioned going out of business up above. The description still intrigues me, I really need to read this book. It appealed to me enough to buy it new, I need to read it.
9. Thicker Than Water by P.J. Parrish
        ~In 2007 I discovered P.J. Parrish and read the first three in the Lucas Kincaid. I had to have this book, and well, it’s been on my shelf since December of 2007. (I remember that because I actually bought the book on vacation in Florida!)
10. The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
         ~A few years ago I went crazy trying to find this book everywhere. I finally ordered it off of Powells’ website because I just HAD TO HAVE IT! And yet, it’s still unread….

Top Ten Best Debut Books (of any year..just your favorite debut/”first from an author” books. If you want, you can focus on debuts of a specific year but it’s open to debuts of any year).

In order by debut year:

1. Carrie by Stephen King (1974)
2. Where Are the Children? by Mary Higgins Clark (1975)
3. When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman (1985)
4. Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell (1990)
5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (1997)
6. A Perfect Evil by Alex Kava (2000)
7. The Double Eagle by James Twining (2005)
8. All the Pretty Girls by J.T. Ellison (2007)
9. The Osiris Alliance by Jack Ford (2009)
10. 31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan (2010)

Top Ten Bookish/Blogging Resolutions in which you can share all those things you things that you resolve to do concerning your reading or blogging life.

1. Participate in as many memes as I possibly can. I pass up on a lot of opportunities when it comes to memes. I want to change that this year. I need to participate more, it will only help me become more well known in the book blogosphere, plus it will help me post everyday (hopefully!)
2. Comment, comment, comment. I am determined to stop being such a lurker and comment on other people’s blogs more often. I have countless blogs in my Google Reader that I follow religiously, I want to let all these wonderful bloggers know that I’m enjoying their blogs!
3. Review a book as quickly as I can. I noticed more than once in 2010 that I wasn’t reviewing books as soon as I possibly could. This meant that by the time I got around to reviewing the book, I was 2-3 books down the road and had trouble recalling specifics about the particular book I was trying to review. I don’t necessarily have to review the book on my blog immediately, I just want to make sure that I don’t let too much time pass before I have a chance to put words to my thoughts.
4. READ MORE! I read 67 books total in 2010. Overall, I’m pleased with that number. But in November I only read 3 books! I could have easily hit 70 books had I not hit such a huge slump. I need to work out of those slumps. I need to pick up “fluff” books when I hit slumps. I need to make myself read as much as I possibly can.
5. Pick up that Nook. I received a Nook Color for Christmas. I received it early, the day it came out. And I have read ONE book on it. ONE!! And I have loaded like 6-7 books on it. I need to pick it up more and read off of it more. I like to read two books at once. I always take a book with me to work. I need to make a plan to pick up the Nook and read it at night. (Unless of course the paper book that I’m reading at work is just that good and I want to read it more.)
6. Schedule. I need to use the schedule feature more often. A lot of the things that I post on here I can use the schedule feature. For example, this is a scheduled post! I started this post on Jan. 4th, it’s now Jan. 9th and I’m editing on it some more 🙂 This is definitely a feature I need to use, especially since I tend to go out of town quite a bit. I hate having huge gaps in the dates of my posts. If I schedule, I can cut back on that.
7. Find a better layout. Here’s the deal, I’ve had the same theme on my blog since the day I took it live on WordPress. I just keep changing the colors. I need something new. I need something better. I’ve been putting off changing things up because of all my widgets and needing the free time to mess with it all at once. I need to just schedule a weekend and sit down and take care of it all.
8. Organize those book shelves. My in-laws bought me a nice 5 shelf book case for Christmas. Not one of those cheapies that I have from Walmart. A nice one. I need to get it put together (I love my husband!) and start getting my books better organized. I was using an Excel spreadsheet. That’s just not cutting it anymore. I have downloaded a free trial version of a book database software. I have begun inputting a little bit, if I continue to like it I will purchase the full version and go from there.
9. Breaking up is hard to do. I need to break up with some of my books. Desperately. I need to just sit down and weed them out. If they’ve been on my shelves for too long I need to see about moving them to another spot and if they are still unread within 6 months, they need new homes. Period. End of story. I need to do this, my house is being overrun with books (and I have a huge house!). Besides, I am a little intimidated by the amount of books I have, it’s daunting, actually.
10. Get my husband to read. My husband, bless his heart, is a civil engineer. He claims he hates to read. I keep telling him he hasn’t found the right book yet. I’m determined to find the right book, even if that means I have to hunt down James Bond and Indiana Jones books for him (his favorite movies). I don’t necessarily want to turn him into a book worm like me, but we travel a lot and it would be nice if I could get him to read a book on airplanes rather than bug me the whole trip 🙂