Category: Let’s Discuss

If you read my recap of the SCBWI conference I went to, you know that one of my takeaways was that I really need my name to be more prominent on my website. Because of that, I’ve decided to add it to my header. BUT when I added my name, I felt inspired to possibly make another little change …   What do you guys think? I thought it might be fun if my fox girl looked a bit more like me since my name is going right there next to her. And now that I have my purple highlights I thought, why not include them? (Yeah, I know, if I really wanted to capture my current look I’d shorten her hair too, but I’m not doing that.) I’m still sort of on the fence because the yellow-blonde hair really pops, and I’m wondering if the brown blends in a… Read more »

For their celebration of YA Week, Goodreads once again created a few lists specific to YA. Last year I analyzed these lists and compared them to my own reading, and I thought that was a really interesting exercise. Thought I’d do the same again this year. CLICK ON THE CATEGORY HEADINGS TO SEE THE LISTS ON GOODREADS. 100 Top YA Books: This is an all-time list that Goodreads came up with using books that are most often on shelves and their ratings (it was updated for 2019). I’ve read 54. (Which happens to be the exact same number I’d read from last year’s list, though the books have changed slightly.) I have 17 of them on my Goodreads TBR (down from 19 last year). 11 of these I own but haven’t read yet (up from 10 last year). 17 books aren’t technically on my TBR, but I probably plan to… Read more »

Artist vector created by freepik – www.freepik.com Recently, I added a field to my review template, and I wondered why I’d waited so long. I use the UBB plugin from Nose Graze (that’s a referral link, by the way), and there’s a field right there for Illustrator. One I’d never added to my template. Why had I been ignoring it? I think it comes down to the fact that we rarely think about the illustrator unless the book is a picture book (which I don’t typically review on the blog), so I didn’t even really think about adding this to my review template. It wasn’t until I reviewed a middle grade book where I specifically commented on the adorable illustrations that I realized the issue. Suddenly a light bulb went off in my head: Wait, why haven’t I credited this person anywhere? The phenomenon was not entirely my fault—the book… Read more »

Recently, I’d found that I wasn’t visiting as many blogs as I used to. I have a solid group of blogger friends who come by my blog and I visit them back regularly, but I was rarely visiting any other blogs, and I started to feel like my blogging world was getting a bit myopic. Especially since, over time, some of my blogger friends have (sob!) stopped blogging. Don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT complaining about the folks who hang out with me all the time (I love you all!), but it’s a great big book blogosphere out there, and every once in a while I notice what a tiny sliver I’m interacting with. So I’ve decided to make an effort to expand my bookish world a little. Here are a few steps I’m taking (each of these on an occasional basis): Visit posts that my friends have linked to. This… Read more »

I have to start this post by saying that I’m not expecting anyone to do anything about this issue, and I don’t blame my fellow bloggers at all for my own state of checkbox confusion. I just need to vent for a minute!!! Ever since the disaster that was the new (or, no-longer-all-that-new) GDPR regulations, commenting on blogs has become a game of navigating a minefield of checkboxes. I mean, I get why they created these regulations, but for the average blogger, it’s just made our commenting lives a mess. I’ll admit it: I’m easily confused. Now every time I go to a blog to comment, I have to spend five minutes figuring out which of the fifty checkboxes I want to check, and I’m not too proud to admit that half the time I want to pull my hair out in frustration by the end! It doesn’t help that every blog… Read more »