Threaded comments

Trying out the new blogger threaded comments to see if it works or not.

Finally made those changes I was talking about!

I first talked about making some changes to my blog in October. My plan was to copy all the posts that I had at my card making blog that I updated infrequently over to this blog, instead of maintaining them both! I was still thinking about it today when I noticed a new feature in Blogger that allowed the Import and Export of Blogger posts. I have to say I was totally impressed at how easy it was to both export the posts off of Card Making Adventures and into this blog! The posts will be on both blogs for a short time while I relabel and then I will delete Card Making Adventures totally. It seems to me that this new option will make it a bit easier to back up your blog on a regular basis as well!

Another small change is that I have changed the comment form so that it is embedded below the post instead of in a separate window. I can not tell you how often I have to click back to see what the main post was about because I have made half a comment and then forgotten what I was going to say!

Blog of Note

I woke up this morning to lots of comments overnight. My first thought was 'Oh, no. The fact that I have removed the verification letters for comments has come back to bite me!' But no, there is another, much nicer reason!

I am today's Blog of Note on Blogger! Wow! What a thrill!

If you are stopping by for the first time, welcome! I hope you enjoy looking around in the archives of my blog!

I'm sorry

Apparently I am a spammer, and we all know how popular they are! At least according to Blogger I am a potential spammer as they so graciously informed me yesterday by locking me out of my blog and threatening to delete my blog within 20 days if I didn't request a review from them. Of course they apologised nicely for the inconvenience if wasn't really a spammer! Grrrr.

I don't know if there was some kind of problem with the automated system at Blogger that they used to detect this kind of thing because I know of at least two other book bloggers that this happened to yesterday as well.

At least Blogger has let me back in for now but in the meantime I apologise for all my alleged spamming activities!


Edited to add: There is now a Blogger Buzz post talking about this issue. Click here to read it.

Blogger users

Do you know about Draft Blogger? I'd never even heard of it before today. I think it is their beta testing environment, but it has at least one cool thing that you can use at the moment - and that is scheduled posting.

Basically it means that you can write a whole bunch of posts and then schedule when you want them to appear on your blog, and it's easy as to do!

If you still want to use future dated posts that show on your blog, that's pretty easy to.

I really should pay more attention to what is going on around me I guess!

Blogroll

I have put up most of the link in my blog roll I think, but I am sure to have forgotten someone! If it was you...I apologise. It wasn't deliberate. Please let me know if I have missed you!

Oh, and I haven't had a chance to check them all yet, so if you click on one and it doesn't take you to where it should have, could you please let me know so I can fix it!

Thanks.

New look

They say a change is as good as a holiday!

With my last template I intended to eventually put a blogroll in, but never got around to it! I started today but I have a load more links to put in. Of course, it is taking longer now that my right mouse key doesn't seem to be working and I am having to type them all in manually! What a job!

Joint review and coming soon to a blog near you...

Kailana and I are reading the In Death series of books together...well kind of together! My review of Vengeance in Death is buried in the archives, but Kailana has taken my review and added her thoughts to them here.

There will be another joint review coming up for The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls in the next couple of days so keep an eye out for that as well!

Also coming up in the next day or so are some more details on the 2006 Christmaas Blog Tour....just too tired to do it tonight!

Sometime in the near future I have reviews for about 10 other books as well. I am so far behind on my reviews it isn't funny! Fortunately Blogger seems to have finally fixed itself so that should at least help!

It's my party..

Happy blogiversary to me!!

Or is that blogging anniversary....or blogging birthday.

Whatever it is, I started blogging one year ago today.

I had been reading a few blogs for a little while before I started blogging, but wasn't going to start because I didn't really think that anyone would want to read what I have to say. When I talk to non blogging friends they say stuff like "I don't have a life so I have nothing to talk about" and that was exactly the kind of thing that I was saying to myself. So twelve months on, I still have no life...and that's okay. I have a few regular people who stop by and read my sometimes nonsensical ramblings! Of course I think my blogging has improved since that very lame "this is my first post" post that would not have set the world on fire in any way, shape or form!

To be honest, this blog has become so much a part of my reading experience that I don't feel like I have finished a book anymore unless I have taken the time to record my thoughts about it here. There are a few other things that I have to do as well after I finish a book - cross it off my TBR list, add it to the read list, rate it on Amazon and AmazonUK so that I can see how it affects my recommendation lists and then post here and add it to the Index of Reads. All sounds a bit anal really, which is okay. The strange thing is that I am not anal about anything else in my life...weeds in the garden, that's fine, dirty dishes, clothes to be folded up...all fine! Strange huh?

The other thing that blogging has done is brought me into contact with heaps of people that I will probably never met but who I get to interact with on a semi regular basis. People who stop by here and leave comments, and I read their blogs and leave comments for them as well!!

Over the last twelve months both the way that I write my reviews has changed (and there is more than a tip of the hat to Rosario because I did pretty much emulate her format with just a few tweaks here and there!), I have posted just under 300 times I think, I have read and shared some great books, changed the blog template and switched to Beta (without buggering it up!), written a few joint reviews and just generally enjoyed many hours both here and at other places out there in blogland. According to Site Meter I get around 300-350 visitors a week (although quite a few of those visitors are most likely me! LOL!!) and a total of 11000 hits.

The other thing that I have noticed is that both my buying habits and my reading habits have changed a lot over the last year. I kid myself into thinking I have stopped buying books (but we all know that that is not really true!) but I have definitely reduced the amount of books I buy, and increased exponentially the number of books that I borrow from the library, as evidenced by my completely out of control library list! As to reading patterns, I hadn't read a paranormal before June this year, now I am part way through several series! There are other examples of how my reading has changed, but that is probably the biggest change.

There are only a handful of books that I have rated as 5/5 since I started reading, but there are plenty that were close to that mark as well. The 5/5 books are:

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase
The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
Poison Study by Maria V Snyder
Queen of the Darkness by Anne Bishop


So, what about the future? As I said this has become part of my book reading experience, so I don't see it changing anytime soon! I do want to change my template again, but I think I want to get a bit more experience with html so that I can make it more personal. I have started thinking about what my reading goals are going to be for next year, and I am definitely planning to at least finish a couple of those series that I am half way through at the moment! And I am thinking about getting an ebook reader......I have to think about it some more, but I think it will probably happen some time next year! Maybe I will work on using less exclamation marks per post as well......maybe!!

So my blogging buddies join me in a toast (with your coffee cup, your orange juice or your glass of wine or whatever it is that you are drinking).....


To blogging!

Bloglines/Blogger Beta

Bloglines doesn't seem to be picking up any new posts I do? Is anyone else having this trouble? Could it be related to switching to Blogger Beta?

Have to say that I am loving the tags feature in Blogger Beta, so much so that I was up until 1am putting tags on past posts....yes, I know...very sad! LOL!!

Bits and pieces, this and that!

I've been making a bit of an effort to catch up on my book posts because I keep on finding things that I want to post about but then think I shouldn't because I will mess up the posting order!!

If you recall I was participating in Sassymonkey's October Challenge. The three books I was going to read were Poison Study, The Silver Rose and The Observations, with a bonus of Exit Unicorns if I got to it. Well, I read Poison Study and The Silver Rose (review still to come on that one!), but I didn't get to The Observations or Exit Unicorns.

Kailana has proposed a November challenge to read books set in World War I or World War II in honour of Remembrance Day. I would like to do it but I am not sure if I am going to officially participate or not. I have plenty of books on my list that qualify. Maybe I will just set the challenge for one book - The Book Thief, although it will depend on whether the book comes in from the library or not as to whether I will read it in November or not. Edited to say that I might try and read Ship of Brides by Jojo Moyes as well.

In other news....I changed over to Blogger Beta a couple of days ago - so far so good, except for having to sign in all the time!! Driving me crazy!

Did everyone see that Rachel McAdams is in talks to star as Clare in the movei of a Time Traveller's Wife? Sounds like a really good casting decision to me!

DON'T PANIC!!!!!

When I get home from work each day, I start cooking dinner and then I come to the computer and start going through the various groups and blogs that I visit on a regular basis to see what I missed that day, and because my blog is my start up page that is where I visit first.

A couple of nights ago I got home, did what I had to do and then sat down at the computer to start the rounds, started IE, and got to a lovely page, with a very nice purple template....but no blog entries! None of the links worked, or the archives...nothing.

After completely freaking out for a little while, I ended up restarting my computer and everything was okay again...PHEW!!! This little episode does, however, make me wonder...is it possible to backup your blog if you are using Blogger's website, or do you just have to hope that nothing goes wrong?

Something New

I have created an index for the books I have read and reviewed here. It is sorted alphabetically by author and can be accessed via the index link on the left hand side or at this address:

http://readingadventures-index.blogspot.com/

There may well have been an easier way to do this....but never mind it is done now!

Just navigate through the index using the links on the right hand side!

New Look

Well....that was easier than I thought it would be! Just need to do the Blogroll now and we should be right!

What the.....

I know that Blogger's spell check feature isn't the best, but when it suggests that housewife might be an appropriate spelling for womanising you really have to worry! Did give me a chuckle though!

Bouncing

Apparently my email address is bouncing for Yahoo groups so I am not able to post to the group members whenever I update! Sorry everyone. I will fix it as soon as I work out how!!

Comments

Sorry to anyone who left a comment that I never responded to! I had my comments set so that I had to approve them before they would appear and didn't realise it!! It was a nice surprise to find that some had been left!!

I did a link!!!!

And it works!!!!!

Yay!

Edit: Suppose I should say where. In the sidebar, links to some of my favourite places to hang out on the net.

First post!!

Just starting out on this blogging thing! My aim is that I will record some thoughts about the books that I am reading, or have recently read, really for my own benefit as much as anything else. I previously wrote a little bit down in a notepad, but I am going to try this for a while instead. This is after all the age of technological advances!!