The Kari AnnAlysis

Archive for August, 2010

These questions were originally posted by Literary Lollipop. Find a book blogger who doesn’t love talking about books and talking about themselves. I dare you. I fall into the category of loving both of those, so here goes. I have split these questions into three parts that will be posted for the next three Sundays.

1. Favourite childhood book: I have two for this category. There are two books that developed my love for reading. Charlotte’s Web and Tuck Everlasting.

2. What are you reading right now? The Starlet

3. What books do you have on request at the library? I am really bad about not spending enough time at my local library. It opens after I’ve left for work and closes before I get home. Earlier this year I did put one on request and thought I would start spending more time at the library, but it became available on a Tuesday. I wouldn’t have been able to get it until Saturday. Luckily a friend and I both wanted to read it, so she went and picked it up. I just don’t think it’s fair for all of the other readers that I have it on hold for a week.

4. Bad book habit: Having too many on my TBR. I have two shelves, two rows to a shelf of TBR. Yikes!

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library? Read #3

6. Do you have an e-reader? Not yet. Ask me in a couple of weeks and my answer will be different. I am getting a Nook for my birthday which is at the beginning of September! Woo!

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once? For years, I only read one at time. Recently though, there have been times where I am reading two. Depending on when the books I have on NetGalley are being released, I’ll read one online and a regular book.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog? Absolutely. I feel like last year, there were A LOT of books that I read that I hated. Now I am more picky and know what I like so the books I read, I want to read and love. I still read about the same amount of time a day and my favorite place to read is still my bed.

9.Least favourite book you read this year: The Gatecrasher by Madeleine Wickham

10. Favourite book I’ve read this year: I have read A LOT of great books this year. But since I’m still on a Firefly Lane high, I would probably say that is my favorite for now.

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone? I would say maybe a book a month. I like to keep my options open when receiving books from publishers and authors.

12. What is your reading comfort zone? Fiction, YA, Chick Lit and Murder Mystery.

13. Can you read on the bus? I don’t ever ride a bus, but I get extremely car sick, so I doubt it.

14. Favourite place to read: My bed, my deck during the fall and spring.

15. What’s your policy on book lending? I will gladly lend out books, but don’t necessarily lend unless someone asks for something. I am stingy and afraid they are not going to come back in the shape I lend them.

16. Do you dogear your books? Absolutely not! That is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves.

17. Do you write notes in the margins of your books? No. I write them in the notes app on my iPhone.

18. Do you break/crack the spine of your books? I try not to, but sometimes it just happens.

Through the past almost two years of blogging, I can’t believe the world that has opened up to me. I started out with a small blog on my Myspace page that was sparked by my love for Jane Eyre.  I decided I wanted more, tried Blogger and WordPress and ended up with my own domain, which I love! I feel so powerful

Through all of my research to find out what people wrote about, what I liked to read and what blogs I liked, I have found so much. I wanted to share some of my favorite booking websites with you guys, so you can get your feet wet, if you already don’t stop by them.

1. Goodreads.com: I have been on Goodreads for a while now. It was one of the first bookish websites, other than blogs, that I found. I copy all of my reviews to Goodreads and compulsively check the giveaway pages. After months, I am still absolutely in love with this site. On a daily basis, I log in to see what new books have been posted. Now the enter vs. win rate isn’t very high. I have won three books from Goodreads, but it still keeps me coming back. I also love that on the site, there is a trivia. You can do general trivia, or only questions for the books you have read. As my library grows, so does my trivia number. I opt to only do trivia for books I have read, so I tend to run out from time to time. I try to add a few questions, although recently I keep forgetting, just to keep the trivia pool filled.

2. Librarything.com: Librarything is known for its book giveaways. They have two ways to sign up for books. The first is through the Early Reviewers Giveaway which is open for a month. There is also a Member Giveaway. I tend to find more books through the Early Reviewers Giveaway. These are primarily new books that are getting ready to be published. The Member Giveaway has nearly any book anyone wants to give away. Now, my ratio here isn’t wonderful either, but better than on Goodreads. I have won 5 books from these programs.

The next two websites are sites that I have just come across the past couple of months and I love, love, love them!

3. BookMooch.com: I had always heard about this website and about Paperback Swap. I never wanted to get rid of books, so I never went to them. That all changed a couple of months ago when I realized I had two book shelves filled with books and no where else to put them. And that’s just in my bedroom. So, I went through my books, kept the ones I loved, and posted the ones I was so-so about. I can not believe how fast some of them have gone. If you’ve never been on the site, you post a book that you are willing to send someone and you get a point. For every point you get, you can Mooch (request) a book from anyone else on the website willing to send to you. The only price you pay is shipping for the people who request from you. So I may not really be clearing out my shelves, because I am replenishing them with other books, but it’s giving me a chance to try new ones and try ones that I am not 100% sure about because I know I can post it and get a new one in return. I have received 7 books from this program and am waiting on 4 others!

4. NetGalley.com : If I had to choose right now, I would say that this is probably my favorite booking website. NetGalley has a list of hundreds of books that you can read for free and review. The one fallback for some people will be that all of these books are read online. There is a program you can download to your computer and read right from there. I don’t mind doing this, because I know it is saving me shelf space. The awesome thing about this site is if you have a Kindle or a Nook, you can have the books sent there. I am getting a Nook in the next month (yay for birthday presents), so I am looking forward to being able to read on there instead of toting my laptop with me everywhere. Now my laptop is just a little Netbook, so it’s not a huge hassle, but it’s still something else I have to bring with me on a daily basis when I am reading a book from there. So far, I have read and reviewed 7 books on NetGalley and I have 14 still to go. And out of the books I have to read, one was published last month, the rest are anywhere from the end of August until mid-November so I have plenty of time to get through them. If you don’t mind reading on your computer, or have some form of e-reader, I HIGHLY suggest this site.

5. Crazy Book Tours : I never really thought I would take part in Book Tours. They just seemed like a lot of work… well, it seemed stressful to have to read a book within a given time period, review it and make sure you get it mailed out. I am normally extremely organized, but when events that happened within the last week, including an awesome family weekend and a horrible day in bed with a virus come around, you can’t always be on top of things. But I ran into this website, posted from Jen on twitter and found some books that I thought looked really good. I have only read one book for this tour, but have signed up for a few. I just got another one in the mail and my 14 day clock starts. After taking part in one, I think I might expand my horizons. This site hosts adult fiction, non fiction and memoir books. My #6 will be for those of you interested in YA tours.

6. Around the World Tours : This site is held together by Princess Bookie. I have run across it a number of times, but never signed up. As stated before, a timeline of when things have to be done scared the crap out of me. Now that I know I can take part in this and get some awesome new books, I am going to sign up for more. I have not signed up for many on Around the World Tours, but as soon as this post is saved, that’s my next goal. One of my goals for the year was to read 25 books from the YA genre. I finished that last month, but I still want to stick with that genre, while I’m still in my early 20′s and allowed

I hope that you guys will check out and enjoy some of these websites! Are there any that you like that I missed? If so, please leave them in the comments section and I’ll definitely check them out. I’m always up for new bookish websites and fun!

Lexi Carmichael is a computer geek to the max. She has no boyfriend and no real social life. That changes when a friend mails her a document that has people from all over the world knocking down Lexi’s door trying to get it. She calls in reinforcements in the form of her computer geek friends and realizes she is the last piece to the puzzle in a fertilization program gone horribly wrong.

After a few days of pondering, I am still just mehh about this book. I am in love with the plot and some of the characters. I love books that sit back and make me think “How did anyone ever come up with this?”. But there was also a lot of computer nerdy talk in the book, along with fertility talk that is way over my head. I had to go back and read a lot of pages, and skimmed a few just because I knew that even if I did read it, it still wouldn’t make sense.

One of the things I love most about books and movies is figuring out how the title plays into it. You normally hear the phrase in the book or movie or are able to connect it together after you are done. I didn’t really understood how the title matched until I was finished. It works very well with the book.

I give No One Lives Twice 3 bookmarks.

ISBN:  9781426890499
Published: August 16, 2010
Buy from Amazon for Kindle
Kari got this book from NetGalley.

This week’s Teaser Tuesday comes from Firefly Lane. I had never heard of this book until my cousin name dropped it. She was in town over the weekend, and I was just finishing up another read, so I dove in. It seems to be a really quick read, but the nausea I was fighting. It’s hard to read anything, let alone quick, with an upset belly.

Pg13: “They weren’t really lies, really, just exaggerations. Anything that would make her mom someday say she was proud of her”

I had a hard time picking out just a couple of sentences for this one. Every area that I found a quote I liked, you had to have a couple in front and behind to make it make sense. Hopefully this one suffices… and intrigues!

What are you teasing this week?

Just a week after posting my goals for the next year, I have fallen off the wagon and it has been a few days since I have even logged onto my blog. I am hoping to get up and going again in the next day or so, but I had family in for a few days and reading and blogging were the last things on my mind, especially since they got me hooked on Big Brother. Then, yesterday, I had all my blogs planned for the week, but around 11, started feeling horrible. I ended up having to go to the hospital for a virus and ended up in bed for 13 hours. I am back to feeling human again today, on my third Gatorade and trying to keep the hunger pains down. All I had yesterday was toast and yogurt. I have definitely made up for it today.

But anywho, I’m getting ready to start on my Teaser Tuesday post for the week, along with a review of No One Lives Twice. Until the next post! And thanks for putting up with my little naps from blogging! It won’t happen again, unless the bug comes back!