Bloggiesta Day 3 and Finish Line

Bloggiesta isn't quite over, and I still have some to-dos I'm going to focus on, but since my major tasks are finished, I decided to combine this update and finish post into one.

For this weekend, my goals were:

• Write a recommendation page for my drinks blog. Done! The formatting's a little inconsistent, but it works for the present: Liquid Persuasion Recommends
• Update my RSS Feed and create an RSS-to-Email service with MailChimp. Done! This was kind of a headache, but I'm glad it's done now. Be sure to update to my new RSS feeds if you haven't already (click on the subscription buttons in the sidebar to go here).
  
• Write some posts. I'm going to work on this tast today.
• Participate in all the twitter parties. I actually missed the one on Saturday because I forgot about it. Eeep. But I will hit the last one today.

Unfortunately, I don't think any mini-challenges (besides my own) are going to get done this time around, but overall I feel like I accomplished a lot this weekend.

For those of you participating in Bloggiesta, were you able to get all of your to-dos checked off?

Please Update Your RSS

Hello, readers! As I challenged myself for Bloggiesta (see here), I've updated my RSS feeds. If you subscribe to Truth, Beauty, Freedom, & Books in a reader, please update to my current feed by clicking on the Atom symbol below:

RSS

Thank you so much!

If you subscribed by e-mail, you don't have to do anything. I've moved all my e-mail subs over to MailChimp. You may continue to get e-mails via FeedBurner for a time; if you want to unsubscribe from MailChimp and continue to follow through FeedBurner, you can do so by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the e-mail.

If you want to switch your subscription to e-mail, please click here to go to the sign-up form.

If you followed Truth, Beauty, Freedom, & Books through Blogger or Google Friend Connect, you also don't have to do anything. The feed should update automatically.

Thank you again for following Truth, Beauty, Freedom, & Books!

Bloggiesta Fall 2012

Olé my blogging peeps! This weekend (September 28-30) is Bloggiesta. Don't know what Bloggiesta is? It's a blogging fiesta. There are twitter parties, mini-challenges, prizes, cute little gifs with our mascot, Pedro, and fun to be had for all bloggers. I think it's safe to say Bloggiesta is probably my favorite internet event, even more so than the Readathon. I have my bottle of champagne and my tequila and I'm ready to go!

Here are my plans for this edition of Bloggiesta:

• My most major task will be to create a page listing favorite/recommended drinks for my cocktail blog, Liquid Persuasion. I've been needing to do this forever.
• I also need to change my feeds from FeedBurner (especially since I'm hosting a challenge to do that very thing, see here).
  
• Do a few other mini-challenges that look interesting!
• Maybe write some reviews and posts.
  
• Participate in ALL the twitter parties (see the schedule at It's All About Books).

Do you want to participate in Bloggiesta? OF COURSE YOU DO! Just go to There's a Book to sign up.

Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: CHANGING YOUR RSS FEED

If you've been around Twitter or looked at your Google Reader this week, you've probably heard rumblings about Google shutting down FeedBurner. If you don't know what FeedBurner is (or was, or possibly soon won't be), it's the most popular RSS tool on the interwebs. RSS, or really simple syndication, tells your blog readers that you've published a new post. It's what publishes your links and content to feed readers, FaceBook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

FeedBurner is an excellent RSS service. First and foremost, it's free; it provides analytics, a subscribe by email option, podcast options, automatically feeds into social media sites like Twitter, splices information from multiple feeds, allows you to monetize your feed, etc. etc. HOWEVER, this summer the FeedBurner blog and twitter account were both shut down, and the FeedBurner API (application programming interface--basically all the analytic features FeedBurner offers) will be shut down October 20th (Google Developers).

Will FeedBurner be shut down entirely? No one knows. Google has neither confirmed nor denied the death of FeedBurner.com, or indeed addressed the issue at all. Some say Google gets too much out of FeedBurner in advertizing, and that it's too popular, for the site to go black. But overseas versions of the site, namely feedburner.jp, did shut down without any warning in July, leaving Asian bloggers stranded without an RSS feed or a way to reach their subscribers (FeedBlitz Blog). Personally, I've suspected Google of wanting to kill RSS ever since they "redesigned" (if removing popular features and making something less user-friendly can accurately be called a redesign) Google Reader last year. Either way, the pertinent point is that FeedBurner no longer has any support for its users and is cutting down on services, making it clear Google is consigning the site to the internet graveyard. To be on the safe side, it's probably a good idea to start thinking about switching your feed.

For this Bloggiesta mini-challenge, your challenge is to switch your RSS feed from FeedBurner and notify your subscribers. Once you've finished, paste the link to your notification post in the Mr. Linky.

Step One: Do you have a FeedBurner feed?

You have to link your sites to FeedBurner manually, so if you don't remember signing up, you probably never did. But it's simple to double check: just mouse over your subscribe button. If text pops up saying, "Subscribe with FeedBurner," or if the link that shows up looks something like this:

feeds.feedburner.com/TitleOfFeed

your RSS is going through FeedBurner.

Step Two: Getting a new feed.

The Good News

All the popular blogging platforms--Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, etc.--have their own RSS feeds you can use for free. You can easily revert to the default feed in your blog settings (in Blogger, go to Settings>Other>Post Feed Redirect URL>Remove), and you're done.

If your site doesn't have its own RSS feed for some reason, then you probably don't have FeedBurner because it basically just redirects your already-existing RSS feed through its own API and services. However, if you would like an RSS feed and don't have one, you can create one manually. Sarah at Puss Reboots had a challenge for this during a previous Bloggiesta, and it's relatively simple. See Bloggiesta RSS Mini-Challenge for more details.

The Bad News

If you're looking for a free alternative with all the features of FeedBurner, there isn't one. Blogging platform feeds will not publish subscriptions by e-mail, offer analytics, push posts to RSS readers so your readers don't have to wait 10-12 hours to see them, or do anything else beyond publishing a basic RSS feed.

As far as analytics goes, you could rely on Google Analytics or another analytical tool in place of FeedBurner's API information. If you want e-mail subscriptions (and I can promise a lot of your readers do) you can set up a separate RSS-to-email service using MailChimp, which is free as long as you don't have more than 2000 subscribers or 12,000 posts a month.

If you want post splicing, monetization, push publishing, and other features, however, the best options I've found so far are:

• FeedBlitz (Pay for service-I've heard this is also a pain to set up and expensive)
• PostRank (Pay for service-haven't heard anything good or bad about it)
• Mint (Pay for service-sounds very cool but pricey)
  
• FeedCat (Free, seems a little sketchy)
• FeedIty (Pay for service, with a free limited option)
• RapidFeeds (Pay for service, with a free limited option)

I can't tell you what service you should use or what it's worth to you, money-wise. For one, I haven't tried any of these feed services; and for another I don't make money from my blog, so I'm loathe to spend money on it. If you do make money from your blog, though, especially with RSS feed ads, then you'll probably want a more sophisticated feed service. It all depends on what your particular blog requires.

If you want more information to help you make a decision, here are some good articles you should look at:

• 3 Free Alternatives to Google's FeedBurner
• 7 of the Best FeedBurner Alternatives
• FeedBurner Alternatives? What I'm Doing

The last post offers more questions than answers, but the blogger has great suggestions and raises good points you should think about before you make a commitment to move your RSS service. As I've said, the wait-and-see decision is tempting but iffy, as FeedBurner could shut down unexpectedly. If you're frozen with indecision, to me it seems like the best choice is to switch to your platform's default feed; then at least your blog will have a feed when/if FeedBurner shuts down.

Keep in mind, too, that you don't have to delete your FeedBurner feed, even if you move to another service.

Step Three: Let Your Subscribers Know

Now that you've gone through that headache, you have to let your subscribers know to update their subscriptions. The easiest way to do this is through a post. You can find great examples at S. Krishna Books and Beth Fish Reads.

Notice both of these posts have the RSS links IN THE POST. Don't make it any harder on your readers to subscribe to your new feed than it has to be. Remember RSS or Atom feeds are links, and you can put a direct link to your new feed into a post the same way you would insert any other kind of link.

Some things to think about:

Email subscriptions

Don't forget to export a list of your e-mail subscribers. Then you can easily import them into your new feed or newsletter. Just click on your FeedBurner link and go to Publicize>Email Subscriptions>Subscription Management>View Subscriber Details>Export CSV.

Update links

You'll need to update your RSS button links, Networked Blogs feed, and any other site or service that uses your RSS feed. If you're anything like me, you've probably forgotten most of them, so this could take a while. Fortunately, this isn't something that has to be done immediately unless you delete your FeedBurner account (another reason to hold off on that for a bit).


Questions? Comments? Please share them and your experiences in the comments! And don't forget to link to your feed notification post in the Mr. Linky in order to complete the challenge.

A More Diverse Universe: THE ARRIVAL by Shaun Tan

To escape dragon creatures, a young father leaves his family and travels across the ocean to a fabulous city, full of helpful animals and exotic food. There he makes many friends, all of whom also came to the city looking for better lives, free from oppression and war. After some false starts the man settles himself in his new life, but will he ever see his family again?

It seems like I've been wanting to read The Arrival by Shaun Tan forever, ever since I first heard about it on You've GOTTA Read This, but my library didn't have it at the time, and then I forgot about it. Fortunately, thanks to A More Diverse Universe, I remembered!

The Arrival is unusual in that it doesn't contain any words. Instead, everything is conveyed through pictures. Personally, I didn't miss the words at all--I didn't even realize there weren't any until after I'd finished! The book has a very cinematic feel, almost like a storyboard, and is a great mix of the familiar and the fantastic. Although The Arrival is a secondary world fantasy, that's not immediately apparent, and the story itself is one that's easily relatable to any immigrant or descendant of immigrants.



Even though the basis of the story is firmly planted in a familiar story, the fantasy elements don't feel out of place or gimmicky. Tan uses them to great effect to convey elements and emotions that, if The Arrival was told "realistically," would be too complex for this format. Instead, the fun animals, exotic setting, and shadowy monsters efficiently tell us very important things about this world and the characters' journey.

As for the art, I LOVED it. It was very surrealism-meets-Dark City. Tan's drawings remind me of one of my favorite artists, Remedios Varo, in that I could see the influence of artists like Hieronymus Bosch and Odillon Redon, along with a quirky sense humor.

Aside from all that, though, The Arrival is a super-sweet story. I adore stories about people who travel and make friends. Basically there is nothing not to like in this book, aside from maybe the fact that it was so short!

I highly recommend this, especially if you also happen to like The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (review here). It's really lovely.



Check out the other stops on the A More Diverse Universe Blog Tour and celebrate POC authors in science fiction and fantasy!

TSS: She Said She Said

In the Box by Mary Cassatt, 1879

In the now-canceled TV show The Finder, the main character, Walter, said something that really pissed me off. He claimed he could tell the writer of a book was female because women use more pronouns when they're writing whereas men will use proper nouns.

Um, right. *eyeroll* I'm not going to harp on that, since I think it's been proven both anecdotally and scientifically that there is NO WAY TO JUDGE GENDER BASED ON WRITING STYLE and why on earth would this even be a goal, what is wrong people? What if they invented a test to judge ethnicity based on writing and were like, "Asians use more sentence fragments, now we know where they're hiding!" would that still be hunky-dory? But as I said, not discussing that. Nope.

What I really wanted to talk about was a very interesting chapter in Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit about creating distance or intimacy with characters in fiction, and one of the things he said reminded me of that scene from The Finder. According to Block, one of the best ways to create intimacy with characters is to use more pronouns when you're talking about them instead of their names. For example, instead of using, "Silas thanked Melissa and walked to the store," you could use, "He thanked her and walked to the store," in which case there's an assumption you know something about each character, at the very least their names.

Another thing Block addresses in this chapter is using last names for characters instead of first names, which he says is another way to create distance from the character. But, he adds, women are almost never called by their last names in novels, and doing so might create unnecessary confusion for the reader.

All of which leads me to wonder, is there a presumption of intimacy when it comes to women? I know the phrase "intimate scene" is thrown around a lot when discussing the work of female artists like Mary Cassatt. Perhaps our own gender assumptions allow private lives for women, and public lives for men, but not vice versa. Or maybe women are not allowed the distinction of public and private personas, and their personal lives are always available for consumption. I was reading Mystery in Geneva by Rose Macaulay recently who commented, "women are, inherently and with no activities on their part, News... Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Take Orders? Marry? Exist?" This certainly suggests there is no separation between personal and public activities when it comes to women--not in the news, anyway.

There definitely seems to be some correlation between what is considered "intimate" and what is considered "feminine," and I would argue that presumption drives us to view both art and literature of a more private or familiar nature as effeminate. Exactly or why this happens, however, I might never find out. Maybe the Beatles can tell us:

Review: CONFESSIONS FROM AN ARRANGED MARRIAGE by Miranda Neville

<--I think this model has the same tan line I do! She needs to use sunscreen.

Minerva and Lord Blakeney are meant to be together. It's obvious because, in The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton (review here), they fought all the time. But they themselves do not know this--if they did, Confessions from an Arranged Marriage would be a very short book. Blake wants to spend his time drinking and hanging out with his mistress; Minerva wants to change the world through a politically powerful husband. Unfortunately, Blake accidentally ravishes her during a ball and then they have to get married. Whomp-whomp. Now they have to make the best of things, which shouldn't be too hard since they're both really good-looking.

After enjoying The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton, I had really high expectations for Confessions from an Arranged Marriage (it's not really an arranged marriage, by the way, it's a marriage of convenience, so a much more accurate title would be Confessions from a Convenient Marriage). Unfortunately, I never felt any chemistry between Blake and Minerva, which really limited my enjoyment of the book, even though it does have redeeming qualities.

With a hero named Blakeney, I would have been disappointed if Miranda Nevillle didn't reference The Scarlet Pimpernel in some way, and fortunately she does: Blake and Miranda don't really trust one another, go to Paris, and do a little spying (although that's not a major element in the plot of the book). Also like The Scarlet Pimpernel, Blake has a secret which results in him being a major asshole to his wife. The difference is, with Confessions from an Arranged Marriage, I knew what that secret was, and it did not help Blake's case. I never thought he was an idiot, even in The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton; but I did think he whined a lot, behaved selfishly, and was the exact opposite of hero material for most of the book--take, for instance, the rumors of him being a bully in school, which were a big concern for me. I found myself wishing I didn't know any of Blake's secrets so I'd have something to wonder about him; then at least he'd have the benefit of being a mysterious asshole.

I would have actually been okay with Blake and his anti-hero ways, though, if there had been chemistry between him and Minerva, but there wasn't. While they were on their honeymoon I found myself hoping Minerva's REAL true love would show up and sweep her off her feet. They'd reached the I'm-bored-with-you stage of their relationship and their relationship had just started!

To solve this problem and make Minerva and Blake get on with the sexytimes, Neville has to make her characters act inconsistently. There is clearly no other way this is going to happen. So intellectual Minerva, who seems like the last person to let her body rule her head, is suddenly a ball of hormones and just can't help herself around Blake because he's SO ATTRACTIVE. Keep in mind they've known each other since childhood and have never found one another the least attractive before now. Is this Stockholm Syndrome or what?

To be fair, there is a lot to recommend Confessions from an Arranged Marriage. It's not recycled or boring, and like The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton, it's based on solid historical research and is not fluffy or idiotic. It also doesn't take place entirely in London, which I loved, and the characters are well-drawn. Blake and Minerva finally start to form an emotional connection in the last quarter of the book. I think the beginning just put me off, as marriage of convenience stories aren't my thing to begin with (I'm always like, "Do you guys REALLY have to get married? Answer: no."), and not once did the characters quote poetry. Honestly, I found their affair kind of sordid and the when, how, and why of Minerva and Blake getting together was too convenient for me to forgive Blake for being a jerk.

Confessions from an Arranged Marriage is an okay book, and I know other people have really enjoyed it, but personally I wanted a bit more from it, both romance- and plot-wise.