Review: Ascend

Ascend by Amanda Hocking
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great read but didn’t quite capture all of my emotions. I was engrossed in the conflict but didn’t shed any tears over the loss. As a Kindle book this was GREAT entertainment.

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Review: Unwind

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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In a society where unwanted teens are salvaged for their body parts, three runaways fight the system that would “unwind” them.

Connor’s parents want to be rid of him because he’s a troublemaker. Risa has no parents and is being unwound to cut orphanage costs. Lev’s unwinding has been planned since his birth, as part of his family’s strict religion. Brought together by chance, and kept together by desperation, these three unlikely companions make a harrowing cross-country journey, knowing their lives hang in the balance. If they can survive until their eighteenth birthday, they can’t be harmed — but when every piece of them, from their hands to their hearts, are wanted by a world gone mad, eighteen seems far, far away.
In Unwind, Boston Globe/Horn Book Award winner Neal Shusterman challenges readers’ ideas about life — not just where life begins, and where it ends, but what it truly means to be alive.

Review: The Dark Divine

The Dark Divine by Bree Despain

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Grace Divine—daughter of the local pastor—always knew something terrible happened the night Daniel Kalbi disappeared and her brother Jude came home covered in his own blood.

Now that Daniel’s returned, Grace must choose between her growing attraction to him and her loyalty to her brother.

As Grace gets closer to Daniel, she learns the truth about that mysterious night and how to save the ones she loves, but it might cost her the one thing she cherishes most: her soul.

Sneak Peak

At the Click of a Button

It’s magic! I click a button to bookmark a web site and ‘magic’ happens!

Although it appears that I spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and Diigo posting links to web sites, it is all happening from Firefox with the click of a button. When I find a site of interest, I make sure I’m in Firefox and just click my Diigo toolbar icon and select Bookmark This. After adding tags (suggested and ones I make up), I just make sure the option to post to Twitter is checked and click OK.

Then the magic begins. The click of the button causes the bookmark to be posted to my Diigo account and to Twitter. From there, it goes to my Delicious account. From Delicious it goes to Raider Tags, a WordPress blog, where my new bookmarks are posted daily. My delicious tags are also posted as a box on my Facebook page.

Since my Twitter feed is connected to my Facebook account, anything I post on Twitter is automatically shared on Facebook. Thus, my Diigo bookmark gets shared on Facebook via Twitter.

Now, I just need to add some more magic and connect my Goodreads account to my blog.

Tagging – 23 Things Kansas

Delicious, Diigo and other bookmarking sites make it easy to move from a work computer to a home computer and have your bookmarks follow along. I started using del.icio.us a couple of years ago.

At the time, I was supporting library projects with web sites containing links to resources. Because it is much easier to add a site to Delicious than to update a web page, I transferred these links to Delicious and created tag bundles. Now, when students click on Raider Links on our (internal) home page they go to my Delicious bookmarks. The major disadvantage of using Delicious in this way is the difficulty of keeping separate personal and work identities when doing school work on my home computer. Thus, I’ve given up and only have one identity on Delicious – nvteklib.

Besides linking the browser home page to my bookmarks, I have my delicious account configured to post my new bookmarks on this blog.

After having set up Delicious, I discovered Diigo. Diigo is similar to Delicious but it allows you to highlight text on the web site. Even though I believe that Diigo has an educational advantage over Delicious, I have not wanted to spend the time transferring my bookmarks and re-organizing them. Thus, I’m still a Delicious user.

Thanks to a recent webinar on new gadgets, I heard about the capability of Diigo to connect with Delicious and Twitter.

• Use Diigo – Delicious Simultaneously
• Diigo’s Annotated Twitter This

Now, I’m switching to Diigo to take advantage of its ability to highlight and to post automatically to Twitter.