2011 August

Waiting on Wednesday -95-

August 31, 2011 By Lori 16 Comments

May 8th 2012

Simon & Schuster

Honor receives her brother’s last letter from Iraq three days after learning that he died, and opens it the day his fellow Marines lay the flag over his casket. Its contents are a complete shock: concert tickets to see Kyra Kelly, her favorite pop star and Finn’s celebrity crush. In his letter, he jokingly charged Honor with the task of telling Kyra Kelly that he was in love with her.

Grief-stricken and determined to grant Finn’s last request, she rushes to leave immediately. But she only gets as far as the driveway before running into Rusty, Finn’s best friend since third grade and his polar opposite. She hasn’t seen him in ages, thanks to a falling out between the two guys, but Rusty is much the same as Honor remembers him: arrogant, stubborn. . . and ruggedly good looking. Neither one is what the other would ever look for in a road trip partner, but the two of them set off together, on a voyage that makes sense only because it doesn’t. Along the way, they find small and sometimes surprising ways to ease their shared loss and honor Finn–but when shocking truths are revealed at the end of the road, will either of them be able to cope with the consequences?

Add it on Goodreads

I loved Moonglass and this sounds just as good. I love a good road trip book and I really can’t wait for In Honor. And the cover is gorgeous!

Waiting on Wednesday was created by Jill at Breaking the Spine. Head over there to see more WoW’s!

Filed Under: Jessi Kirby, Waiting on Wednesday

Review: Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

August 30, 2011 By Lori 17 Comments

Release Date: September 29, 2011
Age Group: Young Adult
Received From: Borrowed
IBSN: 9780525423287
Blurb:
Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn’t believe in fashion . . . she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit — more sparkly, more fun, more wild — the better. But even though Lola’s style is outrageous, she’s a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighborhood.

When Cricket — a gifted inventor — steps out from his twin sister’s shadow and back into Lola’s life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.

“You’re going to fall in love with Lola and the Boy Next Door. Madly in love! Every page sparkles.”
— Sarah Mlynowski, author of Bras & Brookmsticks and Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn’t Have)

Oh, you guys…What can I even say? You loved Anna and the French Kiss, right? Of course you did! Everyone did. But I am going to go so far as to say I loved Lola and the Boy Next Door even more! Yeah, I said it. Now let me tell you why.

I want to be Lola Nolan when I grow up. She has crazy style and a lot of confidence, even if she doesn’t realize it. She’s super witty and her internal dialogue made me laugh out loud on many, many occasions. She has an awesome job, an awesome best friend, and two awesome dads. Not to mention the older bad boy boyfriend! What I am trying to say is that Lola is the kind of girl you want to be BFFs with…or maybe you just want to be her. She was completely believable and just a overall fantastic protagonist.

Now as you can see from the blurb, hot rocker boyfriend is not the boy next door. No, that title belongs to Cricket Bell. And there lies the problem…Nothing. NOTHING makes me fall for a boy more than him pining after her. That’s what made me fall for Cricket even more than St. Clair. Cricket has feelings for Lola and he makes that very clear from the beginning. That made him irresistible! Really I loved everything about him, which is something I couldn’t say with St. Clair. Cricket is such an individual. He’s completely unique, there are no other swoon-worthy YA boys out there like him. He has his own style and a subtle confidence that makes him absolutely alluring. Plus, he has this boyish charm….sigh….I could just go on and on…

One other thing loved about Cricket is that he completely reminded me of my adorable husband when we first met. He had to put a little effort into getting me and he was always very honest like Cricket. So their whole relationship dynamic just spoke to me!

You know how sometimes in romance driven novels you get frustrated that the characters don’t just get together already!!!? Yeah, I never felt that way during this book. Everything about it was so compelling. I never lost any patience with it. I honestly could have read more. That’s how in love with these characters I was!

Oh and Anna and St. Clair are in this book a lot! I was so excited by that! Sometimes with companion novels you only get a scene with past characters, if that! But Anna and St. Clair played a big role in the book and that made me fall even more in love with it.

I’m going to stop now, because I could probably gush for a few more paragraphs, but I won’t bore you. I just want to state that Stephanie Perkins is a master at creating the most unique and believable characters. This book is to die for and my review in no way does it justice. Just read it!

Filed Under: Stephanie Perkins, Young Adult

Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover -The Flip Side-

August 29, 2011 By Lori 13 Comments

Don’t Judge a Book by It’s Cover is a new feature where I showcase some of the covers I dislike, but ultimately loved the book!

The Flip Side is where I showcase some covers I love but…kind of didn’t like the book as much as I wanted to.

I love both of these covers. The colors or Hereafter are fantastic and The Water Wars is so different. It’s even better in person too, but neither of these lived up to their covers for me. Both of these feel unique and eerie and the books didn’t feel that way for me, so maybe the covers set too high of a standard. What do you think? Do you like these covers? Did you love these books?

My Hereafter review

My The Water Wars review

Filed Under: Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover, The Flip Side

In My Mailbox!!

August 27, 2011 By Lori 40 Comments

In My Mailbox was inspired by Alea at Pop Culture Junkie and created by Kristi at The Story Siren.

Review:

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

Flame of Surrender by Rhiannon Paille
Without Tess by Marcella Pixley

Bought:

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Filed Under: In my Mailbox

Saturday Situation -49- Link up your reviews & Giveaways

August 27, 2011 By Lori 1 Comment

Happy Saturday everyone! It’s time for a new Saturday Situation, hosted by Candace at Candace’s Book Blog and myself. So, here’s the scoop: I’m going to set up two Mister Linky’s. One for Giveaways that you want to promote and one for Posts that you want to promote. The posts can be reviews, discussions, rants, events you are planning, anything that you want people to read! I know there’s so many great posts out there that often go unread. Here’s your chance to tell the world! Feel free to link up to other bloggers posts as well! Let’s spread the love!

Reviews/Posts Linky!

In this Linky please link directly to any posts you want to share with the world! Example: Name: Fallout Review URL: http://www.pureimaginationblog.com/2010/09/review-fallout-by-ellen-hopkins.html

Please do not post giveaways in this Linky! They go in the bottom one!

Book Related Giveaways Linky!

In this Linky please link directly to any book related giveaways you have! Example: Name: Middle Grade Giveaway-It’s Raining Cupcakes and other Ends 9/30 URL:http://www.pureimaginationblog.com/2010/09/middle-grade-giveaway.html

Filed Under: Saturday Situation

Dystopia Giveaway

August 26, 2011 By Lori 12 Comments

One winner will receive a hardback copy of Dark Parties by Sara Grant & Possession by Elana Johnson.

Details:

Open to US only (I will be having a great pre-order international giveaway soon!)

Must be 13 or older to enter

Ends 9/16

Fill out the form:

Giveaway is now closed

Filed Under: Dystopian, Giveaways

Blogger Tips & Tricks -5-

August 26, 2011 By Lori 8 Comments

Blogger Tips and Tricks is a new semi regular feature where I will try to shine some light on some little known blogger things and maybe give you a few how to’s.

Last week Keegan Shayne asked:

For Next week could you maybe do a tutorial on how to customize what the tabs look like, for instance how you did yours and used the custom font and such?

Well, I did mine and most of the other blogs I design with slicing in Photoshop CS5. But I think there is a way to do it with GIMP (free photo editing software). Follow this link to see that. But I am not familiar with that program so I’m going to show you a way to have custom title images a easier way. This won’t look like mine, but it will be more custom than just plain ol’ Pages.

If you don’t want to do all of this, scroll to the bottom for a few tips on easily customizing your Pages tabs.

First find the font you like. Maybe you already have a pretty font for your header and you want to match them. If you don’t have a font you can find some fantastic ones at kevinandamanda.com. Once you find a font download and install it.

Now open up whatever photo editor you plan on using. I’m going to be doing this with Photoshop Elements but you can use GIMP or even paint.I’m going to open up a new document 100 x 50. You may have to make it bigger depending on what your titles are going to be. Set your background to transparent too.

Next write out your title. Play around with the size and center it and save for web, if you want the background transparent make sure to save it as a png. Here’s mine:

Now make the rest of your titles and save them. Try to keep level if you can. That way they will be in a straight line when you add the to your blog.
Now that that’s all done upload your titles to a image hosting site like Photobucket. Now we’re going to add the to your blog!

Go to Design – Layout. Add a new HTML/Javascript gadget under your header. This is the code you will need:

<a href=”URL HERE” target=”_blank”><img border=”0″ src=”IMAGE URL HERE” /></a>

Copy that code and paste it into your gadget. Replace the URL HERE with your page url. Replace the Image URL with the direct link to your image. Do this with all of your titles. Save it. Go take a peek! If you are happy with it then you are done! You might have to do some resizing/realigning to get them all to fit. Just play around it it. Here’s what mine looked like:

Maybe you don’t want to do all of that…I don’t blame you! Maybe you just want your Pages tabs centered or in a nicer font. Here are a few easy ways to do that:

Want to center you Pages bar?
Want to add a custom blogger font? Go to Template Designer – Advanced and go to your text font, post title font etc and pick out a new font!

That’s it for me this week. I hope that helped you out and gave you some new ideas!