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 Good morning Saloners! For once, this Sunday finds me on the computer and ready to do some blogging fairly early in the morning. What I should be doing is cleaning, but we all know what will really happen today.
I mentioned a few weeks ago that I am moving relatively soon, and as such my husband and I went hunting in the lovely city of York yesterday for a new place to live. There were actually a surprising number of very nice places to rent, probably a reflection of the fact that no one (including us) can get a flat sold to a first-time buyer in this market. We may end up with an entire house to ourselves thanks to the low prices. We should be able to decide by next weekend after some viewings, which will be exciting, as I am very ready to get settled somewhere new, and I love York; I did my MA there two years ago and have been ready to go back more or less ever since!
Last weekend, I went into London to meet up with Ana, Ana, and Jodie, which was amazing in many aspects, primarily just to meet them all. I acquired three new books, Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire which was solely thanks to the first Ana (and which I’ve already read), Tam Lin by Pamela Dean which was heavily encouraged by the other Ana, and Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon which Jodie gave to me. After haunting the bookshops of London, we went to see Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe, where I had never been.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but the show was amazing and I would highly recommend it to everyone, if it isn’t sold out. It was so intimate that I think everyone in the theatre felt a connection to the actors, and it didn’t matter that some of the words may have required clarification in reading form. It was so easy to understand on stage and so universal. I’d never seen Shakespeare live before and I am currently kicking myself for not going earlier.
As for the rest of this weekend, I’m off for more Nalini Singh, and in the meantime I hope to get some book reviews finished so the blog stays nice and updated this week.
I hope you’re all having a great weekend!
Good afternoon everyone! This is going to have to be a quick Sunday Salon as I’m exceptionally busy today.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting Kathy from Bermudaonion’s Weblog and her husband Carl. We had a great time wandering London for a few hours – I only wish I could have stayed longer! Carl took all of the pictures, so I’ll have to wait until she’s home to show them to you.
Kathy was kind enough to bring me no less than five books from home:
- The Linen Queen by Patricia Falvey
- The Maid by Kimberly Cutter
- This Burns My Hearts by Samuel Park
- A Fierce Radiance by Lauren Belfer
- The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
I can hardly wait to dig into them! I’m so backlogged that it may be a while, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy all of them. She also brought me a lovely Harper Perennial tote bag. You know how it works with tote bags – you can never have too many.
Next weekend I am off to London once again to meet Jodie of Book Gazing, Ana of things mean a lot, and Ana of The Book Smugglers. It promises to be another awesome Saturday!
In the meantime, I am trying to read and review, but mostly failing at home (though I got some good reading time in on the train yesterday with The Story of Beautiful Girl). I have a couple of books I have to review this week, but that might be it from me. In the meantime, I hope you are all reading fabulous books and enjoying the start of summer!
We’re already five days into June and somehow I’ve not yet summarised my May reading! As a month overall, May was pretty average. I spent some time planning my trips, playing various video games (Fable III and Assassin’s Creed, for any fellow gamers out there), and discovering Downton Abbey and How I Met Your Mother. I also decided to go on a book buying ban, which has now taken effect.
My reading took a bit of a hit this month thanks to all of the above. I read 13 books, which is probably the least I’ve ever read since I’ve been blogging, and in vivid contrast to April’s 22. Regardless, I’ve already started to make up for the slow month by reading 4 in June so far! Here’s what I read:
Fiction
- Caressed by Ice, Nalini Singh
- Lady of the English, Elizabeth Chadwick
- Silk is for Seduction, Loretta Chase (review to come in late June)
- Amaryllis in Blueberry, Christina Meldrum
- Archangel’s Consort, Nalini Singh
- Madame Tussaud, Michelle Moran
- Anne of the Island, L.M. Montgomery
- The Widow’s Season, Laura Brodie
- The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Heidi Durrow
- Devil’s Consort, Anne O’Brien
- The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
I also interviewed Elizabeth Chadwick and participated a bit in Armchair BEA with an intro post and three SEO tips.
Nonfiction
Best of the Month
This month I’d best give my top pick over to Nalini Singh, because this is the month that the Psy-Changeling series hooked me!
I also, however, really loved The Hemingses of Monticello, Madame Tussaud and Lady of the English and would enthusiastically recommend all three.
Good afternoon Saloners! Today finds me thinking about my two trips into Europe later this year. I’m going to Amsterdam and Bruges with my friend at the end of August and then (hopefully) Rome with my husband in October. As these are creeping up on me, I’m already thinking about the books I want to read before I go there. I haven’t made up lists yet, but I already have two I know I want to read – Amsterdam: The Brief Life of a City by Geert Mak and I, Claudius by Robert Graves. I have the second one out from the library and I’m waiting for the first. Do you have any suggestions for great books set in Amsterdam, Bruges, or Rome? History or fiction?
Which brings me to my second decision of this weekend – I am not going to buy any books until after my travels for the year are over. That would be towards the end of October. I need that money more for experiences, and with 450+ books sitting around waiting for me to read them, it’s not like I’m going to suffer from having nothing to read. (Even if I did, I have enough books that I plan to reread to keep me going for years). As ever, though, I have some exceptions, so I don’t chafe too much about this new rule.
- I’m still allowed to buy anything I’ve already preordered, though these run out in July.
- I’m also still allowed to buy the next Wheel of Time books should I get that far in the series reread before the end of October, A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, and The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss when I reread the first in that series.
- I’m allowed to buy books on my travels as souvenirs.
- I can still take in any book that’s free, either from the library, review copies, or programs like Amazon Vine.
What I’d really like to do is get my TBR pile below 400 this year, but I don’t really think my resistance is going to last that long. I’d rather just think about saving money towards my trips!
As a bit of a recap for those who weren’t around this week, I reflected on my reread of Anne of the Island, reviewed Chasing Aphrodite and a number of great romance novels, and wrapped it up with a few tips about SEO for book bloggers. This week I’ll be hosting an interview with Elizabeth Chadwick for the release of her newest book, Lady of the English, and reviewing hopefully quite a few books to catch up on my backlog. I have tomorrow off, so plenty of time to actually do so.
Wishing all of you a fantastic week!
 As a few of you may know, I do SEO in my day job and have had a bit of fun toying around with my own blog. For today’s post in Armchair BEA, I thought I’d share a few pro SEO tips to help you rank better, should you be interested in doing so! For those who aren’t aware, SEO is short for search engine optimisation and is the process of improving your site’s quality and authority to rank better in search engines. There are people who go about this very badly, called black hat SEOs (the spammers of the internet who leave annoying comments on your blogs with names like ‘play poker online’), but if your reviews and posts are genuinely good and will help others to decide what to read, there’s no reason you can’t use a few tweaks to take advantage of the stuff you’re already writing.
1. Keywords
Before you worry about your search engine rankings, you should put some thought into what exactly you want to rank for. What do you think others will be happy to find if they land on your blog from a search engine? A particular book review? A book review blog? A historical fiction blog? Choose a few terms that you think you’d like to rank higher for and make sure you actually use them somewhere in your blog’s copy. Perhaps an intro sidebar or on your ‘about me’ page.
It’s easiest to rank for what you already do on your blog. For example, I put ‘review’ in the title of all of my book review posts because it gives potential people clicking through a better idea of what they’ll get when they land here. Plus it’s easier to rank for something like ‘The White Queen review’ than it is for just ‘The White Queen’.
2. Title Tags
A title tag is the text that shows up in the tab on your browser. This post’s reads ‘Blogging about Blogging: SEO | Medieval Bookworm’. If I were serious about ranking for, say, ‘Historical Fiction Blog’, I’d stick that in there on the home page, so it would say ‘Historical Fiction Blog | Medieval Bookworm’. This is one of the more important aspects of on-site SEO, surprisingly enough, and can really make a big difference with a simple change. I am actually on the first page for ‘Historical Fiction Blog’, so I haven’t invested much in this personally, however if you all take my advice I may start. 
Title tags are easily modified through a variety of SEO plug-ins. All in One SEO Pack is a good one.
3. Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is when you can find the same page on two different URLs. So when someone scrapes your site, they’ve made duplicate content out there; it’s not only theft it’s also hurting your site’s rankings. If your site is pulled using the RSS feed and published online, you’re also creating duplicate content, a real problem for those of us who have full RSS feeds.
You can also get duplicate content on your own site. If you can access the same post with two different URLs, then you have a problem. WordPress can do this if you put a post in two different categories (I actually have one here: http://medievalbookworm.com/guest-blog/guest-review-the-trinity-six-charles-cumming/ is also http://medievalbookworm.com/reviews/guest-review-the-trinity-six-charles-cumming/).
To solve this problem, keep your posts to one category wherever possible and use tags more extensively. Alternatively you can change your URL structure to remove any category parameters, but changing the URL structure on an already established blog can be difficult since you’ll have to redirect all of your own links. It’s easiest just to stick with a single category for WordPress blog if you do have it in your URL.
Please let me know if these tips were at all helpful for you and whether you’re interested in hearing more!
To those of you who are new to my blog, welcome! I’m Meghan, a 25 year old American living in the UK, married to a wonderful British husband and navigating the intriguing world of marketing for my career. In my spare time, I am and always have been a bookworm and a history nut, hence the title of my blog. In 2009 I got my MA in Medieval Studies and am currently dreaming of a PhD in Medieval History, but not quite yet.
I’ve been blogging about books since 2007, but I’ve been reading since I was five. Blogging has been and continues to be a delightful outlet to share that love of literature with other people, since very few people in my day-to-day life actually enjoy reading.
A few other random facts about me:
- My two favourite books are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
- I will happily read most genres but my very favourites are historical fiction and epic fantasy. I also love non-fiction, particularly history (obviously enough) and will usually be happy with an enormous tome that someone else would consider dry and boring.
- I adore the Middle Ages and have specialised in the Wars of the Roses; I will now refuse to read this period in fiction because I know too much. I do like nearly every period in history, though, and have loved books set in Cleopatra’s Egypt alongside books set in Victorian England – both fiction and non-fiction.
- I dream of having a cat and a full room devoted to my library one day.
I’d love to be at BEA meeting awesome book bloggers and publishing industry contacts this week, but it wasn’t in the financial cards. I’m hoping for next year and meanwhile looking forward to this week’s Armchair BEA festivities!
If you drop by, leave me a comment and let me know you were here – I’ll do my best to visit your blog over the next week and say hi in return!
Sundays seem to come around ever faster these days! They are even more frequent when I’m as busy as I have been these last few weeks, with work, visits, holiday plans, and a variety of different new activities like exercise crowding out my blogging. I found myself without a book review to write on Wednesday – the first time in three years of blogging – and so it’s been a bit quiet this week. I only have two reviews to write this week as well, so as I’ve said, things may not actually pick up for a while.
Despite reading slower, or perhaps because of it, I’m very much enjoying the books I am reading. At times I feel I speed much too quickly through books. I’ve set goals at various times to try and read less, but this is the first time it’s ever actually happened. While I’m not sure I’ve really reflected much more on the books I’m reading because my brain is constantly going on other things, I have actually enjoyed spending a bit more time in the worlds of the books I’ve read. I’m noticeably enjoying Nalini Singh’s work more now that I just can’t race through it, for example, and I absolutely loved spending more time with Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran, another candidate for my normal fast pace. I am a speedy reader normally, but I forget that it’s also nice to savor books, too.
Since this week is BEA, I am going to just let the lack of reviews slide and enjoy my new issue of BBC History Magazine in my free time. Subscribing to it is such fun; not only do I feel like I’m getting a variety of historical viewpoints and keeping up more with the academic world than I was before, there are also features on books and TV shows that fill up even more of my time with history goodness.
I’ll keep this one short as I know many of you are off to New York City this week. If you’re attending BEA, I hope you have an incredible time. I hope to see you there next year!
St Peter’s Church, Barton-on-Humber
More Wordless Wednesdays
Spring has been coming on for a while but only lately have I actually started to get my rear in gear and clean my place out. I spent a lot of time yesterday sorting and cleaning and it is very nice to get rid of the winter blues! Today’s sunshine has only helped the situation.
To symbolize the coming of spring, we’ve even started up the window herb garden with two purchases yesterday. I have the total opposite of a green thumb, as pretty much every plant I touch dies, but that hasn’t stopped me trying yet. Someday I will get it right. Anyway, we have lovely green basil and coriander plants just waiting to be used in cooking:
 
I have also been continuing with a little bloggy spring cleaning. I have decided to switch over to affiliate links from The Book Depository. I have placed an Amazon banner on the side for anyone who likes to get their books from Amazon, along with an IndieBound box on the left for anyone who likes indie bookstores, so I hope this will mean an option for everyone. I personally don’t mind where anyone buys books so long as they are buying them! I’ve chosen the UK version of TBD but they will ship almost anywhere in the world for free and should switch over automatically if you’re in the US. If you’d like to support my blogging endeavours and fuel the addiction by letting me pay for my site and possibly even more books, please use them to buy online!
Unfortunately there hasn’t been much reading happening around here. I have only managed two books this week, which is pretty far from my normal 4-5, but I’m not sure I’ll be reading more any time soon as I have quite a lot going on elsewhere. All good stuff, but not really conducive to reading a lot. I am also thinking about taking a blogging break while everyone else is off at BEA to control my jealousy and give myself a little recharge. I won’t decide that though until next Sunday when I see how many books I’ve read this week.
Still making an effort, though – this morning I managed to finish up The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed, a very interesting book with plenty of detail for my little brain to chew over. Now I am getting deep into Lady of the English by Elizabeth Chadwick, due out in the UK in June and the US in September, about the Empress Matilda, Henry I’s daughter and Henry II’s mother, who was meant to be queen after his death and ended up fighting Stephen for the privilege. Very good so far, as I expected!
What are you up to this weekend? Any good books in your hands?
I can hardly believe it’s already May – I’m sure it was Christmas just a week ago! April has been an excellent month with a lot of leisure time. We’ve had an extra bank holiday in the UK for the royal wedding, so I am deep into my second four-day weekend and enjoying it immensely. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that I wish royalty got married more often! It was also quite a lovely wedding. I’ve mainly ignored all the build-up and endless speculation, but found myself glued to the TV when it was happening, as it was almost like watching a real life romance. I had never expected them to look so very much in love, for whatever reason, and I find myself genuinely happy for them and hoping that this marriage actually works out.
Anyway, on to the reading! I have been doing a lot of reading with my free time, as always, plus the Read-a-thon was this month, which added up to a total of 22 books read for this month. I don’t think I’ve read so much in a month since I started working!
Fiction
- The Winter Rose, Jennifer Donnelly
- These Things Hidden, Heather Gudenkauf
- A Marriage of Inconvenience, Susanna Fraser
- Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
- Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal
- Dreams Underfoot, Charles de Lint
- Lady Isabella’s Scandalous Marriage, Jennifer Ashley
- Royal Weddings, Stephanie Laurens
- Russian Winter, Daphne Kalotay
- The Dark Enquiry, Deanna Raybourn
- Must Love Hellhounds, Charlaine Harris et al
- 13 Rue Therese, Elena Mauli Shapiro
- If I Stay, Gayle Forman
- The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker
- Anne of the Island, L.M. Montgomery
- The Four Ms Bradwells, Meg Waite Clayton
Non-fiction
My favorite non-fiction book for the month is easy – Heretics by Jonathan Wright is the obvious front runner! I’m struggling to choose a fiction favorite, as always, but I loved The Color Purple, If I Stay, The Paris Wife, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Russian Winter.
On the agenda for May, I am planning some book lists – I have never done one before, but with two potential European trips for later this year, I really want to ensure I get some good location based reading in. I’ll be posting about those as and when I make them up. I also have a number of books I’d like to get to:
- Madame Tussaud, Michelle Moran
- Lady of the English, Elizabeth Chadwick (an early review)
- A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness
- Blood Work, Holly Tucker
- The Native Star, M.K. Hobson
- Shades of Gray, Jasper Fforde
- At Home, Bill Bryson
I hope I can fit all of those in and not get distracted!
How was your reading month? Do you have any plans for May?
I am an Amazon Associate. I received some of these books for free for review.
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