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Knowledge of our past is our inheritance. What we do with that knowledge will shape our destinies...

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Mermaid Challenge Reviews + Follow Friday!

Welcome to the final week of the Mermaid Lit Summer Reading Challenge! Below is my review for this week. If you have one of your own, feel free to link up with us and be sure to visit the others to see what they thought of their reads for this week! This will be the last week for reviews, but I'll do a closing post next week telling who prizes are going to, etc. (Follow Friday below!)

This week, I read two mermaid books. They were Of Poseidon by Anna Banks and Everblue by Brenda Pandos. (Of Poseidon is reviewed below but I didn't quite get through Everblue. I'll probably post it next week in the closing Mermaid Challenge post.)



Source
So I'd heard lots of good things about Of Poseidon and was excited to read it. I found it on sale on Amazon and got it for cheap and totally did a nerdy little dance about it. Once I started reading it, I was almost immediately disappointed for one reason and one reason only: The POV is split fairly evenly between Galen and Emma. Emma's POV is written in the first person--pretty standard for YA and, as I've learned, mermaid reads especially--but Galen's POV is weird. It's still written in first person but it's written in this bizarre, present tense. That may not seem weird but when you read it...well, let's just say it takes some getting used to. And you do. Get used to it. But at first, I found it very jarring. It just pulled me right out of the story and I had to concentrate to figure out what exactly was being said. I was sure I'd give the book a negative review because of it. 

But...I kept reading and...guess what? I really liked the book. The story was very well-conceptualized, the characters were swoon-worthy and Emma--even though she sometimes came across as a whiny teenager--you just had to admire her spunk. She kept me laughing. And of course you get caught up in the romance and just have to root for the main characters. (It even has great sidekicks in Galen's sister and his meremate, as it were. The ending throws a wild (and delightful) curve ball, and now of course I can't wait to get my hands on book 2, Of Triton

So, if you like a great summer read with lots of romance, comedy, and spunk, this is the book for you! I totally loved it. Just don't say I didn't warn you about the weird POV thing. :D


Follow Friday

Gain new followers and make new friends with the Book Blogger Feature & Follow! If this is your first time here, welcome! You are about to make some new friends and gain new followers -- but you have to know -- the point of this hop is to follow other bloggers also. I follow you, you follow me.

The Feature & Follow is hosted by TWO hosts, Parajunkee of Parajunkee's View and Alison of Alison Can Read. Each host will have their own Feature Blog and this way it'll allow us to show off more new blogs!

How does this work? First you leave your name here on this post, (using the linky tools -- keep scrolling!) then you create a post on your own blog that links back to this post (easiest way is to just grab the code under the #FF picture and put it in your post) and then you visit as many blogs as you can and tell them "hi" in their comments (on the post that has the #FF image). You follow them, they follow you. Win. Win. Just make sure to follow back if someone follows you!


Share something you've learned about book blogging or just blogging in general in the last month.  


Source
Not sure if this qualifies, but it's all I could think of. Maybe we could say I've known this for awhile, but I've recently learned more about it. In many of my posts, I use colored boxes to put around questions or quotes. I discovered how to do them some time ago--a year or more--through another blogger who'd post an HTML how-to. I always just copied and pasted, changing the color code as I wanted. Unfortunately, the post I've been using was recently taken down, so I had to learn and memorize the actual code. But, here it is:

<blockquote style="background-color: lightblue; border: 2px solid #666; padding: 10px;">

You put that line of HTML before the content you want in the box. At the end of the content you want in the box, you type </blockquote>. If you want a list of color codes, they are HERE.

It ends up looking like this! :D
Anyway, like I said, I've done this for a long time, but I've recently had to learn to type the code rather than just copy and paste. 

So, what have you learned about blogging lately?

22 comments:

  1. I LOVE posts like this. I can never remember codes so I bookmark pages that offer them (like this post now) so I can copy/paste too. I could probably start my own file of them, which would be wise, but I never seem to have the time. Happy Friday!

    Meredith
    Meredith’s Musings

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    1. I know what you mean! Time is always so precious, even when it comes to small things. Thanks for stopping by, Meredith! :D

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  2. Hi! Old Follower.Great post - I'm writing that down in my HTML file now! What I’ve learned is not to let others dictate my review schedule. Sometimes I’m “too nice” when instead I just need to stick to my rules I have set up.
    http://bookcovereviews.blogspot.com

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    1. Good for you! That's a great piece of advice. My problem is that I'm a nazi to myself. I decide what I'm going to read when, and when life gets in the way I have a hard time revising. Sometimes i have to stop and remind myself that it's not a big deal if I don't get to x book this week, because I haven't promised anyone but myself that I'm going to read it anyway. Yeah, I'm a bit neurotic that way. :D Thanks for visiting! :D

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  3. GASP!!!! I"VE WANTED TO KNOW HOW TO DO THAT FOREVER!!!!
    Old follower
    Jackie

    http://www.nobentspines.blogspot.com/2013/08/feature-follow_15.html

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    1. Now you do! Glad I posted this. I thought it was a bit of a cop out since I've known how to do it for awhile, but everyone seems happy to learn. Thanks for stopping by, Jackie! :D

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  4. I'm RUBBISH at blockquotes and HTML but blockquotes in particular. I may actually steal that to be honest.

    Followed!

    Check out my feature in return? Don’t forget to follow via Bloglovin’!

    - Nova @ Musings of a Blogder

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    1. Go for it. HTML can be tricky, but it gets to be second nature once you get used to it. Thanks so much for stopping by Nova Lee! :D

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  5. New follower :D I learnt this too!

    F&F Friday

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  6. Me too! I've learned some codes because of blogging!!

    Old follower! :)

    Here's my FF. :D

    Kate @ The Bookaholic Blurbs

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    Replies
    1. Sweet! It's amazing how much you learn so quickly once you start, isn't it? :D Thanks for stopping by!

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  7. I have been wondering how to do the boxes with filled in colors. I only have a single lined box I know how to do in only one color from getting my blog redone, lol!

    Old follower!


    Here's my FF

    Amber @Paradise of Pages

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    1. Sometimes when I use this, my blog changes the HTML and it comes up as a hollow box. If that happens, check out the HTML again. If there's a part that says "background color: white" you can just delete that part and it will fill the box in. I probably should have included that in the post. :D Thanks for stopping by! :D

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  8. Yay, thanks for sharing the code! I'm going to have to try that out. I've been wanting to do that for a long time.

    New follower via BlogLovin and old follower via GFC!

    See what I learned at my FF!

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  9. I love learning new HTML codes, too! I have a cheat-sheet on my mac, with those I use most often, so that I can continue to copy and paste them when I want to :)

    Thanks for stopping by my FF post earlier.

    Have a fantastic Friday, Liesel.

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  10. That's awesome, thank you for sharing. Happy Friday!

    old follower

    My Feature & Follow
    Whit@Whit's Book World

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  11. I know zippo about HTML so that's extremely awesome! Thanks :)

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  12. I'm not too bad with html because I've been messing about with it for years. I built and maintain my husbands website so I have to stay on top of things because of that, so it's really come in handy for my blogging. I have my blockquote settings in my main template so when I use the blockquote tab it does it automatically but it's great to use this code for individual posts.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Linsey @ mybooksnthings.com

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  13. Great tip! I love anything that helps make a blog look more dynamic :)

    Kat @ Books Are Bread

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  14. I've always wanted to know how to do this!! Thanks for sharing!

    Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction

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  15. Hi Liesel,
    I will try it in my next review. Thanks for sharing!
    Your new follower,
    Lucie
    http://newbooksonmyselves.blogspot.fr/

    ReplyDelete