Sunday Salon About Memes

A recent post on ways to make your memes more interesting from Anya at On Starships and Dragon Wings got to the two of us talking about what memes we each like and I was surprised by how different our opinions were. To think a little bit about why that might be, today I’ll be talking about the pros and cons of different memes. I’d love to hear what you each like too 🙂

Sunday Salon About Finding Books

Hi all and welcome to my first Sunday Salon post! Moving forward, this will be the meme I use to post my discussion posts and today we’ll be talking about where we find our books – especially our free books. When I started blogging, I wasn’t even aware free books were a thing. As I started reading more blogs in addition to writing, I started noticing that some people mentioned getting free books from publishers and then I was ever so pleasantly surprised when I first got my first review request. However, there are more proactive way to get free books. Obviously the library is a beautiful and amazing thing to which we should all occasionally donate. In my case, that happens when keep books out late (ones without a waiting list!) and then pay the fines. Today though lets focus on the online sources for free books.

Monday Musing About Read-a-longs

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

I’ve been a bit reluctant to try a read-a-long because I hated the idea of having to read a book at a particular (slow!) rate. However, the past month there were two I just couldn’t pass up. Allison at The Book Wheel and Rebecca at  Love at First Book co-hosted a read-a-long of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. At the same time, Suey at It’s All About Books, Kami at Kami’s Library Thoughts, and Kathy at Read This Instead hosted a read-a-long of The Book Thief. Here’s what I liked and didn’t like about the experience of doing these read-a-longs.

Monday Musings About Bloggiesta

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

I’m feeling a bit under the weather today so I’m going to keep this short and sweet. I met almost all of my Bloggiesta goals. I finished cross-listing posts to 2 of 3 sites I use, wrote 3 of the 6 reviews I wanted to, and did 8 min-challenges even though I was only shooting for 6. Although I slept through the Saturday twitter chat, I had a lot of fun with the Sunday one. Here’s a list of what I got done:

Monday Musing About Short Story Collections

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

I don’t read many collections of short stories, but I have twice since I started blogging. Each time I begin to write a review, I’m confronted by a dilemma. How do you review a collection with a lot of short stories? Do you review each separately? Or do you try to review them all together?

Monday Musings About Giveaway Hops

Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

Other than participating in BlogFest last year, the Books to Movies Giveaway Hop I participated in last week was the first giveaway hop I’ve done. I generally avoid these hops for two reasons. First, I don’t currently make any money from blogging so I enjoy it being a hobby I can mostly do for free. I occasionally buy a book I can’t get at the library or as an egalley. I certainly plan on doing giveaways at follower count mile markers because seriously – you guys are awesome. But I don’t want to be paying for giveaways all the time. In this case, the chance to do a signed giveaway was too exciting to pass up 🙂 The second reason I don’t do many giveaways is a question I think many bloggers struggle with and which I’m pondering today. Do we really want followers who are only there for the giveaways?