Follow the Yellow Book Road

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Squee! I finally had the opportunity to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

My sisters and I enjoyed a day at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. It was an AMAZING experience. Unfortunately, we went during a school break and the park was extremely packed, but that didn't take away from our enjoyment. Here are the highlights!

We arrived at the park bright and early and headed straight back to Diagon Alley. It was magical.

Our first stop was Ollivander's where we were able to watch a wand choose the wizard and purchase wands. We chose to purchase interactive wands so that we could cast spells in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade. I chose Hermoine's wand and one of my sisters chose Luna's. If you choose to purchase an interactive wand, it comes with a map that shows where you can cast spells, but keep your eyes open for the medallions on the ground because there are some secret places to cast spells.

We roamed around Diagon Alley, casting spells and window shopping for a bit. There are some great shops including Weasley's Wizard Wheezes and a dark alley where you can find Borgin and Burkes.

Next we boarded the Hogwarts Express and headed over to Hogsmeade. We enjoyed some Butterbeer (deliciously sweet!) and wondered around exploring.

Then we enjoyed Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure for a bit. It was so packed that they were giving out admission tickets with time frames for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Later we went back and went through Hogwarts (amazing) and rode the ride, as well as The Escape from Gringotts (unreal).

All in all, it was an awesome day! I'm most definitely looking forward to returning during a less busy time of the year.

The Paper Magician - Book Review

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

Author: Charlie N Holmberg
Series: The Paper Magician Series #1
Publication Date: September 1, 2014
Source: Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Summary from Goodreads: Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.
Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.
An Excisioner—a practitioner of dark, flesh magic—invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.

Rating: êêê

Review

This book had so much promise. It started out great, I was quickly sucked into England in the early 1900s where magicians bond to certain man made materials. Unfortunately, the world building didn't quite hold up for the duration of the story.

I was intrigued by the two main characters, Emery more so than Ceony. Ceony is like able and reasonably developed. But Emery really caught my attention, he was quirky and mysterious and I really wanted to know his story.

At about the 45% mark, the story began to drag. This is clearly meant to be the part that keeps you on the edge of your seat, but it just felt monotonous to me.

Overall, the writing is decent but it felt like the author was trying to tell the story so quickly that he forgot to tell you everything and left several details out or brushed past things.

However, the last few chapters of the book were redeeming. The climax and resolution are clear and exciting. The ending is sweet and left me interested in the next book.

2015 Book Blog Bingo Challenge

Happy New Year! I'm sure many of you are setting your reading and blogging goals for 2015 and so I thought it would be fun to create a 2015 reading challenge.

It's a pretty straight forward challenge. Using the BINGO card below, your goal is to read books and mark off the corresponding squares on the card. You can get BINGO is any way you want: a traditional BINGO (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line), four corners, coverall, whatever you want!

The Details

The challenge will run from January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2015.
Create a sign up post and add your post to the link up below.
Only books read in 2015 count
At the beginning of every month, there will be a round up post for you to link and show your progress.
There will be at least one mini-challenge sometime during the year for all participants, so check in every month and make sure you link up your progress!
There will be a giveaway at the end of the challenge for all participants.
To qualify for the challenge related giveaway(s), participants must be signed up via the link up on this post and must track their progress (either on your sign up post or in a separate post, its completely up to you).

My Goal

A Double BINGO (2 traditional BINGOs in any direction)

2014 Challenge Recaps

During 2014, I participated in 5 different challenges. Here is a recap on my progress and successes.

Goodreads Reading Challenge

This year I set my Goodreads reading goal to 65 books because 2013 was hectic and I didn't get to meet my reading goal. I am happy that this year I exceeded my goal and read 75 books!

Love for Books Read-A-Thon

This Read-A-Thon challenge was hosted by Jessi at Novel Heartbeat and Amanda at Confessions of a Bookie Monster. My goal for this read-a-thon was to complete two books and I met this goal!

2014 Netgalley Challenge

The 2014 Netgalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge is hosted by Falling for YA and will (hopefully) give you the incentive to tackle your review books, stumble upon new ones, and get your Netgalley percentage to the desired 80%! My goal for this challenge was 25 books and to get my percentage to at least 80%. I read 20 books and my percentage is 100%, so I sort of met this goal.

Blog Ahead Challenge

The Blog Ahead Challenge, which is a bloggery version of NaNoWriMo. It's hosted by Herding Cats and Burning Soup. It runs from November 1-30th, 2014 and the basic goal is to get "ahead" in your blog posts. My goal for this challenge was 15 pre-scheduled posts, and I completed 21!

Top Ten of 2014 Challenge

This week long event was hosted by Two Chicks on Books, Rachel from Fiktshun, Mindy from Magical Urban Fantasy Reads, Rachel from Reading YA Rocks and Nancy fromTales of a Ravenous Reader! The event wass simple. Follow the dates and list topics as provided. I completed 4 out of the 5 lists.

Overall, I'd say for my first year of blogging, I feel really good about the goals I set for myself and the progress I made toward meeting them.

What challenges did you participate in this year? Do you feel you were successful? Do you have any challenges you are looking forward to in 2015?

Top Ten Tuesday #18 (12/30/2014)

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted over at The Broke and Bookish , and this weeks Top Ten is Top Ten Goal/Resolutions for 2015

These are my blogging and bookish goals for 2015

Host my own blogging challenge (this is already set in motion, so I will need participants hint hint)
Participate in at least 2 other bloggers' challenges
Increase my followers
Attend at least 2 bookish events
Be better about blogging in general
Read and comment on other blogs more
Read 70 books
Re-do my blog design
Organize my book shelf (I finally have a book shelf, now I just need to get the books out of their boxes)
Post at least twice a week

So, what are your blogger resolutions and goals for 2015?

Bookish Discussion: Giveaways

Seriously, who doesn't love the sweet satisfaction of winning something? And generally speaking in the book blogging world, who doesn't love getting a free book (or multiple free books), swag, and sometimes free money to spend on books?!

Book bloggers find lots of reasons to host giveaways. If you participate in a book tour, usually the publisher provides some sort of giveaway either for individual blogs or tour wide. Bloggers who are celebrating accomplishments (like blogoversaries, reaching a certain number of followers, or meeting a goal) host giveaways. Bloggers who host events (like challenges and read-a-thons) usually include a giveaway too.

As a blogger who enters these giveaways pretty regularly and would love to host more, I've got lots of questions:

Britney Spears confused dumb dumbfounded durr stupid Derp GIF

My thinking face...lol

Where do bloggers get the books (or funds) for giveaways?

I know that when you participate in a tour the publisher/author usually provides a free book or swag for a giveaway. But lots of bloggers are giving away ARCs, boxes of books, and dollar amounts to various online book retailers. Are bloggers clearing out their shelves and giving away their personal book collections? Are bloggers paying for these giveaways out of their own pockets? If a publisher sends you an ARC in the mail, are you allowed to use that ARC for a giveaway? How many bloggers out there are using affiliate links to finance their giveaways? How do affiliate links really work anyways?

How do you decide how long to keep a giveaway open for entries?

Again, I know if a publisher or tour host is running the giveaway, that they make this call. But for bloggers who are doing this on their own, how do you decide how long to keep a giveaway open?

Do you make any options for entry mandatory in order to unlock other options for entry and if so, why?

I assume bloggers like to host giveaways in order to increase traffic and followers, so does making certain options like "follow via bloglovin" mandatory actually accomplish that? or does it prevent non-followers from entering?

On the flip side of that, do you allow entrants to repeat any entries daily? Does allowing entrants to tweet (or some other option) every day for multiple entries actually help increase traffic and followers?

How do you decide what to giveaway?

How do you decide how many entries to assign each possible thing a person can do to enter?

How do you pay for shipping? Again, I'm wondering if most bloggers are paying out of pocket or using profit from affiliate links for this or maybe some other unknown source?

Do you host multiple giveaways at one time? If so, how do you stay organized?

I think those are all of my questions, for now. I'm sure more will come up as the discussion ensues!

Please feel free to share your answers and any questions about giveaways that you have in the comments!