Wednesday 31 December 2014

Goodbye 2014: End of Year Roundup



Alas, it's the end of the year and what a year it's been. I've probably had the busiest school year of my life but I managed to get through it. Even if it did unfortunately mean posting less frequently. Soon we'll all be a starting a fresh, but before then lets have an I'm Booked! round up of 2014.

Film adaptations

We had a particularly fantastic year for film adaptations of popular literature and quite a few YA and action films were released:

The Fault in Our Stars
If I Stay
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay
Gone Girl
Divergent

 




Here are my Top 5 Most Popular Posts on my blog based on which post got the most views:

 
My Top 5 Book Blogs  according to whose blog I loved in 2014:
 
It's a Book Life
 It's a Book Life
  
It's a Book Life
So there you have it, 2014. Happy New Year everyone!
It's a Book Life

Tuesday 30 December 2014

5 Benefits of Book Tours for Bloggers

Since I'm Booked! is now offering book tours for authors over at I'm Booked! Tours, I thought I'd give a few examples of how bloggers benefit from book tours by becoming tour hosts so you can see how book tours can make your blog even better.


1. Content
As a Tour Host you will always have a stream of posts to add content to your blog. These include reviews, giveaways, guest posts, interviews and book excerpts. This is especially helpful when you are lacking in ideas for posts for your blog.

2. Organisation

When you’re on a tour you choose when you want to host a stop on a book tour. As you are added to the tour schedule, this will help you keep organised as you must ensure your post goes out when planned.


3. Traffic
You will get increased traffic to you blog from other tour hosts, bloggers and authors. From this surge in traffic to your blog, people who may have never seen your blog before may become long term followers of your content if they like your blog.

4. New Friends
 You’ll meet fellow book bloggers, and make friends with authors. This is helpful for you as it helps build your network in the book blogging world and can lead to new opportunities long after the tour is finished.


5. Books
Free books!  Always a perk. As a tour host, when you sign up for a book event you can request a copy of the book to read for free.


So there you have it, 5 benefits of book tours for bloggers. If you're interested in I'm Booked! Tours, sign up to become a tour host here.

Friday 26 December 2014

Fun Fact Friday (#45)

Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.
I hope you're all enjoying your holidays so far. This week we'll be having a Festive Fact Friday as we're currently in the week of Christmas. Hope you enjoy!


1. Father Christmas has two addresses; Edinburgh and the North Pole. Letters addressed to 'TOYLAND' or 'SNOWLAND' go to Edinburgh, but letters addressed to 'THE NORTH POLE' as it's a real place.

2. Christmas pudding was first made as a kind of thick soup with raisins and wine in it.

3. The average age of a Christmas tree when it is sold is 15

4. If you received all the gifts from the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” you would have 364 presents.

5. Christmas trees were first decorated with foods such as apples, nuts and dates.



Friday 19 December 2014

Fun Fact Friday (#44)

Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.

This week’s five facts:

1. During the average meal, you eat over 90,000 miles of DNA.

2. When you lose weight, most of the fat is breathed out as carbon dioxide, while the rest is excreted as water.

3. Humans have caused 322 animal extinctions over the past 500 years.

4.  90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes of their delivery.

5.  The first-ever hot-air-balloon passengers were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster.
Fact #10 Source

Thursday 18 December 2014

I'm Booked! Tours needs bloggers! Want to be a tour host?

I'm Booked! Tours has been up and running for a week now and soon we will be offering tours for authors looking to promote their books. Of course, you can't have a virtual book tour without a host. That's why we need you to join and become a part of tour service. Being a tour host for I'm Booked! Tours means you will have access to complimentary books from the author, interviews, guest posts, giveaways and of course you'll be able to post reviews which will add content to your blog.

If you or a blogger you know are interested, subscribe here!

Wednesday 17 December 2014

Happy Holidays Giveaway at I'm Booked!

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays! First of all I'd like to congratulate Olivia Roach who won a copy of Life of Pi in our first ever giveaway. Now, since 'tis the season to be jolly I think it would be appropriate to have a new giveaway for Christmas and New Years to get you all into the festive spirit.

From now until the 31st of December, you have a chance of winning a copy of A Conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith. Good luck to everyone!




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Tuesday 16 December 2014

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell



Title: Fangirl
Author: Rainbow Rowell
Publisher: Macmillan
Page Count: 445
Publication Date: September 10th 2013
Obtained: Purchased

Synopsis:

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan...

But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?


What I thought:

I’ve been meaning to read Fangirl for a while and I’ve finally gotten round to it. For me personally it was nice to read something a bit different from the usual things I buy. The story follows a girl named Cath who is in her first year at university. She has a twin sister called Wren and a love interest named Levi. That’s the ordinary stuff. The more unusual aspect of the protagonist is that in her spare time she writes fanfiction about a book character named Simon Snow.

This book was nice. It was a cute story about a girl balancing school with her family life whilst also chasing love and maybe writing a little Fanfiction. The book kind of started off slowly and then later picked up its pace. I found the fanfiction excerpts a bit boring and eventually I just started skim reading or skipping them all together. I know they were there to make the whole Simon Snow world seem more realistic but it felt unnecessary.

I found Cath’s character to be a bit whiny at times. For example, at the start of the book she has a ‘boyfriend’ who’s at another university. He calls her up to tell her that he has a real girlfriend now and thought she should know. Cath was obviously very upset about this, especially as the way he broke the news was in quite a cruel way, but at the same time it was clear to everyone that the relationship was mostly platonic and Cath could have saved herself a lot of heartache if she had accepted that they weren’t really dating in the first place.

There are many things that are unexplained in the book such as Caths social anxiety and her unwillingness to have any sort of contact with her mother. I feel like these would have been interesting things for Rowell to address in more detail. Overall though I thought the book was okay. Rowell makes a big effort to make Cath quirky and relatable but I feel like sometimes it was a bit over the top. Cath was borderline obsessed with Simon Snow and her fanfiction. It is a bit strange but she reassures us that it’s a perfectly healthy way to behave.

That being said, I thought the book was a decent read. I’ve been quite critical about what I didn’t love but there were other parts that were more enjoyable. So if you’re into slice of life type YA novels then this could be the book for you.

Rating: 3/5

Friday 12 December 2014

Fun Fact Friday (#43)

Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.
This week’s five facts: - See more at: http://www.imbooked.co.uk/#sthash.YUtYw8UH.dpuf
Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.

This week’s five facts:

1.  Fish in polluted lakes lose their sense of smell.

2.  A human liver can grow back even after 75% of it has been removed.

3.  George Foreman has 5 sons called George: George Jr., George III, George IV, George V, and George VI. Plus a daughter called Georgetta.

4.  Snowflakes fall at 3.1 mph or 5 km/h.

5.  You can tell the age of a whale by counting the rings in its earwax.

Friday 5 December 2014

Fun Fact Friday (#42)




Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.
This week’s five facts:

1. To our eyes, in space, the sun would appear white, not yellow.

2. Corn can grow in multiple colors by mixing special seeds.

3. Pencil sales increased 700% in the year after Sudoku became popular.

4. Humans can live unprotected in space for about 30 seconds if they don't hold their breath.

5.  It would take the average person walking nonstop approximately 347 days to walk around the world.

Friday 28 November 2014

Fun Fact Friday (#41)




Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.
This week’s five facts:

1.  Women live longer than men partly because their immune systems age more slowly.

2.  The day after tomorrow is called "Overmorrow."

3.  Wasabi was originally used to kill bacteria.


4.  About a quarter of the world's hazelnuts, 100,000 tons a year, are used to make Nutella.

5.  The word hundred is derived from the word "hundrath", which actually means 120 and not 100.



Friday 31 October 2014

Fun Fact Friday (#40)

Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I'm Booked! Isn't it very fitting that the 13th Fun Fact Friday is on the day after Halloween... spooky. I hope you've all had a frightfully sweet filled week.

Now onto this weeks freaky(ish) facts... - See more at: http://www.imbooked.co.uk/2013/11/fun-fact-friday-13.html#sthash.XW7somtz.dpuf
Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I'm Booked! Isn't it very fitting that the 13th Fun Fact Friday is on the day after Halloween... spooky. I hope you've all had a frightfully sweet filled week.

Now onto this weeks freaky(ish) facts... - See more at: http://www.imbooked.co.uk/2013/11/fun-fact-friday-13.html#sthash.XW7somtz.dpuf

Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I'm Booked! Isn't it very fitting that the 13th Fun Fact Friday is on the day after Halloween... spooky. I hope you've all had a frightfully sweet filled week.

Now onto this weeks freaky(ish) facts...

1. Though many consider pumpkins, squash and courgettes to be different foods, they are in fact all the same genus and species, and can be bred with one another.

2. Candy Corn was originally known as "chicken feed."

3.  Orange and black are Halloween colors because orange is associated with the Fall harvest and black is associated with darkness.

4.  Trick Or Treating Is Actually A Form Of Ancient Begging

5. The symbolic white mask that Michael Myers wears in “Halloween” is actually a mask of William Shatner. The production crew bought the cheapest mask they could find at a party store and spray-painted it white.

Happy Halloween!

Friday 24 October 2014

Fun Fact Friday (#39)

Fun Fact Friday is a meme hosted by Lettora at I’m Booked! If you’d like to join and do your own Fun Fact Friday, just ask! At I’m Booked! Every week we’ll give you five new, fun facts.
This week’s five facts:


1.  A baby octopus is about the size of a flea when it is born.

2.  Watermelon is considered both a fruit and a vegetable.

3.  During photosynthesis, plants emit light, called fluorescence, that humans can't see.


4.  Owls turn their heads almost 360 degrees (a complete circle) but they cannot move their eyes.


5.  A ten-gallon hat actually holds a little less than one gallon of water.

Thursday 23 October 2014

Giveaway: Life of Pi by Yann Martel [INT: ENDS 23/11/2014]

I said last week that when I reach 500 Twitter followers I would do a giveaway but I just can't wait! There's no time like the present so why not put in an entry or two to be in with a chance of winning a copy of Life of Pi by Yann Martel. (This is also to celebrate a belated blogaversary from August. :))


Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel published in 2001. The protagonist, Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, a Tamil boy from Pondicherry, explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age. He survives 227 days after a shipwreck while stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.






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Tuesday 21 October 2014

Kathleen Hale: A Writer's Response to a Bad Review

A few days ago an article on the Guardian by a novelist named Kathleen Hale came out detailing an experience she had with and anonymous reviewer who left a one star review of her book on Goodreads. Once her book was out for the world (well, bloggers) to see, Hale decided to pay a visit to Goodreads to see what people thought. Although fellow authors had told her to avoid reading the reviews, the temptation was too great and it wasn’t long before things got heated.  

After an interaction on twitter where she was asking for book ideas, a blogger, who went by the name of Blythe Harris, tweeted Hale that she had a few ideas for her next book. This lead to Hale visiting the blogger’s one star review that she’d posted on Goodreads. In the review she gave her thoughts on the novel:

"F*** this," it said. "I think this book is awfully written and offensive; its execution in regards to all aspects is horrible and honestly, nonexistent."


Blythe went on to warn other readers that my characters were rape apologists and slut-shamers. She accused my book of mocking everything from domestic abuse to PTSD. "I can say with utmost certainty that this is one of the worst books I've read this year," she said, "maybe my life."

According to Hale, her book didn’t actually include the theme of rape and she felt the review was unfair. Some other commenters had apparently agreed with the blogger, and decided to lower their reviews. 

Just to note - Goodreads authors are given warnings on any bad reviews given on their books to discourage them from commenting on said reviews. If they want to comment they have to ignore this warning. This may be a response to the train of authors on sites such as STGRB who blacklist certain book bloggers for their notorious negative reviews.

So far it sounds like Blythe has been overly harsh. It’s important to give an honest review so that potential readers can make an informed decision on whether they want to buy the book. It seems to me that this blogger went beyond that. According to Hale she has a history of attacking people online who don’t agree with her opinions on books. That aside, we know that essentially when you put a book out there, it’s no longer your place to decide whether it’s good or not. There are going to be people who won’t like your book and you need to accept that. But Hale was far from finished here.

She engaged in what she refers so as ‘light stalking’ and kept an eye on Blythe’s social media accounts. You know, just to keep up to date.

This is where things get strange. Months later, when things had calmed down, Hale’s book was released and she was asked to do an interview for a book club. She got to pick a blogger to host it. Who better than Blythe Harris? This particular interview had a giveaway and so the book club forwarded her Blythe’s address. From here, Hale checked it out on Google maps and did an internet background check to find that Blythe Harris was in fact Judy Donofrio, a 46 year old woman rather than a 27 year old mother of two.

It looked as if I had been taken in by someone using a fake identity. I Gchatted Patricia (fellow author): “I think we’ve been catfished?

By definition, no. Blythe wasn't a character used to lure Hale into a relationship so no, she isn't a catfish. But Judy/Blythe is most certainly being stalked.

She rented a car to track Blythe down but before doing the deed, she needed some expert advice and consulted Catfish star Nev Schulman, who explained how the blogger may respond. It was time to hit the road. When she turned up at her house, Hale’s nerves got the best of her and she walked away leaving a book on her doorstep. This visit was later followed by Hale calling Judy at work where she denied the claims but did make herself look guilty.

To me it sounds as if Kathleen Hale is living in the fantasy of one of her own novels. You can't just turn up at a strangers house unannounced. That's creepy. So she wasn’t happy with a review? That’s fair enough. But this ‘light stalking’ went way too far and can’t be justified. I understand some bloggers need for anonymity online because some authors can get feisty when you criticize their book and this is a perfect example of why the right to stay mostly anonymous is so important. It seems that Blythe/Judy’s online persona gave her the ability to feel powerful over others without having to be accountable for her actions. She felt she could make or break a book with her review and had a large enough following that she could influence them to feel the same way.

Bad reviews are a part of the job. We've only seen one side of the story and the way Hale tells it, it seems like she feels she's the victim in this but she has most definitely crossed the line, essentially bullying another person. She should have left the review as it was and moved on. What she has done has done more harm to her and her book than a one star review could ever have done and now that she has publicly admitted to these events I can’t see how she’s going to recover any time soon. What disturbs me most that, she and many others don't seem to see a problem with what she did. They play it off as something that isn't a serious as it really is. I'm even more surprised that she was allowed to use the Guardian as a platform to share her story.

One thing to be learned from this is that this is a prime example of how not to respond to a negative review. On the bright side, if Hale is still looking, I think she’s got a great idea for her next novel.