Lady Danielle

(Reblogged from Kaia)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my husband is a programmer. He works for an international company with a high bar for its IT staff. 

I ran GR's latest nonsense--their claim that Booklikes is causing Goodreads content to be deleted--past him, and the verdict is that this is actually probably GR's fault. More than likely is has to do with flaws in their API code that are more like security holes than features. Other sites should never be able to delete GR user content. The fact that it may have somehow happened indicates that the blame lies with Goodreads, and they're trying to use Booklikes as a scapegoat.

My husband also ran this past his colleagues, who agreed that there's only one way to handle this:

Run. Pack up your shit and get the hell out of dodge, because Goodreads is not a site you can trust. Their API code is a mess and they're trying to blame it on someone else so they don't have to take responsibility for exposing their user base to potential security breaches. The best thing you can do for yourself is jump ship.

I'm appalled at Goodreads' behavior. Their lack of professionalism and unwillingness to take responsibility for their mistakes is horrifying. They're a shit snowball rolling down a hill and with each new fuck up, the mess gets uglier and uglier. Find a place that respects you as a user, a place that doesn't try to censor you and doesn't think you're an idiot who can't see through their bullshit. That place is not Goodreads. 

Oh god this is so amazing and funny. I don't want this to end.

The moral: read a book. (And I'd like to say "exercise some discretion in who you listen to", but I won't.)

"Have you..." Kami cleared her throat. "Have you had a chance to talk to Holly?"

"No," Angela snapped. "Been chatting much with Jared?"

"We often have special moments where I come into a room and he immediately leaves," Kami said. "I treasure those times."



Damn Sarah Brennan. Already chuckling.

What a cute manga! I devoured this in just a few hours today on my way to college; I was giggling on the bus like a middle-schooler. 

Meet Kiri-chan, an undercover hair beautician. She doesn't make a big deal about her "magic" hands, she merely helps girls who feel "ugly" within an hour. She's a very chill main character -- always tired, but always kind... unless you're one of the three boys at school in the Scissors Project. These boys handpick beautiful girls with shoulder-length hair for a makeover. 

The main character in the S.P. is Narumi; let me tell you, he's a class A asshole... but atolerable one. I got a real kick out of him: so boastful, so arrogant, so dramatic. Usually I'd drop a novel when the male MC becomes insufferable with his douche-y-ness, but I couldn't put this manga down simply because I couldn't wait for "Mysterious X" to put Narumi's scissors where his mouth is in the Cultural Festival. Only problem: there was a cliffhanger, ugh! I'm angry.

***This manga is by all means predictable, but it's still a light and fun read nonetheless.***

BTW, I really liked Kei from the S.P., he was funny. I can relate to him with his love of food. 

Testing:

Look what GR replied to me about the deletion of my HP books and my other positive reviewed books:

(Click image to enlarge)

WANNA KNOW THE FUNNY THING?

I didn't even know about BookLikes at the time. Awks...

EDITED: Also, I already mentioned to Kara that I re-added the missing books/reviews. (And I can't find the attachment she mentioned. Ugh.)

EDIT #2: Oh, never mind, I found the attachment. Damn yahoo!'s updated email shit. So difficult. And correction: I looked at my status updates on GR, did know about BL, but why would BL remove my books/reviews???

Stopped roughly on page 114

Once again, we enter a world full of clichéd writing. Nicely done. The first time I picked this garbage up was last year in November, the average user rating really excited me. Not to mention how some people are saying it's "so much better than Twilight". Excuse me while I put my eyeballs back inside my head because I rolled them too damn hard. I kept forcing myself to continue, constantly telling myself "it will get better". Boy, was I ever wrong. 

This was nothing like Twilight; in fact, this was worse than Twilight. (I read Twilight first and enjoyed it quite a lot, so reading a remake of this was really annoying.) This has what every other paranormal young adult novel has: 
A) a douche and a stupid Mary Sue who loves being treated badly by Mr Douche (okay, so maybe our MC didn't take too kindly into being treated like shit, but she kept coming back to him as though she loved it). 
B) The clichéd story-line: new girl arrives and meets mysterious people (Douche and his stupid sister) people tend to stay away from.
C) finds out what the mysterious people are but doesn't give a damn because she loves Mr Douche so much.

The list is endless.

Yeah, I get it, Armentrout, Daemon's super hot with a body like a greek god and eyes that're piercing green. I get it. His sexiness was described in almost every. Damn. Page. I think it was constantly stated so we could forget about how much of an asshole Daemon was and focus on his hotness overload. Everyone seems to have loved our protagonist, but I really hated her. Okay I admit, it was pretty cool to read that our MC was a book blogger, it was really cool, but it doesn't cover the fact that this writing was mediocre and cliché (can I also add that the arguments taken place in this book was so... god what's the word? Childish? Try hard? Somewhere along those lines). (I find it extremely funny how the author made fun of twilight when her shit of a book was a complete rip-off.* [applauds]) Oh well.

(Sighs), everyone seems to love Daemon because he was a douche. I think this is a new trend -- get a douche for a boyfriend because it's so hot. (Rips hair out) 

* Stop trying so fucking hard to hate on something you were inspired by, Armentrout:

And when he spoke, it wasn't out loud. It was in my head. This is what we look like. We are beings of light. Even in human form, we can bend light to our will. There was a pause. As you can see, I don’t look like a giant insect. Or… sparkle. Even in my head I could hear the disgust on that last one.

“Will you show me what you really look like? You don't sparkle, do you?”




see what i did there?

so i've been letting two stray cats come into my house everyday for a few hours to eat and have water, one of them (both girls btw) showed up so i gave her some food. i thought she was full because she didn't finish; she starts following me around the kitchen crying and i'm just like, 'stop being a glutten you have food right there, eat it!' but she keeps following me around meowing.

i made a hotdog and went into the room and she's looking up at it meowing-- occasionally lifting up on two legs to have both her fronts paws on top of the bed. so i give her some of my wiener. she does it again and i say the same thing that she has food 'right over there' and i lead her to it, but she will not eat.

a couple of minutes later, her sister shows up at the door meowing and i let her in

GUESS WHAT??

when the other cat i let in went to the unfinished food, the one following me started eating with her.

SHE WAS SAVING THE FOOD FOR HER AND HER SISTER I JUST

There are quite a few tutorials on how to change the layout of your BookLikes blog. I figured it's good to have them all in one post, and I'd like to thank all who put a lot of work into making them so others can enjoy BookLikes. 

Let's start with the customization blogs posted by BookLikes: 

• Edit Your Design Theme With HTML on BookLikes 
• Your Blog on BookLikes - Custom-Made

Tutorials made by BookLikers for BookLikers: 

• Litchick's Easy Tips for Customization
• Litchick's How to Change Your Followers/Following to Something Fun
• AnHeC's How to Move/change your Followers/Following conters
• Jane's How to Customize your BookLikes Blog using CSS
• Jane's Customizing your BookLikes Blog Pt.2
• ThreeRs' Blog about Fonts
• AnHeC's How to change font colour (text, link, comment section)
• AnHeC's Background for Search Bar

Note: All links open in a new window and take you to the original posts and their creators. Leave comments, likes and reblog the hell out of them so others can see it too :) 

Great idea. Thanks to everybody working on this list!

Thank God tumblr allows us to have booklikes links now! 

Day 3: Your favourite Series

Day 4: Favourite book of your favourite series.

Going to do these two together since I missed Day 3 and won't be saying a lot about it.

Day 3: Hands down the Harry Potter series. 

Day 4: My favourite book from that series would have to be Order of the Phoenix. Now I know what you all are thinking: "WHAT??? I hated that book, it made me so mad!" That's what I loved about it. Of course, I placed myself in the rest of the series and experienced the magic, love, loss, and friendship, but, for the weekend that I devoured this, it truly felt like I was there. I don't remember sleeping or eating, that's how vivid this book was. 

I wanted to stop reading this book because it made me so angry (but not in a bad way... if you understand what I mean). I wanted to be finished with Hogwarts just like Harry -- I did not blame him for packing his bags since I already done just that. Do not even get me started on the betrayal of Percy Weasley. I felt what Ron was feeling. it felt like I lost a brother, too. This book was dark. Very, very dark. It's so hard to explain and talk about the things I loved about this. 

And Sirius... god I'm going to start crying again.

“We love having authors on Goodreads. But, we are a site that's focused on readers.  If there is a choice between what is best for readers and what is best for authors, we will always err on the side of readers.” 

"I've watched us deal with many author flame wars over the years, and they all started with an author commenting on a negative review of their own book first." 

Please note: I am not in any way related to the company I'm about to talk about; I don't get any commissions or any benefits for talking about this bookseller. I simply want to share how happy I am with them with people who love books as much as I do.

So, to start this post I should tell you that I live in Bulgaria, a place where Bulgarian is the official language, and books in any other languages are often hard to find and are really pricey. 

I completely understand how commerce works and that selling stuff needs to be profitable for you. However, I am a book collector, I buy books really often AND choose the editions (because of translation, quality, covers) very, very carefully. Of course, there are a lot of books in English (the language I mainly read in) sold in Bulgaria, but in 99% of the cases the book I want to buy is either not available at all, or is an edition that I don't want to buy and own.

Excuse any grammatical errors, just wanted to write this before I head off to bed. I'm exhausted.

I definitely can't have only ONE book for this one. You may have noticed I'm missing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, that's because I haven't read that one three times; rather, twice. The rest of the HP series I find myself going back to them once every three months or so. I've the HP series so many times, they've never gotten old. The first books my child (if I ever have one) will read will be Harry Potter. Do I really need to explain why these are on this list????

Ingo by Helen Dunmore: I remember reading this book in 7th grade; I've never wanted to be a mermaid so much. There's some type of spell on Ingo -- I dunno, guys, reading this makes me feel as though I'm on an island. I cherish Ms Dunmore's books (Igno is book one; Tideknot book two; The Deep book three; The Crossing of Ingo the final instalment [I still haven't read this one yet]). I read book one more than three times and books two as well as three only two times. Funny short story: In 9th grade this sophomore saw that I was reading Ingo and the Tideknot; she was telling me how much she loved mermaids and wanted to borrow the books when I was finished with them. So, me being extremely nice and all, I let her borrow them and GUESS THE FUCK WHAT?! The girl never gave them back. There was a month before school ended and everyday of that month I asked her for my books. She kept saying, 'Oh my god I keep forgetting I'm so sorry I'll bring them to you tomorrow.' I swear, I had this urge to follow her home, break into her house, and ask for my books. I never got them back.

I had to re-buy them. (rubs temples) Never again will I ever let someone borrow my books. NEVER. 

Breaking Dawn: I really enjoyed this. My favourite from the saga. Nuff said.