Evolution of the Book Visualized

From Best Colleges Online. There is a larger graphic on their website.

Blog Award

I have mentioned before that I usually do not to participate in blog award chains but it is definitely super nice to be recognized for your efforts.  I appreciate each and every comment I receive, as I know its so much easier and quicker to read a blog post and then move on to the next. Just the fact that there is more than one person who even knows my blog exists is gratifying.  I blog because I have thoughts and opinions about books and if I do not put them into some concrete form they haunt me. I do not have many friends who have the same interests in books and reading as I do, so my blog and all the comments/feedback I receive is the substitute. I want to thank every individual who has ever left a comment at Obsessed With Books.

I also want to thank Mary Ann DeBorde at Mary Ann DeBorde Writes for her kindness in passing along this award.  This is an award to honor kindhearted bloggers, those certain individuals who leave the sweet comments that brighten our hearts and make blogging worthwhile.

AWOL at the Olympics

This Canuck was just at the Olympics in Vancouver!!!  We got lucky and were able to get tickets to a Germany-Belarus hockey game, Men's and Women's Curling in which we were able to see Canada play in both, the U.S.A.-Canada hockey game and the Ice Dance Free Dance.  We were quite bummed ar the loss to the U.S.A. in hockey but Monday night more than made up for the loss, with an incredible and historic golden win in Ice Dance. Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue were the youngest ever Ice Dance gold medal winners and the first time gold has been won in North America. Finally!  So glad to see that the waves Bourne and Kraatz made were enough to open the field for more Canadians. Too bad the Ice Dance rules were not changed years ago...

Vancouver was overflowing with Canadian patriotism and pride. An amazing once in a lifetime experience!

Tweaking My Blog

Most of us I know are addicted to our Feed Readers but if you click on this post link you will see my new tailor-made background that I designed using this BgPatterns tool.  Its been fun to tweak the color and design of my blog to give it a more personalized and sophisticated look.  I did have to enter the html code though to change the background...I would advise saving a copy of your template code in a safe place before you go making any changes.  I also used Photobucket to grab the image of the background from my computer (which I has downloaded from BgPatterns once I was happy with my creation) to create a link which I could then use in the html code in replace of Blogger's background image link.  The images are small gifs or jpegs which are then applied in a repeated pattern.

I recommend creating free accounts with both BgPatterns and Photobucket. In BgPatterns if you do not create an account you can only rely on your memory of the patterns you make but if you have an account you can save your patterns to My Favorites. Photobucket has come in useful many times for hosting images and gif slideshows in various blog posts and the tweaks I have made to my blog design.

I've said goodbye to blah brown and hello to glamourous grey and green. So what do you think of the new look?

Looking for more inspiration to beautify your blog? Here is a post at Mashable about how to Build A More Beautiful Blog. Good luck and have fun tinkering!

Sharon Lathan Giveaway at Hist-Fic Chick

Hist-Fic Chick is hosting an amazing giveaway for Sharon Lathan's three Jane Austen fan fiction novels: Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Two Shall Become One, Loving Mr. Darcy: Journeys Beyond Pemberley and My Dearest Mr. Darcy: An Amazing Journey into Love Everlasting, which is being released by Sourcebooks this month.  Don't miss out on your chance to enter...the contest ends January 28th. Open to residents of U.S. and Canadian residents only.

Masterpiece Classic - Jane Austen's Emma

The beginning of every year would not be the same without new productions from Masterpiece Classic. I've loved Masterpiece Theatre and PBS for years because of the Jane Austen productions and 2010 is no different with Emma (January 24-February 7), Northanger Abbey - Encore (February 14, 2010) and Persuasion - Encore (February 21, 2010) all upcoming.

I'm looking forward to watching the new Emma three part mini series although I still have to wrap my head around Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightly when everytime I think of him I see him as Dade Murphy from Hackers...with both characters wearing tight pants though its not that much different. :)

Here are all the online special features for Emma on the Masterpiece Classic website.

Here is the Masterpiece Classic complete schedule.

Deanna Raybourn's Next Julia Grey Mystery - Dark Road to Darjeeling

I love Deanna Raybourn's blog and follow it religiously...she posts every day and has so many great viewpoints on life, love, beauty and fashion, as well as music, reading and writing.

I caught in yesterday's post the title of the next Lady Julia Grey mystery...Dark Road to Darjeeling, although I believe the title was first announced in Raybourn's Twitter feed on January 13. No release date mentioned.

Lady Julia Grey has a Twitter feed too.  Soooo looking forward to the next book in the series!

Blog Award

I just wanted to thank Kath at http://kathmeista.blogspot.com/ for the Honest Scrap Award.  I am not a fan of spamming other bloggers with awards so I will refrain from passing the award along but how about I reveal some secrets.

The rules for this award are:

1. The Honest Scrap Blogger Award must be shared.
2. The recipient has to tell 10 (true) things about themselves that no one else knows.
3. The recipient has to pass on the award to 7 more bloggers.
4. Those 7 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them.





10 True Things About Me That Most People Do Not Know

1. I'm a rule breaker and risk taker.
2. I write a blog about books...about my book obsession.
3. I am a fanatic about cataloging the books I own using Bookpedia.
4. I refuse to sell or giveaway any of my books if I only own the one copy. For giveaways I always buy additional copies.
5. I love really strong black tea such as Irish Breakfast and Lapsang Souchong...they both have smoky notes.
6. The painting of Girl Reading by Sir Charles Perugini on my blog is the same graphic I use on my work computer desktop and my Blackberry. I also own a poster and one day hope to frame and hang it.
7. I have not used the library to borrow books in many years because I buy all my books.  But I love libraries and bookstores. It would be a dream to visit The Library at Trinity College in Dublin.
8. I cry when characters are crying on TV, in books and in movies.
9. As a young adult we received a Doubleday flyer in the mail and I secretly subscribed without telling my parents...of course they eventually found out when the bills and books started coming in the mail.
10. I have a couple odd talents like being about to pick out the perfect greeting card and being able to square a picture frame on a wall by just eyeballing.

O, Juliet Love Games Poetry Contest

Do you love to write poetry? Well if you do author Robin Maxwell has two competitions, one for adults and one for teens 13-18, and all you have to do is write a poem about love. The winners for each competition will receive this lovely tooled leather journal and a phone conversation with Robin Maxwell!

For more details visit Robin's blog at http://robinmaxwell.blogspot.com/

Robin is releasing her next novel O, Juliet February 2, 2010.

Related Posts

Robin Maxwell's O, Juliet and the Love Games

Cold River by Carla Neggers

I have been a fan of Carla Neggers for a long time, loving her blend of a hint of romance with suspense.  I am a fan of her U.S. Marshall and FBI series and some of her standalone novels but I'm not so keen on her new Black Falls series. The series revolves around numerous characters set in Black Falls, Vermont basically involving a handful families, the Camerons and the Harpers. The Cameron siblings recently lost their father Drew Cameron, who was murdered by assassins because he was asking questions about something...but we don't know what that something is. There are many secondary characters which have cameos in each book.

Hannah Shay has finally shown the town of Black Falls what she's worth. Her Three Sisters Cafe is a success, and she's soon to become a prosecutor. When the cafe becomes an epicenter for investigators trying to pierce a violent crime ring that's leaving bloody trails on nearby Cameron Mountain, Hannah suspects a man from her past is involved.

Sean Cameron returns to the snowy cold of his Vermont hometown to unmask his father's killer. Sean has the skills and resources to mount his own search, but he must convince the resistant Hannah to cooperate--because the killer is ready to strike again...and closer than anyone ever imagined.

The second book in the series, Cold River, falls short of the mark for me and was not as good as the first book Cold Pursuit, which I rated 3.0. To be honest I'm not even sure what the title of the book represents because I don't think a "Cold River" or similar was ever mentioned...although most of the cast seem to be outside in freezing weather a lot of the time. The book summarized too much the first book in the series and didn't really develop the characters, the plot or the relationships between characters enough.  I would recommend skipping this series.  On the other hand I liked The Angel, the second book in the FBI series a bit better and would recommend this read for a good suspense story set in Ireland. I'll probably pick up The Mist, the third book in the FBI series to be released March 30, 2010 but I'm afraid for me this is the end of the road for the Black Falls series.

My Rating: 2.5

Chapters
Amazon

Related Posts

Cold Pursuit by Carla Neggers
The Angel by Carla Neggers