Kristina's Book Blog has moved...

Effective immediately, Kristina's Book Blog will be located at:

http://www.kristinablogs.com

Please update your bookmarks and links and come on over!

Why have I moved? The main reason is that WordPress allows me to sort my reviews into various categories, which is very useful for a book blog. That way if a reader wants to see what children’s books I’ve read and reviewed, but don’t care to spend time sifting through the archives and reviews of other genres to find them, they can click on the Children’s Books category and see all those reviews in one glance. This was the number one reason for switching.

Switching over was easy too. WordPress imported all my posts from Blogger without any problem. The only things that didn’t transfer properly were the pictures (and the way they are placed within the post), and some of the text formatting, which for someone like me who can be obsessive with grammar and punctuation and is a self-proclaimed “font junkie”, I’ll admit that it’s an aspect that irks me. I see myself spending a couple (few, many) hours pulling up each post and editing them to fix those things to my satisfaction.

Now, I’ve only been at WordPress for a day, so I haven’t had the chance to really explore what other gems are unique to WordPress, but so far I am liking what I’m seeing. But I also see a few disadvantages. I’m a little disappointed that I can’t fiddle around with the template the way I could with Blogger. At least with Blogger, I could play with the column widths and colors and had more control over the overall view. I was also able to look around the web and find different templates than the standard Blogger templates (not for this blog, but my other ones), and upload them for a different look whenever I wanted a visual change. So while WordPress is very easy to use, I haven’t found a way to manipulate the template visually (at the very least, to change the colors), and I’m not entirely impressed with the choice of template themes provided. They are kind of… boring. I am certain that I could look around the web and find WordPress templates that I will find visually appealing, but I’m not sure I can change the template if I keep this blog hosted at Wordpress.com. Though from what I've read so far, WordPress is looking into this themselves and are keen on giving their bloggers more of these choices.

So I'll see you there :)

The Next Big Thing -- Johanna Edwards

In comparison to the last book I read, this was a much-welcomed fast read. This novel is very current in that it is pure chick lit centered on a fictional reality TV show.

Kat Larson is a big girl. At 230 pounds, she's tired of being the fat girl that everyone brushes past. The only thing that gives her happiness in her life is her gorgeous British boyfriend, Nick. Only problem is: it's an online relationship and they've never met. He thinks she's a size four, and she's done everything she can to keep him thinking that way. As their relationship grows, he starts asking for them to finally meet face-to-face. Kat knows she can never meet him until she loses the weight.

So when a friend of hers comes across an open audition call in the newspaper for a new reality TV show called From Fat to Fabulous, Kat decides she has nothing to lose by auditioning, except the weight. When she's accepted onto the show, she thinks everything she wants in life is finally going to start falling into place. She'll be thin, famous, rich and finally able to be the person Nick thinks she is.

Of course, nothing ever works out the way it's planned. Except this novel. It's extremely formulaic and predictable. It's not boring, but it's not a great piece of creative fiction either.