Tag Archives: twitter

March 8, 2013 · 5:05 am

Let’s Talk! Social Media

Lets Talk Lets Talk: Review Request Rant

Let’s Talk is a weekly meme created by Smash Attack Reads and A Book Obsession in which you talk about whatever the topic is. And if there’s one thing you know I love to do, it’s blab.

Today’s question:

What social media sites/tools do you frequently use? Which ones do you avoid and why?

  • Twitter! I love Twitter, even though I didn’t understand what the hell it was at first. And I don’t get to go on it as much as I’d like, but dude, I’m busy. Sometimes I really don’t even think about looking at my phone for ages because I’m driving or socializing or something. OH, and I’ve been using Twitter through Tweetcaster lately. I like that I can schedule tweets (even though it’s a pain to link to stuff from my phone), and I like the colors and interface better.

  • Instagram! Because apparently I feel the need to share pictures of Gabby, books, and food with people. Whatever, I <3 it. Also, lately I’ve been using Instagram to take photos of the books I read to use in my book review posts. They’re purrrrty.

  • Pinterest! I mainly pin funny things… and, and bookish things, and occasionally things I want to actually try making and things I want to buy. Oh and of course I have a board for my book reviews.

I do use all three of these things for bookish and bloggish stuff, but I can use them as my own personal accounts too, and I think that’s why they’re my favorite and why I’ve stuck with them the longest*. I also use Tumblr, but rarely. I mainly use it to find GIFs and occasionally I reblog something.

I avoid Goodreads now – I used to love it and was on it all the time. Then work blocked it, and then by the time they came out with a phone app it seemed to have changed… too many people, too many teens, and it just got annoying. I also have a Facebook but I really want to delete it. It’s annoying and creepy. The only reason I haven’t yet is because I have family out of state and it kind of keeps me clued in on what’s happening in their lives, you know?

 So, do you think there are any social media apps or tools I should be using to promote my blog? What your favorite? Or do you shun them all? Is that even possible? Let’s talk, people!

~Sarah

 

*Also, if you want to follow me on any of those things just search SarahSaysRead, or check for a button to the right. I try to keep the same name on everything so I can connect with my blog readers easier!

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November 6, 2012 · 10:34 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Things I Love

Good morning ya’ll! So first thing’s first – if you live in the US, hopefully you’re registered to vote and if you are – get out there and vote! Don’t forget, and don’t be so lazy that you decide not to go. It’s important!

Anyhoo, so today’s Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by The Broke and The Bookish) is a freebie! So, I’m just going to list some of the bookish things / stuff that makes me happy inside.

1. Claire’s ring – I have this replica of Claire’s ring (from the Outlander series) – the honeyman got it for me for our first Christmas together :-) It’s my absolute favorite piece of jewelry. And the website that it comes from, The Author’s Attic, makes a lot of jewelry for fans of Diana Gabaldon, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and more.

2. Bookstores – I loooove going into bookstores. Sadly there’s really only one left in my town, but I would go there every day if I could. And whenever people with e-readers mention how e-readers are great because you can just buy a book on the couch instead of having to drive to the bookstore, I’m so confused. Going to the bookstore to buy a book is one of the best things ever!

3. Pinterest – Not specifically bookish itself, but it’s enabled me to hoard bookish pictures, ideas, and quotes like nobody’s business (plus some reviews here and there, which I really need to get better at updating).

5. The library embosser my sister Heather got me for Christmas last year! It’s SO AWESOME to be able to emboss the inside pages of my favorite books :-) Can you tell that Heather is like a gift-giving genius???

6. Twitter - Again, not inherently bookish. But it enables you to chat with your favorite authors! And book bloggers!

7. Readalongs and readathons – These are two big things in the book blogging world, and they’re everything that I love about our community- there’s such a sense of camaraderie during readathons, as we all struggle to stay awake while we read together and join in on challenges, etc. And readalongs are SO awesome for reading books you normally might not have read otherwise, while getting to chat about it every week with AMAZING people!

9. Any bookish GIF. Cause they’re fun!

 

9. This shirt – I actually just bought this at Target, either to sleep in or to work out in. Yay Seuss!

10. MY books – Obviously. I could literally sit in my spare room with the futon and four big bookshelves all day and be totally happy.

~Sarah

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July 28, 2012 · 8:16 pm

Summer Mini-Readathon is tomorrow!

Hi guys! I just wanted to write a quick reminder post that the mini-readathon starts tomorrow, Sunday July 29th!

Remember, you can read for any 12-hour block on Sunday, whenever suits you. Because I know some people may be joining in from other time zones, the mini-challenges will stay open through Monday night. This should give everyone enough time to participate, and that you can feel free to concentrate on reading and come back from the mini-challenges later if you so choose.

I personally will be reading from 10 AM to 10 PM tomorrow (US Eastern time), although I may post the first mini-challenge (AKA the start-up post) around 9 AM Eastern time.

And of course, I’ll be on Twitter tomorrow as well, and anyone who wants to chat during the readathon can use the hashtag #ssrminiread .

If you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time!

So, I’ll see you all tomorrow morning! Can’t wait!

~Sarah

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May 22, 2012 · 8:12 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Non-Bookish Online Stuff!

top ten tuesday

Good mornin’ folks! It’s Tuesdaaaayyy, which means it’s time for Top Ten Tuesday hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week’s topic might be kinda tough – it’s Top Ten Blogs / Sites You Read That AREN’T About Books. This might be tough, because I don’t  think I follow any blogs that aren’t about books…

1. Pinterest – I could spend alllllll day pinning alllllll the things! I find funny stuff, useful stuff, beautiful stuff, awesome stuff… it’s the best time-suck there is. I have 983 pins… and now that I just looked that up, I’m tempted to spend the next hour or so getting it up to over 1000.

2. The Pioneer Woman – I love the Pioneer Woman’s cooking. I have her first cookbook (still need to buy the new one), and she uses gorgeous photography of delicious food and it’s just all so wonderful. Her recipe for Leftover Turkey Pot Pie led to me making THE BEST chicken pot pie, and I’m pretty sure that pot pie is the reason my honeyman loves me :0)

3. Epic Rap Battles of History – 90% of my time on Youtube was spent watching The Epic Rap Battles of History, so imagine my delight when I learned that they now have their own website! My favorites are Christopher Columbus vs. Captain Kirk, Hitler vs. Darth Vader, and Albert Einstein vs. Stephan Hawking but seriously, I love them all.

4. Twitter – Cause you know, duh.

5. Amazon – OK I know that Amazon is evil. They’re like the Wal-Mart of the book-selling world, they’re a huge giant evil corporation. But the Amazon app on my phone is really useful for looking up ratings and release dates when I’m out and about. I don’t actually buy from them as often as I used to, but it’s still the first place I look for TV shows on DVD because they’re ususally really cheap. As for books, I was going to start buying from The Book Depository instead but it turns out Amazon bought them, so no point now. Damn evil bastards.

6. Shutterfly - I’ve been using Shutterfly to order pictures for over 7 years now. That’s SUCH a long time! But they have great pre-paid print plans and always send me coupons and stuff. I’ve gotten so many free address labels and photobooks from this site. Plus they make really cute photo gifts.

7. Yahoo – I actually don’t like Yahoo that much, but I use it at least one day a week when I’m at work. I can kill at least an hour or two looking at the news and, more importantly, looking at pictures of famous people in the omg! section.

8. ABC’s Cougar Town Store – Ummm I would like everything here, please. Cougar Town is switching to TBS for the fourth season, so hopefully TBS comes up with another shop that has newer stuff in it. I would LOOOOOVVEEE a Cougar Town calendar for next year.

And that’s where I’m gonna stop, because the other websites I use a lot are my bank’s and my local news station’s, and that’s not exciting.

I obviously need to branch out a bit. What are some of your favorite non-bookish sites?

~Sarah

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April 21, 2012 · 7:39 am

Readathon: let’s do this thang!

Readathon pile, to be read books

updated readathon pile. cause i'm indecisive like that.

It’s time for Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon!!! EXCITEMENT!

So, I made some changes to my pile for today…

  • Swapped Michio Kaku’s Physics of the Impossible out for Physics of the Future, because I just bought this one so I can make notes in it if I want (the other was a library copy), and because it’s his most recent book and when choosing science-y books to read, I prefer them to be within the last couple years.
  • Ditched Lord of the Flies by William Golding, because last night I decided I’m just not in the mood to read it right now. I also set aside The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams because I’ll read that later.
  • Added Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, because I have been wanting to read it and last night when I was book shopping I talked myself into buying it so that I could read it today. Love the way my brain works.

 So, here are the little introductory questions for the first mini-challenge, along with my answers:

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today? NY state. Woohoo. Not, it’s all rainy today. But I guess rainy weather is good reading weather!

 

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku, because I am a huge nerd like that.
 
3) Which snack are you most looking forward to? I can’t even tell anymore… perhaps the jalapeno poppers. Or the turkey burgers we’re having for dinner tonight. Yum!
 
4) Tell us a little something about yourself! Ummmmmm… I’m 25, live with my honeyman who is amazing, have an easy job where I get to read a lot, and I read lots of different genres.
 
5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? The one thing I’m doing different than past readathons is that I’m actually starting with the group instead of several hours earlier! Feel pretty good about it so far. I’m going to try to be very relaxed today.
 
 
So, onward with the readathon, yes? I think I’m going to start with something light, such as Betty White’s book. Because who doesn’t love Betty White? I’ll update back here in a few hours. @SarahSaysRead if you want to tweet me before then!
 
~Sarah

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November 27, 2011 · 6:05 pm

Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros

OK, so basically I read this novel because it’s about Twitter! And I love Twitter, despite the fact that I’m often too lazy to fight with my phone to get it to work properly. I can only tweet, my stupid timeline doesn’t update unless I take the battery out of my phone and turn it on, and then 5 minutes later it’s not working again. Pain in the ass, I can’t wait to get a Droid. Anways.
 
So this novel is about Abby Donovan, a writer with one successful Oprah-approved novel under her belt, who has been struggling for years to write a second novel. Her confidence is down, she rarely leaves her apartment, and she’s dangerously close to running out of money to feed her two cats, Willow and Buffy. Then her agent signs her up for a Twitter account to remind her fans that she’s still out there, and she agrees to give this Twitter-thingy a whirl.
 
On her first day in the Twitterverse a witty professor on sabbatical named “MarkBaynard” becomes one of her followers and starts to teach her Twitter 101, and they develop a tweetship of snarky conversations peppered with pop culture references. And as Abby gets more comfortable with Tweeting, she starts to realize that she should be more like Mark – out there seeing the world and seizing the day instead of lounging in her sweats and avoiding writing her new novel. And her flirty tweetship starts to turn into something maybe more…
 
So this is supposed to be a romance story for the Twitter generation… and it KIND of works. I guess. Mark and Abby’s conversations take place entirely via 140-characters-or-less Twitter conversations, but really, it’s not any different than the people that used to “meet” and “fall in love” via AIM conversations. So this is really one more novel for the all-around digital generation than the Twitter generation.
 
Also, maybe it’s just me… but online flirty romance is creepy. I really don’t believe in meeting potential marriage-material people online. You never know for sure who the hell you’re talking to, which makes the flirty sexual innuendo (in YOUR endo… LOL sorry, Scrubs reference, the Todd is a perv), and online “dates” SUPER WEIRD. And really, meeting a potential boyfriend / girlfriend solely via Twitter is just as weird as meeting someone in an anonymous online chatroom. Or those weird dating websites.
 
I guess I’m trying to make a distinction here – making friends with fellow bloggers via Twitter is not that weird. There are some bloggers that I’d love to meet up with someday, preferably at like a big blogger or bookish event. But you know, we become friends via the whole book-blogging community in general, and then start following each other on Twitter, etc. It’s super weird to just log onto Twitter and strike up random conversations with random non-bloggy people that Twitter suggests you may like. Is any one getting the point I’m trying to make here? I guess developing online-only FRIENDSHIPS is not very creepy, where developing online-only ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS is the height of icky and you’re just asking to end up dead in a stranger’s freezer somewhere.
 
So, given my whole stance on the online-romance thing, Abby and Mark’s blossoming Twitter-romance was kind of off-putting and uncomfortable. Also, over 50% of their conversations seemed to be nothing but pop culture references and jokes. And while some made me happy (YAYYYY for mentioning Glee!), most of them kind of went over my head anyways because they’re based on older shows that most of the Twitter generation (ahem, my generation) know nothing about. Seriously, who my age has seen enough episodes of Frasier or Gilligan’s Island to really get all those jokes? Which makes it kind of weird that this book about what I’m assuming are mostly 30-year olds getting totally into the Twitter thing. Twitter-romance seems much more appropriate for people 20 or younger, because they’re naive and dumb enough to be developing online romantic relationships. People over 20 should know that it’s weird, pathetic, and stupid to be “dating” someone who you’ve met online and have no clue who they really are.
 
So, while I liked Abby and totally wanted her to get back on her feet and finish her novel… I also thought she was kind of lame for only perking up after she starts a flirty intimacy with an online stranger. It all just felt kind of wrong and skeevy.
 
Sarah Says: 2 stars

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October 10, 2011 · 10:48 am

Twitter, you are the best.

So yesterday after finishing short story A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows (see previous post for review) by Diana Gabaldon, I tweeted about how amazing I thought it was. And got THIS as a reply:

Yup, Diana herself tweeted back to me! I still hope to meet her in R.L. someday, but for now this is totally awesome. Thank you Twitter for giving me the chance to “speak” to my favorite author ever!

Okay, done gushing now.

~Sarah

*Also a note – Busy Phillips from Cougar Town tweeted back to me once too. I LOVE TWITTER.

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