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| Jardin Botanique, Montreal, Canada, Oct. 2010 |
If you've visited my blog in the past 24 hours or so, you've probably noticed that it has undergone some significant layout changes. Most importantly, I have a new banner! It was drawn and designed by my lovely, fantastic, and super-talented friend Carey. Thank you so much! I'm absolutely thrilled by it. I'm going to pretend that the white flakes outside the window are not snowflakes but rather dandelion puffs or scarily large balls of pollen. Wheeeee.
I've decided to go with a simpler layout this time, two columns, mostly black and white. I love colors but there's something so appealing about simplicity. I'm still tweaking some things but the big changes are done. Hope you like it! And yes, I did the coding myself. I'm self-taught. I just took a classic blogger template and tweaked it a hundred times over the course of several hours. Thank goodness for Google to help me with my coding questions.
There will probably be several other changes content-wise coming, but the most important one is that I am going to try out not assigning ratings to books I review. Ratings are just so hard, so subjective. Silly things such as your day's mood can affect them. So I'm going to focus on the content instead. I'm really excited about this move. Let's see how it goes!
Happy spring, everyone!
Oh, I like that banner!! May your simplification actually make your life easier as you finish your thesis!
ReplyDeleteIt looks great Steph!
ReplyDeleteI keep thinking about not rating books too, it would make things a lot easier. Hmm...
I like the simple look too :) Looks good.
ReplyDeleteI don;t do ratings on my blog. I always found it hard to separate giving a rating based on my own personal enjoyment/feelings about the book V the actual quality/merit of the book. You know?
somtimes I'll read an obviously brilliant book but it's not to my tastes so I'll be 'meh' but giving it 1 or 2 stars doesn;t feel right...
on goodreads i purely rate on my personal enjoyment of the book. even if I award 2 stars over there it means the book was 'okay' which is not a necessarily bad thing.
I love the new look! I like simplicity too, but I just can't seem to do 2 columns.
ReplyDeleteLike the new look, and I think you'll find not assigning a rating is soooo freeing.
ReplyDeleteLove it!
ReplyDeleteAww! Let's go with dandelion puffs. Swat produces more than enough pollen to scare me off it for life ;)
ReplyDeleteVery glad to get to contribute to a blog I enjoy, even in a roundabout way! Let me know if you're looking for a more colorful banner as we get farther into spring.
Your new header is adorable, and I like the new grey/white simplicity! Yay for self-taughts; I don't know what I would do without blogger coding tutorials online, lol. I've considered no-rating reviews before, but ehh, I like my world strict and orderly, haha. Looking forward to reading yours though! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd I would gladly trade the cotton puffs over here for some snowflakes over there.
Your blog looks wonderful! There are so many blogs out there with a million things on them and half of them blinking or flashing - I can't go to those anymore especially the ones with extra toolbars at the bottom that take forever to load. Clean and simple looks best every time. Beautiful job!!
ReplyDeleteNoooooo!! I am so upset that you are not doing ratings anymore. This is a terrible trend that all my favorite book bloggers seem to be going to. So sad. I will miss you. Curse the Story Siren.
ReplyDeleteOoh, the simplicity is really nice! can't believe you did the coding by yourself, I think I'd be nowhere without blogger template designer :p I especially like that painting in your header, so pretty!!
ReplyDeleteI love the new look. You cannot go wrong with simple.
ReplyDeleteWow, looks great! Love the clean, simple look. Great work :)
ReplyDeleteLovely! I like the new header a lot!
ReplyDeleteFunny about ratings, I only ever do it on LibraryThing and Goodreads, but recently decided to not review on Goodreads because of all the issues. I still rate on LT but I honestly do that for my own memory when I look back at things I read (like books in a really long series) it helps me remember which ones I liked and didn't. I have never rated on my blog though and I will be honest, I never paid attention to ratings on reviews. I always read the review to see what people thought.
Interesting Anon comment there. 0_o
I like the simplicity! And the header's adorable!
ReplyDeleteGlad to have more members for Team No-Ratings. We only use it if our reviews are REALLY mixed and we want to clarify our feelings on the book.
The changes are pretty dramatic! But I do like the simplicity of your new layout (and that header-it's so sweet!). Sometimes less is more :)
ReplyDeleteI decided a while back to not give out ratings either for that same reason: numbers are so subjective and us readers can be fickle--one day we love a book and then later on we think to ourselves, "Huh, what did I see in this book?!" I do rate them on Goodreads like Nomes does though. Anyways, I wish you success with the new direction your blog's taken!
Steph your new layout looks fantastic! I'm a fan of simplicity. :)
ReplyDeleteAs for the shift away from ratings I think you'll find it easier than you might expect. I don't do ratings for exactly the reasons you mention. Good luck!
Absolutely love the banner -- unique and beautiful. I've recently gone more simple with my blog too -- using mostly gray, but simple. I like the new look!
ReplyDeleteThe new banner is great! And I love simplicity in layouts! Hope you love your new look too!
ReplyDeleteit's looking good! nice changes. and i am all about the rating-free reviews!
ReplyDeleteI love simplicity on a blog. Your new layout looks great! and your friend is quite the artist. Very nice job.
ReplyDeleteI've found google to be my BFF when it comes to html codes & tweaking blogger, haha.
I really love the banner. Did you have a say in how it would look? I think it's especially nice to be drawn next to a window! :)
ReplyDeleteI like the new look. Was there some sort of blogger convention recently where everyone decided to stop rating books? It seems like the other bloggers are all fans of this but as a person who follows book blogs to save myself time/money in trying to find good reads, I think it sucks. I think it’s easy to read between the lines to tell if a book is a 2 star or a 5 star but the ones in between are a little trickier and I don’t want to waste my time or the money trying to read between those lines. So I like the new look but I’m really going to miss the ratings.
ReplyDeleteI love the new layout, Steph! Great calls on design and looking forward to your rating-less reviews. :)
ReplyDeleteI adore simple and clean layouts, and yours is just gorgeous. I really like the header; it's really cute.
ReplyDeleteThe new layout is great, but like some others have mentioned, I'm going to miss your numerical ratings. As a person who loves numbers and categories, I always look for your rating before I read the entire review. It helps frame everything for me before reading, and it also allows me to compare what you thought of a certain book to others you have read and reviewed previously.
ReplyDeleteVery cool!
ReplyDeleteI love your new banner, it's beautiful. So homey and cosy-looking.
ReplyDeleteRatings are tricky beasties, aren't they? For me 3* means good but not flawless or not particularly special, and 4* means I really enjoyed it, but books are all so different it's not easy to compare enjoyment - so, say, if it took me a long time to get into it but the end was fantastic, how does that compare with a book that is consistently "ok"? And I think for some people 3* is a harsher rating than my 3* ratings, for example. I'm waffling on, sorry!
Great new layout! I like the simplicity as well.
ReplyDeleteI don't use a rating system because I want the review to stand on its own. If I like the book on a three or higher, I'll review it. As long as I have enough good things to say, I review the book. I don't want to rate within that rating. I don't know, I can't describe it...
Love your new layout! I think the banner looks great. I really like the simple design.
ReplyDeleteI don't put ratings on my reviews because it's so hard to rate my enjoyment of the books that I read. I'd rather go with just describing the reading experience than giving a rating.
It's funny to read about so many people giving up ratings when I keep thinking I should do them. I think it gives readers an idea of how well you like books in relation to another and when it's hard to give a book a bad review, the numbers can do the talking! Love the new look! Spring cleaning is in the air, I've re-designed, too!
ReplyDeletenew banner and layout looks awesome!
ReplyDeleteYour blog looks so gorgeous now! I love it so much I could quite possibly just stare at it all day (jknotreally). I'm disappointed that there'll be no more ratings though; I thought them quite useful in determining what you thought of them; that, combined with your written review, provided valuable insight into what the book was like :(
ReplyDeleteLove the new banner, Sweets! Carey is very talented!
ReplyDeleteOff to stalk her blog. ;)