Book Around You #2 - Curation of Book Posts

in #books7 years ago


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Welcome to the second edition of Book Around You, a curation project from @steemitbooks. It's been four days since the first curation post and it's time for another!

I'm glad to see that quite a few people are checking out the project after being upvoted, and several people have joined the Discord channel and are dropping links in there. Thanks a lot! I'm trying to do my part by scanning through the #book, #books, and #reading tags every night and upvoting the best ones. As a note: I'm normally going to put only one post per user in a curation post, but I'm not limiting the number of upvotes you can receive.

That said, lets get rolling!

Book Reviews

Book Babble #6: My take on… "On Writing" by Stephen King by @adambarratt

@adambarratt has been publishing a review a day so I was really unsure which one to choose. In the end I settled on his review of On Writing because it's a book I've never gotten around to reading, but always tell myself I should. Adam did a great job of summarizing some of the main points of this books. I loved the quote "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." Most of use are voracious readers so we're already half-way there! Now we just need to start writing. ;)

And I can't stop from mentioning this, so here it goes: KISS means "Keep It Simple, Stupid." Please don't sugar coat it!

Review of Everything Must Go by Jenny Fran Davis by @thestorychaser

I stumbled across this post while curating the #books tag and I have to say I like it. While it isn't the type of book review that dives into the POV, plot, and structure of a book, it conveys exactly what @thestorychaser wanted to convey - that she loved this book! While it's not the type of book I'm interested, the review still caught my interest and made me check out her profile. Speaking of that, do check out her profile for yourself. She's been writing some good, heartfelt reviews but hasn't been getting much attention. If you have some extra voting power drop by and give her a visit.

Female Hysteria and The Yellow Wallpaper by @nobyeni

You may be wondering what female hysteria has to do with yellow wallpaper. And unfortunately I don't know since I haven't read the book (though it could be the shade of yellow?). Guess you and I each need to pick up a free copy of the book and get reading! Check out @nobyeni's great review before or after you read it, to help you get a better grasp of the book.

A Book in the Hand

How to Get Over Book Hangovers by @bookleaf

Book hangovers are real, trust me. I have some pretty bad ones after I read anything by Victor Hugo. And yes, books are the mortal enemy of sleep. That next chapter is like tomorrow in that it never comes. @bookleaf has the right solution though - just read another book! (Preferably after sleeping for a few hours, of course.)

And here's your Brandon Sanderson quote to go with this post:

By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry...

The Joy of Reading by @reewritesthings

I've always liked reading (probably in part because I grew up traveling) but I know some people don't care for books at first. @reewritesthings shares her journey from book hater to hoarder. I love how she said that each person has a book they need to read, in order to learn to love reading. Kinda like a book soul mate :)

Contests/Giveaways

Adventure Reading Contest by @therovingreader

We can all agree that reading is an adventure. This contest challenges you to share your adventure with others by writing about, and snapping a picture of, the book you're reading and where you're reading it at. And no, you don't have to read anywhere special. Even if you're in your bed you can still have an adventure! Excuse me, I think I heard something under my bed...

Deadline: Sunday, March 11 at 8 PM UTC

Book Giveaway #2 by @metzli

@metzli is running a neat little giveaway where you can win a free children's book. You can get up to four tickets in the draw by doing certain tasks, and two of those can be earned by commenting. Check it out, and enter for a chance to win a book to gift to that little child in your life.

Epilogue

Enjoy your reading! If you can, try to support these authors with an upvote. If you're an Bibliophagist (book devourer) consider writing some book posts of your own. Everyone's always looking for more books to add to their shelves.


The Steemit Book Project was started by @carn and its goal is to make books more available to everyone. All the profits from this and other posts by @steemitbooks will be used to buy books to donate to Open Library. For more info about the project and ways you can help, read the project's introduction post.

If you write book-related posts, drop by our Discord channel (https://discord.gg/h93nHMu) and post a link to them in our curation-requests channel.

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Thanks for the inclusion! I probably won't keep up with one a day but just trying to get a few under my belt to get going. Yeah, I'm aware of the 'KISS' acronym, just a bit of fun to mix things up! ;) And I'll be sure to keep tabs on the others. Good job on getting the group going and the curations!

If you're just mixing it up, it's fine. ;) I only get frustrated with the people who want to make it politically correct :P

What a great source for people to find more books to read and book lovers to follow! Thanks for the inclusion too. Beyond honored. :)

You mentioned me doing some dividers, just following up and figured I'd post on your latest blog to keep in touch. Just let me know what you'd like and I can do a few and make it into a post as well I suppose!

Ok, great!

For dividers I'm currently thinking of a flat shelf the width of the page with the middle section having books within some bookends. If you wanted to do multiple you could change book colors and sizes.

I came up with two ideas for the header so you can take your pick on which one you think would be better.

  • Stacks of books with the edges having higher stacks then the middle. The Background would just be white.
  • A view from the inside of a bookshelf with the covers of books on either side of the header and the shelves top and bottom. The background would be a streaked view of a room. Something to give the image a sense of space but not distract from the title.

Whichever header you choose should include a large blank space that I could add text into.

How many dividers or headers you do is up to you. I'm not going to complain if you do several but you're the one doing it so it's up to you. And you're definitely welcome to do a post about them and give them a Creative Commons license if you want to. Thanks for doing this :)

Loved this list and what you're doing with your curation project. And I especially loved the Sanderson quote about how authors "Get a kickback from the caffeine industry!"
🤣 It really should be true...

Do you guys have any requirements for what kind of book-related posts you require in your curation-requests channel? It has to be a review? And any genre?

[Currently hosting fun contests on my comedic FanFic-story series @JoyLovesToWrite]

You can submit any post that is book related. Reviews, artwork, posts about reading, etc. I'm not limiting genres either (though I'm not too keen on horror so those would have to be really good to be approved). I do want posts I review to have none or very little profanity and such (the book itself can have it, though I'd appreciate it if the reviewer mentioned it) and be well written with good English, but those are the only qualifications I have rn.

Great job on curating! While finding out new books to indulge in, I also find new fellow book lovers to follow! :)

Hi @steemitbooks, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.

Join us on Thursdays for Pimp Your Post Thursday at 11am EST or 7PM EST in the Steemit Ramble Discord or:

If you’d like to nominate someone’s post just visit the Steemit Ramble Discord

I wish I had the patience for long novels, I never did. I'm just not wired for it. Really nice post, thanks for sharing!

So glad to have found this, I was so disappointed there were so few Bibliophiles on steemit. Tried getting something going to no avail.
Thanks for being one of the few.