Book Review: Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Howl's Moving Castleis a story about many things, but mainly follows Sophie, who finds the courage to leave her dull and confining life behind and seek her fortune, despite her oldest daughter status. When she becomes entangled in the mysterious fortunes of the Wizard Howl and his apprentice Michael, not to mention the demon Calcifer, things become decidedly more exciting.

Things I Liked:
I love the rambling nature of the story. It doesn't appear to be going anywhere, but it is so much fun along the way. The end manages to wrap things up neatly and satisfyingly. I really like Sophie and Howl - they are interesting and complete characters. Calcifer is also a lot of fun. The characters and the magic in this book were just plain entertaining. The interactions between characters and some of the adventures are quite humorous.

Things I Didn't Like:
I also didn't like the rambling nature of the story (call me conflicted). I had a hard time feeling connected with anything, despite my feelings for the characters. I wondered throughout my reading what exactly was the purpose, or is there one? There just seemed to be so many random things that happened, I couldn't connect them, until right near the end. The cover shown here is slightly better than the one I read - it was dreadful!

Read-alikes:
Reminded me of Terry Pratchett's books like The Wee Free Menand The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: none

mrg-factor: none

v-factor: none

Overall rating: *** (between 3 and 4)

Follow-up to Twitterings and Followers

Wow. Really. I am overwhelmed by your answers to my queries! I wish I could respond to each person individually (I don't know how those popular bloggers who regularly get this many responses manage to do it)! So, I decided to write an entire post mentioning all that I learned from your comments!

On Twitter:
First off, I totally love the irony that many found my post via Twitter. As Suey mentioned, Twitter would certainly drive traffic here (now, if only I could hire Natasha to tweet about me regularly :) I am so glad I got the courage up to post about this, or I might still have all this wrong ideas about Twitter!

I had a rather incorrect view of just what Twitter can be used for (at least in the book blogging world). I have obviously been missing out! I think I would enjoy "listening" to the bookish chats, but I might feel just a little too shy to actually say much (at first). I'll bet there are all kinds of interesting things, like Jeanne mentioned, that are talked about (or tweeted, I guess) that I am missing.

I really liked what Natasha @ Maw Books (and wordlily and The Book Vixen and Florinda and most everyone else) had to say about Twitter being a "forum where bloggers, authors, publishers, booksellers and reading fanatics all occupy the same space. It's great to be able to discuss issues/reading in ways that you normally wouldn't be able to. " If that doesn't make me want to hop on board right away, I don't know what would!

Melissa said it was fun to talk to people from around the world - which I think is one of the greatest things about blogging; and Rebecca Reid mentioned it is just an "extension of the blog," which I think is fabulous - it's like a blog, but more conversational! Obviously, as this post evidences, I would meet lots of people I wouldn't normally, just as Rasco from RIF says. I still find there are so many other blogs I would love to read, I just don't know where to find them! farmlanebooks said he has "formed better relationships with many bloggers and [found] the best blog posts much quicker than before." All of these things sound like what I need to do!

I'd also like to interact more with authors/publishers like KyleeJ mentioned. I'm just like @mylittlesoapbox, because it's about as close to them as I can get!

I am also a tiny bit afraid that I will, like Lisa, turn into a total addict. I already spend lots of time blogging, how will I drag myself away from more bookish stuff? When I don't check my reader for a day, there are hundreds of posts waiting! What would happen if I started following lots of folks on Twitter too? Ack! I guess I just need to find the perfect balance (any of you have the magic solution to this?)

And I can see why Sheila (bookjourney) said it was different when you can tweet about books and not your everyday cleaning (or not cleaning) habits. Natasha @ Maw Books said it well, "it's not really a 'what are you doing' but rather a 'what am I reading' 'who's blog do I think you should read' and 'let's discuss this issue/book together.'"

largehearted boy pointed out one thing that makes me both interested and cautious: " I can quickly interact with people." I think this is an advantage as well as a drawback. Responding to something quickly is very useful in the fast-paced online world, but sometimes if I respond too quickly, I might say something I'll regret later. I feel like Twitter would be the equivalent of me virtually putting my foot in my mouth. And, without the face-to-face interaction, I wouldn't be able to see the person's immediate reaction (the horrified or crushed look on their face which clues me in to my mistake). And I think this could happen even if it wasn't something nasty I said, but a misunderstanding instead. Amy from My Friend Amy blogged about this much better than myself, so you can just read her words.

I gotta say, though, I love the twitsy language that grew out of Twitter (I can think of all kinds of awesome variantions on that theme).

I do hope others will post thoughts about Twitter (Suey) since I'd love to have my horizons broadened some more!

Um, and hi, I do know how to research, I just obviously didn't do it quite as well as I should. Twitter allows 140 characters (thanks for the probably inadvertent correction, Nikole Hahn) and also it has a LOT more uses than I originally thought!

On followers:
I agree with Nymeth about this aspect: "What if I unfollow some of them for some reason and the owners notice? I'm not saying they'd resent me, but they might feel rejected, or wonder if they did anything to upset me." I think I had one of my (exceptionally large number of) followers drop off. I felt a little sad. I don't know that someone with 400+ followers would notice, but with 10? Yeah. I saw. But, I also got over it. :)

Florinda said just how I feel too, I'm curious about who follows me. I can get the total number of subscribers, but not who it is. Then again, do I want every person whose blog I subscribe to, to know about it? Hm... It makes me want to follow privately (which is possible) instead of publicly.

Amanda mentioned how convenient following can be since it automatically goes to RSS (which is where I read my stuff anyway). Then again, why not just subscribe? As I mentioned, it is to get the extra entries in contests (I promise I would regularly subscribe, even if I didn't follow, Brodi Ashton).

Jenny had some excellent thoughts on personally interacting with followers - good advice for any blog visitors, I'd say! I'd like to "try very hard to remain on a personal level with everyone who follows my blog b/c I don't want it to be a numbers thing ever."

And most of the time, people don't care so much about this. I am still reluctant to post the widget myself, but might just put it somewhere far down my sidebar as a compromise of sorts.

I think that about wraps up my long and excessively rambling response to your kind comments!

Thank you all for sharing so respectfully your opinions!

Oh, and I think I'll get started with Twitter. But as more of a listener than a tweeter. twitterer. twit. whatever. :)

On Twitterings and Followers

I've been thinking a lot about these two aspects of the online and bloggy world:

Twitter - the extremely popular know-what-everyone-is-doing-anytime-in-40-characters-or-less social networking site.

I haven't been able to make myself join this. I am not sure what makes me not like it so much, but I have an inexplicable aversion to joining. I think part of it might be that I am fairly certain I couldn't come up with a single interesting thing to tweet about throughout my day. These would be typical tweets for me:

-sitting at my computer (still)
-wishing students would use the library
-reading a book (shocking)
-pulling weeds in the garden (or since I would be tweeting this, how could I actually be outside weeding?)
-should be cleaning my bathroom
-too lazy to make dinner
-flossing and brushing

Really. No really. That's what it would be like. Who would want to read that? I wouldn't. I rarely use the Facebook equivalent to tell people what I'm doing. I suppose these would be more useful and exciting if I lived a more useful or exciting life. For some reason, I'm just not sold on the whole Twitter thing.

Followers - and the widget to display them on blogger.

What is the purpose of followers exactly? At first, I figured it was some kind of "look at me, I have tons of people who think I'm awesome" - you know, a status symbol - the more followers you have, the more popular you are (which reminds me of my really non-popular high school days) (hmm, maybe that is why I don't like it) (this is probably not a grammatically correct sentence, but I had to add that Trish of Hey Lady! Watcha Readin'? wrote a most lovely post about this feeling). Maybe if I had 400+ followers, I'd want to display them too, but I don't and probably never will. And I honestly don't care (much).

But, then as I thought about it more, I wondered if it might be the way people keep up with new posts and such. Just because I am an RSS fanatic myself, doesn't mean everyone tracks blogs that way. I will shamelessly tell you that I have about 10 followers myself. I honestly don't know how they became followers either, since I don't have the widget. I'm impressed they took that extra effort to sign up with no real incentive.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that I "follow" about 12 blogs. Why? Because I got extra entries in their contests. Shallow, silly, but true. I read these blogs the same way I do the other hundred or so blogs I subscribe to - on google reader. It makes no distinctions there.

So, here are my questions for you:

If you twitter, why did you start? Do you regularly update? Do you follow other people? Why?

If you have the followers widget, why? Why do you follow other people's blogs? Do you wish some blogs (ie: mine) had the follower widget in order to make it easier for you to follow?

OR tell me any other thoughts you have on these topics!