meltem

UPDATE August 2016:  In light of Kim Harrison sending fan hordes to get a negative review of The Drafter on Amazon downvoted off first page  -- she's now on my do-not-buy and BBA list.  Yes, I realize she has a book about the Turn and Trent's origins coming out that fans of the Hollows series, like I was, are dying to read -- but I will not be buying that one either.

Original post on 2015-07-31 14:29 said:  

A 99¢ 50-page ebook prequel to September's The Drafter, start of a new series The Peri Reed Chronicles, from Kim Harrison set in a futuristic Detroit.  If trying to find on most sites from some reason you'll need to search by the isbn = 9781501134241 because title and author fail for whatever reason.

I'm a fan of the author but not sure if this is a series for me. Futuristic, urban fantasy, paranormal elements = sure; law enforcement = not so much; too near a future = not so much; comparing itself to suspense and thriller books = definitely not for me. I still have book hangover from her The Hollows (Rachel Morgan) series which I did get addicted to after beginning good-but-nothing-blew-me-away books I read via library loan because friends ranted about and because I loved her fantasy books written as Dawn Cook. It's possible I'll read this and think "gotta have it" even at hardcover prices or "nah..." (then after hearing everyone else loving later books I'll start it up at paperback prices or library books until hooked like I did with the now beloved The Hollows books).

Anne Rice never stops the good fight against us big bad bullies. I mean, hell, she even linked to STGRB on her FACEBOOK PAGE and oh boy! All the BBAs are coming out in this thread:

https://www.facebook.com/annericefanpage/posts/10203090519694116?stream_ref=10

Even "Athena Parker" herself. She must feel super special now.

I'd love to comment, but alas, I've been blocked from her FB page for over a year ever since I told Anne exactly what I thought of her ginormous ego and her sheep-like fans.

Boo.

Hey all! What are you currently reading? You can now update your reading progress with two clicks and share it with your friends. You’ll see new option on Dashboard in Currently Reading Section, just look on the right. It’s Update button :-)

Once you click Update you can fill up your reading progress, save and continue reading (update).

Or you can post it and share on your blog and among your friends (update and publish).

Both options are visible once you click Update in Currently reading box.

If you choose Update, you’ll change reading progress that is visible on your blog. And you can go back to reading :)

If you choose Update and publish, you’ll be moved to writing box with book attached, your current reading progress and social media switch on (green icons on the right) if you had connected them. If you didn't connect your Facebook or Twitter, you can do it in Settings/General. To turn off social media in writing box, click on icons and make them grey (deactivated).

Updates:

Discussion rooms

- We've made changes in discussion room and threads, now you can receive notifications about newly set discussions in a given group. If you wish to be informed, please go to Group page and choose “Yes” in notification section. Then once a new discussion is created, you’ll get a note about it.

- You can also made adding tags to your posts in discussion easier. We've made changes to list of tags:)

- It also easier to keep conversation going and answer to previous posts, we have new look for Reply posts: 

Messages:

Your personal messages page (PM) received new features of searching through messages, paging and deleting messages.

Tips:

- To find other reviews of a given title, go to book page OR type book title in Tag Search Box on Dashboard on the right. Then you'll see all writings about this book, including different editions and book sources. It also nice way of finding new blogs to follow :-)

- If you wish to find more blogs similar to yours, please take a look at your book blog categories and choose only those which are really relevant. Remember that the categories should reflect your reading taste and books you’re reading and reviewing on your blog. Best to choose several genre categories that you’re active in. Then you'll be able to find other bloggers with similar reading taste faster. 

To look through your book blog categories, go to Settings/Blog and click edit categories. And to look through blogs, go to Explore. 

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving Day!  And Thank You for being with us :-) 

“No shortcuts!” Many people support this statement but sometimes they are really useful and let discover new paths. So why not? We let you take two kind of shortcuts on BookLikes, with your Dashboard and Reviews.

Shortcut #1 - Dashboard

Form now on Dashboard is available in optional view with shortened posts. Now it will be easier to stay up to date with your friends reviews and bookshelf updates. To switch on new view of your Dashboard, go to Settings/General, select new option for feed activity at the bottom of the page and Save.

Once you select Dashboard in new view, you’ll see that posts are shortened and of similar size. With new view you’ll see title and the beginning of the posts, the rest will be hidden and will be revealed once you request to see entire post at the bottom of the text.

In this way your Dashboard will be better organized and will present numerous post entries that you can easily read, like and reblog without the necessity of infinite scrolling. It’s like never-ending table of content :-)

Remember that you can still add page break to your texts while writing. Then the posts will be published with Read more option not only on Dashboard but also on your Blog page. 

Let’s remind ourselves what other options Dashboard has. The right column has many useful features:

The upper part of Dashboard works as navigation bar which helps you to move between your admin views of your webpages: Blog, Shelf and Timeline. All changes made on your admin pages are mirrored on your public webpage with your personal address yourusername.booklikes.com.  To view your public page just click on your photo on Dashboard.

Dashboard is also the place where you search books. Use search box on the top to find books from book sources we partnership with (select book sources in Settings/Search) or search through your own Shelf (select magnifying glass icon in search box).

Shortcut #2 - Reviews

The second shortcut  is about your reviews and ability to edit them. So far you could edit your texts in your admin blog view. Now it can be done faster from Table view of your Shelf. We added Edit Review option to your reviewed books so if you want to add something to your published text, click on it and you’ll be moved to writing mode and text box of your review.

You can also use blog admin view to edit reviews. If you want to edit text added some time ago, you can use search box (paste post title) instead of scrolling down. Once the post is found hover over it and click Edit in upper right corner. Then make corrections and Save with your changes.

No unnecessary shortcuts :-) Enjoy!

Join me in voting this book in the goodreads Choice Awards 2013, in categories of "Best Debut Goodreads Author" and "Best Nonfiction".

Screenshots of my votes (I actually did not have anything in mind for either category as not a bug nonfiction reader and would have no idea which author debuted on goodreads):

Not my brilliant spurt of imagaination, originated with Lobstergirl at https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1499741-important-note-regarding-reviews?page=123#comment_86192680

We're making organizing your books and writing reviews easier and faster. Today's Thursday release includes several updates concerning exclusive statuses, your reviews and reblogs.

On Your Shelf

NEW: Change shelf into exclusive status

Form now on you can change existing thematic shelf into exclusive status. Then the books will be shelved only with this exclusive status (former shelf) and any other default status (read, planning to read, currently reading) will be removed. This means that you don't have to manually reset the default statuses, it will be done automatically. 

To Change the existing thematic shelf into exclusive status, point on the shelf name and click the icon .

This change works in both ways. This means that you can make new status (former shelf) a thematic shelf again. However, the default statuses will not be brought back. Be careful and double check that you really want to change the chosen shelf into exclusive status and reset default statuses. 

Here are several other options available on your Shelf page:

1. Create exclusive status

You can still add new status to your Shelf (e.g.: Re-read) and shelve new book with this status. Here's how:

1. Just create new status (click +add exclusive status, type name and Enter).

2. Search for a book in search box on the top, click on it and select "Add to bookshelf" in book pop up.

3. Select new status in Edit Statuses sector and Save. 

OR

If you don't want to change the whole shelf into new status, you can manually reset default status on several books and keep those books with new status only. If you wan to reset the default status follow these steps:

1. Create new exclusive status on your Shelf page 

2. Click on the book on your Shelf.

3. Edit your statuses and select the one that fits you.

4. Click on the default status.

5. Click on the green default status on tab in book pop up - it will go white (deactivated).

6. Save.

Below are screens that show how it looks like in the pop up.

Default Read and Exclusive: 

Exclusive only:

2. Create thematic shelves

Thematic shelves help you to organize your books and keep those from the same series, author, genre together. To add new thematic shelves: click +Add new Shelf, type name and hit Enter. Then click on book on your Shelf and Edit shelves in book pop up. Remember to Save.

You can also rename and remove thematic shelves.

Hover over the Shelf name and you'll see two icons: "x" and little pencil. When you click on a pencil, you'll be able to edit shelf's name and if you select 'x', you'll delete the shelf. Your books will not be deleted, the books will stay on your Shelf page with default status but not on the thematic shelf (it will be gone). 

3. Table view

Table view shows your books in a list an has numerous edit options:

- Add to Shelves: You can select several books and add them to a given thematic shelf or change status.

- Sort by: You can sort by author, title, add date, read date, ratings and cover to add missing cover images.

- Remove selected: You can delete several books from your shelf, they will be removed from your shelf page permanently. 

- Add: you can add ratings, shelves to single book, read date, review. 

Reviews

NEW: You can Go from your Shelf straight into Review writing mode. 

Now when you want to create a review straight from your Shelf, the rating stars marked on your Shelf will be auto-transferred to your writing mode and the text will be automatically marked as a Review. 

You can uncheck the review marker and change ratings any time in the writing mode. 

Reblog update

We made reblogs more transparent. From now on every time you reblog a given post (review, text, photo, quote, URL, video) an information about it and a link to original author of the post will be given on the top. 

More updates concerning reblogs are also in progress. As well as many many more :-)

Goodreads has one rule above all others:

NEVER delete a unique book from the database. No matter what, especially if it's been shelved and reviewed.

They broke their own rule.

(Click image to enlarge)

Read more

If you don't want to annoy lots of people with big assed posts on their dash... Use the page break function. Makes things so much less huge.

_________

Spread the word!

This adds a "Read More" button to expand the post.

Note: This also works when reblogging. Even if the original poster didn't use one. Also I often see reblogs where the original poster used a break and the reblogger didn't. 

I'm just going to keep reblogging this. Thanks to the people who do it regularly!

Amanda Welling shares a screenshot of author's discussing "trolls," where it was reveled that several authors are collecting readers' personal information, via Book Giveaways, into a spreadsheet to "track and identify trolls." 

There's no indication of what they plan to do with this informations, but the fact that none of these authors are respecting the privacy of potential readers is worrisome enough. 

Whether you believe you're one of the "trolls" being targeted is beside the point, everyone should be concerned, if not outright pissed. The personal information of ALL the participants in these giveaways is being shared without their permission. 

Not surprising, GoodReads has absolutely nothing safeguarding privacy of the participants' personal information in the Terms & Conditions of their giveaways. 

This is my comment on the issue. AmandaWelling's rebog starts from *** This is very worrying. Someone 'anonymous' is collecting real life names and addresses through GoodReads, but they don't want anyone to know who they are. Another author wants to have this information - for what if it isn't for stalking?  

I'm not really involved in the reviews/comments/spa authors thing as I don't read in any of their genres, but all this tracking of people is worrying. It's worrying because if 'anonymous' (what a coward eh? At least the other author has the courage of his convictions and uses his name) can track people and their friends, what about all sorts of other crazies, maybe targetting the kids with the private profiles sending away for stuff?  

This is seriously Not Good.

***

...I'm not surprised by this anymore. 

You're free, Charlie! Run, flee before it's too late! 

Not much enjoyment from goodreads lately but this little feedback group bit cracked me up:

Okay, maybe just funny to me who did one too many incredibly dull stints programming infobot systems..

Please don't blog only about your book. Promotion is fine, but if all you ever talk about is your book, you won't get followers or readers.

Tell us about yourself. Blog about books you like, and that you don't like. Blog about your writing process. Win us over with your personality. I can promise you that this will lead to readers, and maybe even friends.