My goal is to read 50 books by the end of 2010. You can read more about this challenge here; all posts in this category can be found here; more information about all my challenges can be found here.
Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick
:
Shelf Discovery
Author: Lizzie Skurnick
ISBN: 0061756350
Pages: 424
Started: 16 February 2010
Finished: 28 February 2010
Rating: 3.5/5
Thoughts: Let’s get the negative out of the way:
I really didn’t like THE CONSTANT USE OF CAPS and the! unnecessary! exclamation! points! I thought they were irritating and off-putting. Furthermore, many of the “book reports” found in this book used really long quotations from the books they were discussion. I thought it was unnecessary to use such long quotes. I read this book because I was interested in what Lizzie Skurnick had to say. I can always go read the novels discussed in this book for myself if I’m feeling so inclined. Perhaps these issues could have been fixed by better editing.
Maybe I was a deprived teenager, but I didn’t read most of the books discussed here. The “book reports” probably would’ve meant more to me if I had.
All these issues aside, there was something about this book that I really liked. Other than the editing issues I mentioned above, I liked the way Lizzie Skurnick writes; I felt like I was having a conversation with an old friend. It gave me some ideas for YA novels I might want to go read. Maybe I’ll come back and re-read this later.
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iMaxi - The Apple iPad Case with Protective Wings
By this point, you’ve probably heard about the
Apple iPad, which appears to be Apple’s answer to ereaders like
Amazon‘s
Kindle. The name of Apple’s newest gadget, however, makes one wonder if there are any women working at Apple. Don’t they know this sounds like a feminine hygiene product? I love that an
etsy member known as
hiphandmaids chose to poke fun at this name by listing a creation called the
iMaxi, a case designed for the iPad.
Price issues aside, I can’t see myself buying an ereader. Any ereader. Ever. I can see why an ereader might be convenient for the bookworm who does a lot of traveling, but I can’t/don’t travel that often and can’t justify spending that kind of money. Plus, I’m one of those people who has a hard time reading large chunks of text on a computer screen and will frequently print out articles that interest me. I worry that an ereader would be too computer-y for me and that I’d never be able to read an entire book on one. I love the smell of books (especially new ones), I love the feeling of turning pages, I love writing in my books, I love the feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing a book. I don’t think an ereader would give me the same sense of satisfaction. Call me old school.
Random Posts:
I’ve been blogging since I was a teenager. Just to clarify though, I haven’t been blogging non-stop since I was a teenager. Rather, it’s been more of a on and off type thing. But in any case, I’ve been blogging for…a while. What I like about blogging is the ability to keep in touch with people I know and meet new ones. I enjoy reading blogs, though strangely I’m not big on personal blogs and only really keep up with a handful. The blogs I tend to enjoy seem to be more of the activist, news, or book review variety. I guess it’s weird that someone who doesn’t read many personal blogs keeps one herself.
Over my years of blogging, I’ve tried lots of different blogging platforms, from Livejournal to WordPress to Movable Type and beyond. At the end of the day, I think my absolute favorite blogging platform is a self-hosted WordPress blog (the kind you download from wordpress.org rather than the kind you get via wordpress.com). What I like about WordPress is the amount of control I have with it: there are tons of themes to choose from (or you can design your own if you’re so inclined) along with an overhwleming number of plugins to choose from; you can make your blog look and do whatever you want it to. I’m one of those (possibly weird) people who’s really picky about how the archives look and I really like that I can make my archives look the way I want them to. WordPress to me is clean and easy to use.
For a while I used Livejournal and only really stayed because I know some people on Livejournal. But you know what? Aside from the people, I didn’t really like Livejournal. I didn’t like the archiving options (you can tag entries but you can’t put them in categories? Boo), I didn’t have control over how my blog looked, felt, or behaved. Similarly, I know people who swear by blogger/bloggspot. It seems they feel blogger is easier to use, which I really don’t understand (WordPress is easy to use!). I think blogger is like a cheap imitation of myspace.
Yes, it costs money to register and host this blog, but we’re not talking a lot of money. The amount of flexibility I have makes it worth it to me.
The only absolutely free blogging platform I enjoy is tumblr. Tumblr has it’s share of flaws: I’m not keen on their archiving options, nor do they have a built in comment system (if you want comments, you have to install something like disqus). I probably wouldn’t want to use it as my main blog. But there’s just something about it I enjoy: it’s very lightweight and I like using it as a lifestream type thing. I like using mine to post finds from other parts of the internet, post updates from some of my other online activities, etc. I enjoy collecting quotes and posting them there.
So anyway, that’s what I have to say for now.
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Thursday Three is a weekly event in which I post three random facts about myself. These can be anything from an activity I did over the past week to a physical feature. I invite you to post random facts about you either in the comments or in your own blog. Have fun!
- My eyes are dark brown.
- I love banana flavor, but I hate actual bananas.
- My middle name is my sister’s first name. My parents don’t understand why I think that’s weird.
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Welcome to my first ever What’d You Get? Wednesday post. This series of posts is where I list things I’ve bought over the last week. You probably will not see a post in this series every single week since I don’t always buy stuff (and I don’t see the point in posting if I have nothing to share).
So here goes. Here’s what I got over the last week:
From the Joseph Fox Bookshop:
- Lessons from the Fat-o-sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby.
- Graceling by Kristin Cashore
- The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
From Vistaprint:
- Some address labels that I actually ordered a long time ago as part of a larger order, the rest of the order arrived some time ago. Not sure why this particular package took so long.
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Sue. 20-something. Unemployed bum. Philadelphian.Plans on attending graduate school and hopes to be a librarian. Likes 
