Top Ten Tuesday- Blogging Life Easier

Top Ten Things That Will Make Blogging Easier!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at The Broke and the Bookish in which book bloggers are given a topic and asked to make a corresponding list of their top ten books.  I don't always participate in Top Ten Tuesday but this week is a topic I love to find out more about!

1.  Goodreads! This is an amazing resource for all of us readers.  I love goodreads.  I run two groups on there and discover new books that way. I use goodreads for the book description in all my reviews and the picture I use for the book cover.  Thank you goodreads!

2. Rafflecopter I have only held two giveaways on my blog (I don't do giveaways to get followers) and both times I used Rafllecopter.  I saw it used on other blogs and it is so easy for giveaways and it's FREE!  

3.  inlinkz I recently am hosting my first giveaway hop Off to OZ (sign up if you are interested in joining the hop).  I looked around and tried to use Mr. Linky like I see a lot of blogs use but it turns out you need a paying membership. inlinkz is FREE and easy to use!!

4.  Bloglovin.. I like Feedly.  But I really like Bloglovin.  Since I am used to GFC on blogger, Bloglovin helps me to know how many people are following me.  I know some bloggers say the number of followers you have is just that .. a number.  But I like to know how many people are actually interested in my blog.  Bloglovin gives me that number. 

5.  Pixlr has made blogging easier for me.  It helps me make pictures better.  I do have photoshop but am a little lazy to go and learn it.  My husband uses it all the time though and I got tired of asking him to always help me out.  I used it to make my banner for my Off to Oz giveaway and other buttons for my OZ month here.  

6.  Other blogs have helped me out along the way.  I have a section on my blog that links up to links from other blogs that have shown me how to do things.  I have these links on my blog to help you guys out.. I take NO credit for the stuff listed so I hope those blogs don't mind that I link them up.  Find help here

7. Library honestly I couldn't be a book blogger without my library.  I could never afford everything I read so therefore I am there at least once a week.  Plus I don't feel bad if I don't get a book read since it is free (do you see a theme with my list??? FREE???).  Seriously.. use your library.

8. Amazon Prime.  If I do order a book.. this is how I do it.  It's cheap and free two day shipping.  When I had my giveaway my winner was so happy to get the book so fast and I was happy because it was FREE shipping.  FREE!   Of course there is also Media Mail from the US Post Office so always remember to ask for that shipping rate if you are mailing a book. 

9. Memes and networking... a lot of people might not like this but memes I think really help bloggers find bloggers.  I have found several blogs to follow through this meme here.  Participate in them but don't participate in only memes.  Only do the ones you really care about too.  Comment on other blogs and really get to visiting their blogs. 

10.  no Captcha! Please!  This makes blogging so much easier when you don't have it turned on.  Really it isn't that necessary.  There is even a challenge for this that you can check out:

Hope these help all bloggers out there. Now I am going to check out your blogs to find out some tips for myself!

Off To OZ Giveaway Sign Ups

It's time to sign up for the Off to OZ giveaway!  Hosted by myself and I am a reader, not a writer.

September 10th-17th

The Off to OZ Rules:

• You must include a giveaway on your hop stop and are responsible for supplying and shipping that prize.
• Since this is for Off to OZ- your giveaway must feature a book that would fit in the category of Classic books, Classic retelling or time travel books.
• You may have a maximum of 6 entries and only ONE can be mandatory.
• Offering a Gift Card or book of choice from The Book Depository is fine.
• Your giveaway post must include the hop image & linky (or links to the host’s sites if you can’t get the linky to work).
• Your post must be live by 12 AM EST on Sept 10th. Up to 24 hours early is fine. Ending the giveaway on Sept 17th.
• The giveaway must be specifically for this hop.
• Your site & giveaway must be family friendly – no erotica or 18+ sites.
• Once your post is live AND accepting entries please email me a direct link so I can update the linky. I ask if at all possible please put your post up sometime on Sept 9th. If you sign up for this hop and then realize you can not post delete your name from the list. I totally understand that life happens so if something comes up.
• To host a giveaway add your blog to the linky with your shipping info in parenthesis (US) (US/Can) (INT) following your blog name. Example:  Angela's Anxious Life (US). if you don’t include shipping info I will assume you are shipping to US only and edit the linky for you. If you have any questions or need anything changed please email Angie (me) at wsbronco@aol.com.

Be sure to add the button to your blog!

<div class="Off to OZ-button" style="width: 150px; margin: 0 auto;"> <a href="http://angelasanxiouslife.blogspot.com/2013/07/off-to-oz-giveaway-sign-ups.html" rel="nofollow"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHstyLOYmHXhXqbagvtRfteMTydQ-ioMWEnd2Qtoxd9Si2YGj7Ti9ZHhBJFtJvM0MfZFZcHETnDRmylfHLjsFk0ogw26fBUw9dcg1Rv0x2d1pD0FSvfSHYXmSgdsLzc4bqp16cv48qrzM/s320/giveaway+hop+image.jpg" alt="Wizard of Oz Giveaway Hop width="200" height="200" /> </a> </div>

get the InLinkz code

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum- Review

 

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum is an amazing classic!  I am so surprised I hadn't read it before now.  We are reading it in my Young Adult Book Club this month and discussing how great it is.  Here is the goodreads description:

Join Dorothy Gale, Toto, and all of her friends as they explore the incredible land of Oz. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is American's most enduring fairy tale. From the moment Dorothy puts on the silver slippers (changed to ruby slippers by MGM to take advantage of their new advance in movie making: color) until the moment she clicks her heels and returns home to Kansas you will be swept away and captivated by her extraordinary story.

This is my first time reading The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. Shocking! I am so glad I read it. It really is a wonderful tale. Full of great characters and plots. Baum creates a wonderful world. I will for sure be carrying onto the other novels in the series. I am glad too that in the book Oz is not a dream. I can't stand when books/movies do that. You go the whole way only to find out it was all fake! The silver shoes in the book/red shoes in the movie has always bothered me too. I guess it was because they were trying to make use out of the movie being in color. Also the characters have to wear goggles with green lenses in Oz so that everything looked green. Even after the Wizard left people continued to wear them. If the Wizard left I would quit wearing those goggles!  The Wicked Witch of the West is clearly not a big villain like in the movie. In the movie we know she is chasing Dorthy the whole time. The monkeys are EVIL and scary. In the book they were so friendly and just really wanted to be freed. I really enjoyed finding out their back story. I did think the story ended a little abrupt. Was a series planned? Or did the author just want to write this one book? One thing I LOVE LOVE about the movie is that Kansas is in black and white and OZ is in color. Very very clever!

I wish that by the end of the book the characters had found out that the Wizard gave them fake items and that in the end they had the heart, courage, and brains in them all along. I think that would've been a better moral to the story. As readers though I suppose since we know that items are fake the moral still comes across. Just think of how many people the Wizard faked out?

The characters are really neat. I wish that I hadn't seen the movie prior to reading this. Because the movie is so dominant in our culture I of course pictured the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man just like I saw them in the movie. The Wicked Witch of the West only has one eye? Who knew? The later OZ books now intrigue me.. what are they even about? Can't wait to find out. The China town in this book really interested me. I didn't even know about it till the movie Oz the Great and Powerful (the one that just came out). They did a fantastic job of bringing china town to life. The Wizard is the most intriguing character to me. Is he a bad man or a good man? He ended up in the circumstances he did by accident but did he do the best he could in the situation? The four witches are also interesting to me. Two evil, two good. It seems the only way the can gain/lose power is by being killed. 

I am interested in reading more into the series and see where it goes. I love the art in the edition of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz I have pictured above.  The artist is Michael Sieben and I first heard about this book through Huffington post.  What do you think of OZ?  Do you have any favorite retellings? 

 The crystal ball says:

Clouds are covering! A read that lets me down every now and then but peaks out of the clouds!

Armchair BEA- Blogger Development and Genre Fiction

Today topics are Blogger Development and Genre Fiction.  I have been blogging for a little over 2 years now.  I still feel like I don't know what I am doing!  I have tried to make my blog better by the example of others.  I have learned that using twitter to reach out to people is a good thing.  That not participating in too many memes is important too.  I have tried to incorporate my book clubs from goodreads into the blog to make it more interactive (the Young Adult Book Club, and  Stephen King Fans) .  I haven't had any giveaways or anything like that because I hate to feel like I am buying my readers.  Though I am going to have one for my OZ month here in September and I am not even sure what to expect!  It will be my first time! I have partnered with other bloggers for a few blogging events.  I don't think I am pro whatever that means.  I enjoy meeting other bloggers.  There is a small group of bloggers in my local area but I haven't really connected a lot locally.  I have found lots of friends who are far away from where I live.  I use Blogger.. which everyone says sucks but I am not some HTML genius and so I guess I will just hang here.  I have tried to find books on wordpress and html but they are all WAY over my head.  I just need someone to tell me in layman's terms.

Genre Fiction:

Now onto the Fiction post.  I love all books.  I do review a lot of Young Adult but that is because I run a young adult book club... if it weren't for that I would probably read a lot more adult books.  I love Stephen King~ one of my all time favorite authors.  I love Charlaine Harris' books.  I really enjoy R.A. Salvatore's books too and need to finish up the Drizzt series. I think the only type of genre I don't like is romance.  I just have never been able to get into it.  I don't mind it mixed in with other genres but stand alone romance is just eh to me. 

Well... I wish I was walking around BEA right now.. but here I am typing up this post and needing to make time for some reading!