The Kari AnnAlysis

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!

Last year, I experienced Book Blogger Appreciation Week from the outside. I checked the website, learned about new blogs and hoped that the ones that I already read kicked some major book blogging butt.

This year, I decided to take part. I read through the instructions, looked through my posts and picked the ones I thought made me look the best. I chose 5 reviews that I thought showed that I was decent at what I do. I was semi-pleased with the posts I chose, but quickly realized before I even sent it in, that I had some work to do.

So here are some things I am going to work on for the next year:

*Don’t only post book reviews.I love reading blogs where people just write. I have seen some awesome topics that are still bookish, but are just so much more than blogs. We are writers. That’s what we do. And I was actually checking through a #bblog chat on Twitter recently and someone said something along the lines of “if I wanted to read only reviews, I’d go through a Barnes and Noble.” I never thought of it like that, but I think I worry too much about reviews and not just writing. I know there are many times that I think of a good post, but I forget about it and it never happens. I am changing that. I have already started posting ideas. I’ll start a post with just an idea or two so that I don’t forget them and every time I log on, I see the looming post. Plus, all I really had to turn in this year were reviews and I saw that a lot of the posts I liked the most that others turned in were just posts about books in general, or authors.

*Interview some authors.When I first started blogging, I never thought this would be possible. But now, through Twitter especially, I talk to authors on a daily basis. It’s still crazy to me. I have recently found that most of the authors that I have been reading are on Twitter and will usually write me back or retweet my posts that involve them. Plus, in most of the books I get from publishers, they tell me this could be available if I wanted. I guess I am just now feeling comfortable enough to do this. Maybe….

*Don’t do all memes.I love memes because I love the traffic it brings to my blog. I write these reviews for me. I started writing so I would remember, if I ever needed to, what I liked and didn’t like about a book. But, I still like seeing that other people are at least coming by to see what I am writing about. I am going to stick with a couple of memes though. I still love Teaser Tuesday and will always check Musing Monday and Booking Through Thursday and judge those based on the topic and how much I can discuss it. But this goes back up to the first bullet point of just doing reviews. This helps me do a little more writing, but sometimes it feels like just a cop out and something easy for me to do to get a post up. I think I need to push myself to come up with unconventional topics, rather than wait for someone else to think of them. Now there is one meme type that I really want to work on. I have seen a couple of bloggers do posts with book covers that are similar. I have started making folders and putting similar book covers together. Hopefully in the next couple of months I will be able to get at least one post out of this! I think it’s cute and creative.

*Post more. There are times in the past year that I went a week or two without posts. There are days when I check other blogs every day or so. If they don’t have new posts for me, I’ll stay away for a while. I don’t want people doing that to me. On the other hand though, I do want these to be stellar posts that I may need to spend a day or two working on.

*Schedule posts. I started doing this already. This week, for instance, I posted a review on Tuesday and had posts scheduled for every other day during the week. Now, I don’t have to worry about my posts for at least 5 more days,  unless something comes up that I want to get out there. I have already felt like this has taken a bit of pressure off of me to get posts done. I finished 3 books in the past week and have scheduled their reviews to be posted over a 5 day period. I used to just post them as soon as I got them done, meaning some days I had 2 or 3, then I would go another week without a review.

*Keep my theme awesome. I am a big fan of the theme I have now. It allows me to be creative and change it all the time. I am very phase-y, so I like change. Changing my picture allows me to do that. Speaking of, it’s about time. I think I’m about done at the pool for the year. One thing I do need to work on is spacing. The post I published earlier this week about cupcakes looked great before I saved it, but after I saved, no matter what I did, it didn’t post the way I wanted it to. And no matter how many times I changed and saved, it stayed the same. Simplicity is best

I feel like I am doing a lot of rambling, but I am trying to keep my head clear and let you guys know what is going on in there. New year, new leaf.

What did you learn from other blogs this year?

Hello blogging buddies! Sorry I am a little late at posting this. I actually got caught up finishing a book last night and forgot until I went to bed. Mahh Sorry

Marce wins Duty of Love hands down, no competitors

Lindsey wins Season of Water and Ice with no competitors, and thanks to Random.org, she also wins Rooms.

Thanks all that participated! I’ll be contacting the winners and sending out the books ASAP!

It is time to do some spring cleaning. That unfortunately means I have to part with some of my beloved children, I mean books. I have four books I’m going to give away this month.

And the spring picks are:

To read my reviews on these books, just click the book cover and it will take you there.

All you have to do to win is leave me with a comment with your email address and which book(s) you are interested in winning. Yes, you can sign up for more than one book and one person can win more than one book. This contest will run one week, it ends on May 10th.

Enjoy!

I’ve never done a monthly wrap-up post, but it’s a new year, might as well try new things. Kind of like my last post on Cover Wars.

Books Read:
Dead to the World
The Life O’Reilly
Pet Peeves
Gods Behaving Badly
Truly, Madly
The Lovely Bones
Dead as a Doornail
Tainted
To read the reviews for these books, click here.

Pages Read: 2393

Bookmarks Given:
1. 0 Books
2. 2 Books
3. 2 Books
4. 2 Books
5. 1 Books
*There was one book I didn’t give a rating to because it was short stories.

Favorite Book: Tainted
Least Favorite Book: Dead as a Doornail

Giveaways:
I gave away Truly, Madly and had quite a few entries. The Duty of Love didn’t fare so well. No entries, but if you are interested, let me know. If I don’t hear anything by the weekend, I’ll give it to my church for the church book sale.

Goals for February:
1. Get some reading done for my 2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge
2. Finish up the books I have from publishers/borrowed/contests and read the ones I’ve bought
3. Read 9 books. That may be a stretch. I didn’t realize I read so many in January, but it’s a goal

Looking Forward to in February:
Starting the Private series and finishing the Sookie Stackhouse series.