Thumbs Up Tuesdays

Dead Trees and Silver Screens hosts a meme each Tuesday called Thumbs Up Tuesdays. She said:

I started this meme because I believe that bloggers should celebrate each other. Sometimes as a blogger, you put your heart and soul into a post and you get no feedback or recognition.

Each week, she chooses a blog and writes three positive things about it. Today, she chose mine. I had no idea until I received a comment telling me about it. I was so surprised! And, I loved everything said in the post:

  1. Super cute layout with cute cartoony characters. Plus she has a Dumbledore quote at the top. Can’t beat that.
  2. She separates her personal posts from her book posts, making it easy to find what you are looking for.
  3. She does a great job of recognizing other book blogs for the fun things they do.

While I think this meme is such a great idea because I’m all for sharing the blog love with my fellow bloggers, I don’t think I’ll become a regular participant. I just feel like I already participate in too many memes, and I’m still kind of trying to find my way in this book blogging world. I wanted to share this on my blog, though, to:

  • Say thank you for thinking of me today. It totally made my day!
  • Give others a chance to find out about this meme so they can participate if they want to. Go check it out on her blog.

What I Like About You

What I Like About You is a tag created by Roxy of Keeping Up With Roxy’s Books that answers some questions about other bloggers to help spread the blogger love. Everybody can do it. Just answer the following questions!

  1. Name the blogger who first left a comment on your blog. I started my blog so long ago that my first comments just came from friends and family members. None of them had blogs yet. I was the first out of the group.
  2. Name a blogger who has the cutest button. I don’t really keep track of buttons. I don’t like to clutter my sidebar with them so I never pay attention to them.
  3. Name the blogger who blogs about a lot of things other than books. Brodi Ashton blogs about the struggle she had with getting published, the joys of getting a book deal, and many more things. Her blog is a ton of fun to read because she presents things in such a unique and hilarious way. I highly recommend her blog (and book Everneath) to everyone!
  4. Name the most creative blog. Brush Up On Your Reading is such a creative blog. I love that Nina and her pet monster ARGH talk about books. They often have different opinions and talk about why they think the way they do. It makes for a really fun discussion.
  5. Name the blogger with the prettiest blog design. I really like Emily’s Reading Room. Her design is modern and fun, yet simple and clean. I’m all about uncluttered blogs. The more cluttered a blog is, the less likely I am to frequent it because it’s hard to read and takes forever to load.

I tag anyone who wants to do this! Let’s spread the blogger love!

Featured by Mission to Read

I’m being featured on Mission to Read today as part of Rie’s new monthly blog feature, Great Designs. I’m really very excited for this awesome opportunity. Rie has such a great blog herself and to have my blog considered for this feature just means the world to me. Thank you so much, Rie!

Hop on over to her blog to check out the feature and learn a little more about my blog design.

Liebster Blog Award

Yesterday, I received a comment from Jennifer at Books & Barks telling me that I’d be very interested in the post she had just published. I was intrigued and not disappointed when I found out the reason for her enthusiasm. She has been generous to nominate me for the Liebster Blog Award. Thank you so much, Jennifer! I really appreciate your thoughtfulness! You made my day when I read your nomination!

The Liebster Blog Award is designed to bring additional recognition to those bloggers with less than 200 followers. If you receive the award, you should link back to the blogger that nominated you and nominate five more blogs. Also, don’t forget to let them know that you nominated them.

My Nominations

  1. Jenny from Alternate Readality
  2. Laura from The Shabby Rabbit
  3. Ashley and Alysa from Everead
  4. Sarah from Writer, Reader, Dreamer
  5. Lari from Lari is Writing

Semi Blog Split

I’ve decided to split my blog in two … sort of. I don’t have two separate blogs, but my front page is no longer displaying personal posts. Instead, I’ve created a “Personal Posts” item on my main menu at the top of my blog. I’ve decided to do this for several reasons:

  1. I want to start posting more personal posts again and I know not all my readers want to read those.
  2. I want to make it easier for those who want to only read my book blog posts or my personal posts.
  3. I want to see how many posts of each I really do.

Because of this change, depending on what you’re interested in reading, you may want to change your  RSS feed settings (if you view my blog through an RSS feed). If you don’t read my blog through an RSS feed, just remember that you’ll have to click “Personal Posts” at the top of my blog to read my personal posts.

There are a few RSS feed options. If you don’t want my personal posts to show up in your feed, you’ll definitely want to change your RSS feed to the “Book Blog Posts Only” option. If you’re not really interested in reading my book blog posts, then you’ll want to use the “Personal Posts Only” option (this includes my Nearly Wordless Wednesday posts). If you want to read any post on my blog, you can either update your feed using the “All Topics” option or leave your RSS feed the way it is. All these options are listed in my sidebar so if you change your mind in the future, you don’t have to find this post to get the RSS feed URL.

I hope this makes it easier for everyone. If you run into any problems or have any questions, please let me know.

What do you think of this change? Do you like it, hate it, not care? Will it help you enjoy my blog more?

PS–All my posts will still post to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.