ALA Edition of Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday is a traveling meme. Burton Book Review has been hosting it for the month of June.

ALA (American Library Association) Annual Conference is being held this year in Anaheim, CA. It is open to the public, and since it is only an hour from where I live, I decided to go for a day. Boy was it worth it!



I was hoping for an ARC. But they had finished copies for her signing, super cheap! That made the whole trip and parking madness worth it! I probably should try to finish The Tiger's Wife first.



Finished copies:
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson - signed (I wasn't there Friday when she signed the arcs for the second book and I didn't ask if any were left)
Faery Tales & Nightmares by Melissa Marr - signed
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor - signed (I already had, but unsigned. And it was super cheap)
A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd
LA Theater Works productions of Romeo and Juliet, Copenhagen by Michael Frayn and Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler



Advance Read copies:
The Diviners by Libba Bray - Signed
Wards of Faerie by Terry Brooks
The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns by Margaret Dilloway
The Mongoliad by Bear, Bear, Brassey, deBirmingham, Moo, Stephenson and Teppo
Sanctum: Guards of the Shadowlands by Sarah Fine
The Ruins of Lace by Iris Anthony
Carnival of Souls by Melissa Marr - signed
Amber House by Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed and Larkin Reed
Artemis Fowl: The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer (sampler)
Days of Blood and Starlight by Taini Taylor (preview)



Assorted swag. I also bought a package of Banned Book Week bookmarks to giveaway during Banned Book Week

The ALA has their schedule of the Midwinter and Annuals through 2017, so if one of them is coming around your way, I would highly recommend it. Exhibit only passes are cheap and gets you into all the booths. And most of the arc signings are free (Penguin was giving the Prodigy arcs as a gift with purchase of Legend for the signing, which is why you don't see it on my list. I just got Legend & had it signed a couple months ago, and the price here wasn't quite cheap enough for me to repurchase).

Mount TBR Challenge Checkpoint #2

Soo... I've still not made it to far up my Mt. Vancouver challenge. I've only got to book 5 of 25. Which would be 962.4 miles of the 4,812 miles elevation. But I'm hoping I can have some lazy time with a few in a read-along or two this summer.

And now, a little poem using the tiles read, and up to five extra words:
At The Kingmaking of The Princes of Ireland, The Book Thief was Catching Fire from A Clash of Kings.

Mt. Vancouver - Completed:
1. The Kingmaking by Helen Hollick
2. Princes of Ireland by Edward Rutherfurd
3. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
4. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
5. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
(eta)
6. The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
7. Kindred by Octavia Butler
8. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
9. Naked Heat by Richard Castle
10.
11.
12.
13.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.

Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games series #2
young adult, dystopian, post-apocalyptic
My own purchase
4.5 stars

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

I really loved this book. I stayed up until 2am Saturday night just so I could finish it, and it was really hard to not start Mockingjay Sunday morning (two library books told me I shouldn't). I was glad to see Gale again (Yay, Gale!), and how life back in District 12 had changed for Katniss after the Games. Becoming a nationwide celebrity, means that she has to watch how she acts, which is difficult for her since her previous constants in her life have changed. Becoming a symbol for the rebellions is unexpected for Katniss, and trying do her best to discourage the rebellions proves to be a harder task than competing in the Games.

Katniss still maintains her strength in protecting those she cares about throughout the novel. One thing that struck me in this is how Collins did a bit of role reversal in Catching Fire. It seems like frequently in novels, the serious romantic feelings tend to originate in the female character, but in The Hunger Games series, it the male leads that come into their feelings first, and Katniss is blindsided when she learns of their feelings. I just found it interesting, it fits well for the completely un-boy crazy Katniss.

The story will keep you reading with it's plot twists, especially when you get to the last half of the novel. The worse thing is it has one of those cliff hanger endings (although, it may have been before that was the in thing to do), so you may have the urge to start straight in with Mockingjay.

Just a note

Things may look odd, but it is just because I've been trying to set up a free blogger template. One that turns out not to work at all in the current system. Please, excuse any wonkyness

Review redux: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Young Adult, Dystopian, Post-apocalyptic
My own purchase

Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

I previously talked about The Hunger Games last fall for Banned Books Week. You can see my previous thoughts here.

I enjoyed this as much the second time around. Collins built a great world- regions of the former United States rising up against the new central government, and failing. Part of the punishment inflicted on the districts is to pick two teens from each, to perform in a battle to the death, every year. Tied with keeping the poorer districts poor, and the excesses and extravagances of the Capitol, Panem is cruel and vindictive government.

Katniss is an ideal modern heroine. She is smart and dependable, taking responsibility for making sure her family is fed since she was eleven. At sixteen, when we enter her world, she is not vain, and does not care about having kids. She just wants to survive. She can use the stereotypical girl behavior, if it suits her needs, but it isn't her.

I still think the movie makers did an awesome job adapting the novel. With the reread, and having just started Catching Fire, I think I get why they changed some of the most noticeable things. I look forward to the DVD release in August so I can compare some more.

TGIF: Most valuable book

Forgive me for two memes in two days, but I'd been waiting for Book Blogger Hop to have a question like this, but found another one asking it! I will have small review up later today.



This Friday's Question:
Most Valuable Book: From your personal collection of books, which ones hold the most value to you - is it signed by the author? or maybe it's your favorite story of all time? Share it with us.

For purely historical value:


Surpised? If you have trouble reading it, it is Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. My uncle lived in San Francisco for a while, and this was one of the books he had. It is a second edition of the Foreign Language Press from 1967, and has a US Distributor: China Books & Periodicals stamp on the title page. My mom has no idea why her brother had it, but this one was well traveled and I think he was the history buff of her family. I've never read it. I just like it for the age, condition and reflection of the history of the time.

For signed books:
My first first signed copy of A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I loved the book, and was so glad to get it signed.

Honorable mention:
1964 hardcover of Gone with the Wind
three Shakespeare plays publsihed by Macmillan between 1900-1925
Shakespeare Birthday Book published 1929

Book Blogger Hop

Book Blogger Hop is runn by Crazy for Books. This week's question is: Do you belong to a book club, either online or in real life?

A: I am trying to get a book club started on an art forum that I visit. Several people were really keen on suggesting books for it, but so far they haven't been keen on participating. I don't belong to a real life book club. I wouldn't know the first thing about how to find one in my area, other than vague ones at the local Barnes and Nobles or the summer only one at the library. And then I would be very stubborn is a book was chose that I refuse to read. So there might be problems (my neighbor, who does some book clubs, told me I should join them when I told her I don't like being forced to read certain books).

#ArmchairBEA Day 5- Experts Say

Its the last day of ArmchairBEA, for today, the prompt is:

Today's topic is Ask The Experts. In your post, ask the visitors to your blog for blogging advice. What did you always want to know about blogging but were afraid to ask? Now is the time! Alternatively, if you've been blogging for awhile, you've probably learned a thing or two. Whether you stumbled upon a something that makes blogging easier or made a mistake you'd never want anyone to repeat, share your experience and wisdom with others.

I've been mucking around with websites for my hobbies for eight years now, and livejournal use for nearly as long, so I will provide tips on things I've learned and noticed over the years.

• Learn basic html- The 'What you see is what you get' (WYSIWYG) editors of Blogger, Livejournal, Tumblr, and Wordpress are limited in their usage. So much can be done with html, if you only bother to learn it. It is really easy, and it makes your blog 100% customizable, especially when you learn about Custom Style Sheets (CSS). If you don't know it, or need a refresher, Lissa Explains it All is a fantastic and easy to use resource. Also, finding a book on the subject at your local book store is an excellent offline resource. A bonus is, that once you learn some html, it is a skill set you can list on your resume.
• Do not imbed music into your blog & limit flash and java script usage- Probably one of the most complained about things I've heard from the dolling community on website design is auto-play music. They are large files, and slow down loading speed. Same with using too many javascripts and flash additions. If I can't get a blog to load reasonably on my dsl connection, its not worth revisiting.
• THOU SHALT NOT HOTLINK- Hotlinking is bandwidth theft. Everytime you load a page, bandwidth is used to display the content. Some people pay for their webhosting, or upgraded Photobucket accounts, so they are paying real money for a certain amount of storage and bandwidth. You know how Blogger has the "Insert Image> Or add an image from the web" option? Do not use this unless the image is in an account you control (ie. your Picasa, where all your Blogger pictures are kept). It will just use the link you provide and not reupload it. There are many people, if they find some to be hotlinking (or by default have coded into their site), will upload at best a graphic declaring the using this image to be a bandwidth thief. At worse, some use some extremely Not Safe for Work images. You really don't want those showing up on your blog. If you want to link to book covers, Goodreads has some awesome blogger/website tools. Open a book's page on Goodreads, and look in the sidebar until you find the 'Share this Book' section. Click 'Your Website', and pick any of the top four selections. That way, if someone enjoys your review, they can click on it, and add it to their Goodreads list.
• Don't Spam your Twitter followers- If people follow your twitter, they know when you are hosting giveaways, hops or when you are updating. There is no need to retweet every tweet made to advertise you event. Those are to get the attention of people who don't follow you already. Don't constantly post links to buy stuff at amazon, every pintrest post, or every single Formspring post. Have you every had 5+ people you follow on twitter answering Formsquare questions at the same time? Then you know what I'm talking about.
• Less is more in sidebars- Do you really need ~all~ of those things in your sidebar(s)? If your sidebars are twice as long as the content on your blog, they are way too long. Tags/Labels are essential for readers to find certain older posts, but if the vast majority of the ones you use are only used once, you might want to reorganize them. Blog buttons are super huge in the book blogs, when compared to the pixel art world. Pixel artists use 130px x 55px and 88px x 31px as the most common standard size. And they are plenty big enough. That being said, all other advertising images (for hops, readalongs, etc) should be reduced in size as well. Limit your blog rolls, put them on a seperate page, or better yet, make a twitter list. Make the things for following your blog (twitter, goodreads links, RSS subscriptions, GFC, etc) in a place of priority at the top of a sidebar, and not halfway down the page.

Well, this turned into more of a novel than I intended to be. The TL;DR of it: If people can't load the page, they can't read the blog

#ArmchairBEA Day 4- Beyond the blog

So, you enjoy writing do you? Would you like to be involved elsewhere on the interwebs or possibly start writing for your local paper? Perhaps you'd simply like to start drawing an income from your blog? Today we will be sharing tips that will help you move your blog forward or perhaps your own personal goals of writing and making an income from what you love to do. Today we'd love you to share your top tips for getting beyond your blog! Have you done any freelance writing? Are you monetizing your blog and how so? How do you make connections outside the book blog community on the internet? If none of these apply we'd love for you to share a fun aspect about your blog or life that may be completely separate from books!

This is a tough topic for me. I never liked writing in school; never wrote in a journal or diary. I certainly never wanted to write a novel or other creative writing piece. Monetization of my blog, I don't do that. 1) As I still use the free blogger website, there is no cost to run it. I can't justify monetizing a hobby site where I have no out of pocket cost. 2) Successfully monetizing a blog is really hard. A hosting account averages around $100 a year. Browsers have ad-blocking add ons and people read blogs in RSS readers, so unless an add is in the body of the blog post, they won't see it. So other than becoming an affiliate with some store that has a web presence, How likely is it that I would recoop 25% of my hosting? Not good. Perhaps when I get my blog transferred to my hosting (I do have it for hobby stuff) I will reconsider it. One perk that my webhost offers (others may, but I'm not familiar with them), is the option to donate directly to the cost of hosting the site. I have belonged to a couple of pixel art forums who use the same hosting company, and both have used this discreet button:

This is a handy tool, because if someone really cares for the welfare of your blog/website, and wants to help you cover the cost, they can click the link and donate via paypal. That money goes directly to your account statement with the hosting company (Dreamhost in this case). It can only be used to cover the cost of your web host. If you self host, check the information from your hosting company to see if they offer this.

And now for something unexpected...

Something I do (largely) outside of books and blogs. I'll touch on two of my other hobbies:

- Pixel Art: If you were around and saw my last Top Ten Tuesday post, I mentioned I hang out at DeviantArt sometimes. About eight years ago, I wandered into the pixel art-dolling commuting (headed there from a Harry Potter fan forum of all places). I learned how to make little graphics using programs like Paint or GIMP. There is a whole world of digital art out there. I mostly stuck with non-isometric pixel art and digital dolls (if you are familiar with ball-jointed-dolls and how people paint and make outfits for them, its similar idea, just digital). If you are interested, you can see a few at My DeviantArt.

- Genealogy: The year I graduated high school, my dad and I started working on researching our family tree. We started with getting pictures and stories from my grandparents, and then we visited the LDS Church's family history centers (associated with their church locations around the country) and the few online resources there were at the time. Now, LDS church has many of their resources available online at Family Search, for free. Every so often I will help with indexing, which is what moves this great resource. I do use Ancestry from time to time. From what I've found, my most recent immigrant ancestor came over to the US just before Ellis Island opened. And most of the rest have been here (US and Canada) since the American Revolution, or before. If anyone wants to geek out on genealogy, we can talk in comments.

These may work their way into the blog. I'm trying to think of a layout design. And I'm thinking of reading some history associated with periods that affected my ancestors, like the influenze pandemic of 1918. But not much.

Networking:: Armchair BEA

Day 3's topic is networking off line. I'm afraid I'm not very good at this. I met a couple people at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books who are out in the Inland Empire area, where I live, and I've run into them at a few events out this way, once I learned about this great place called Mrs. Nelson's, one being one of the librarians for a near by city system. But mostly this is to recognize them and say hi. As I mentioned in my introduction, I am terribly introverted, so striking up a conversation is not natural to me (I never know what to say to the authors at the signings, especially when I haven't read their books yet).

My city is not a very literary city. We don't have any independent book stores that sell new books, except for the highly specialized ones (ie. church related book store) which I have no interest in. We have one Barnes and Noble, and they almost never have any author signings, and usually its author of books I have no interest in, or a local author published by a small publisher, that I never hear about their book again after the event has passed. I think the most interesting literary thing was probably when the local museum opened up an exhibit on Rin Tin Tin to tie in with the release of Susan Orlean's book, since he was from the area. And again with the whole introvertedness, I've not tried attending their book clubs.

My local library systems don't do very many events with authors, so I've been heading to the Ontario City Library, who has held a couple YA-MG events in the last month, and Mrs. Nelson's Bookstore. Not the most convenient, but sure beats heading to the Grove where it seems like most author events are held.