Really Random Tuesday #73: Book Winners, Blogger Layout Issues, and a Few Fall Quotes

Uno, dos, tres!  I have three lucky winners to announce today.  Stacie, Carol M, and Gina D have each won a copy of The Last Camellia by Sarah Jio.  Congratulations!  I'll send those books out to you as soon as I get your mailing addresses.  It sounds like quite a captivating book and I hope to read my own copy of the book, (relatively) soon. If you didn't win this time, please take a look at the other book giveaways in my blog's sidebar.  I know, the book covers in my giveaway list are larger than usual; more about that next.

******************

Suko's Notebook  ·  Layout

 

Is anyone else having layout problems in Blogger?  I've mentioned this already to a few of you, so please excuse any repetitiveness on my part if you've heard it before.  Specifically, I'm having a hard time with the Configure Image Gadget in Layout, which used to work easily and perfectly.  Now, suddenly, I'm getting a message that I need to include a title ("required field must not be left blank") when I try to save images, and the size of images is larger than it used to be, so the book covers are not of uniform size.  I've figured out how to bypass adding a title and will continue to do this if I absolutely need to, but it used to work without this hassle.  As a courtesy to my readers, I list book giveaways in my right sidebar, and that's what's being affected by this.  I'm not sure if Blogger made some permanent changes (I hope not!), or if this is just a temporary glitch of some sort.  Sometimes, these issues resolve themselves within a few days, and I'm hoping that will be the case with this, because it's been a pain to contend with.  Thank you for letting me vent about this!  Is anyone else having similar problems?  I hope someone at Blogger reads this and that it will work the way it used to soon.

 ******************

Autumn officially started on September 22.  In my neck of the woods, Southern California, we had one day of cool fall weather, autumn's "opening day", but yesterday was hot.  It should be a bit cooler today, though, thankfully.  Regardless of the actual weather, it is fall, so I'm posting a few quotes from authors about this time of the year to help put us all in the mood for the days ahead.

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."
~ Albert Camus

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."
~ George Eliot 

“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn--that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness--that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.”
~ Jane Austen, Persuasion

******************

Appearing on random Tuesdays, Really Random Tuesday is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related matters you can think of.  I often announce book winners in these posts.  If you have miscellaneous book news to gather up and are inspired by this idea, "grab" the button for use on your own blog, then add your link to the "master" Mister Linky on the Really Random Tuesday page. 

As always, thanks for reading! 

Really Random Tuesday #64: A Winner, a Geeky Question, and The Summer of France

Sometimes I toy with the idea of listing book winners in my blog's sidebar, but for the time being, I'll continue to announce them in these Really Random Tuesday (RRT) posts.  Welcome to edition #64!

And the randomly chosen winner is... Brian Joseph from Babbling Books, a terrific book blog I discovered a few months ago.  Congratulations, Brian! (Is it just me or do you also often type "Brain" instead of "Brian" and then need to correct your spelling?)  He's won a copy of Leave of Absence by Tanya J. Peterson, which I read and reviewed earlier this month.  If you didn't win this time, please take a look at the other book giveaways listed on the right side of my blog. 

*******************
 

I have a "geeky" question for those of you who use Blogger.  Do you type up your posts in Compose or HTML mode?   I usually "compose" my posts, but switch to HTML when I need to have things in code.  It's nice to have this option.  Sometimes I want to copy code, like code for a photo or graphic, and I can get it neatly in HTML form.  And sometimes the only way I can fix spacing issues is by going to code mode, rather than compose mode.  I don't know if WordPress also offers both of these options.  And speaking of WordPress, I know some of you have switched from Blogger to WordPress and vice versa (I think).  I've never really considered changing to WordPress, because I've been on Blogger for five years, from the start of this blog, and feel as if I know it inside and out.  It usually works very well for me, except for occasional glitches.  Also, Blogger has made some positive changes fairly recently, such as offering a larger window for typing up posts (we used to have only a small rectangle for this), and it's quite user friendly.  If you use WordPress, I'm guessing it's relatively easy to use, for the most part.  I know so little about the mechanics of WordPress, but apparently it's the most popular platform for bloggers worldwide.

*******************

Que faites-vous cet été?  Next month, I'll participate in The Summer of France book tour.  The book looks and sounds romantic, n'est-ce pas?  I just received my book in the mail yesterday (on Mailbox Monday), and I'm looking forward to reading it.  The author, Paulita Kincer, has traveled to France numerous times.

*******************

Appearing on random Tuesdays, Really Random Tuesday is a way to post odds and ends--announcements, musings, quotes, photos--any blogging and book-related matters you can think of.  If you have miscellaneous book news to gather up and are inspired by this idea, "grab" the button for use on your own blog, then add your link to the "master" Mister Linky on the Really Random Tuesday page.

Your comments are welcomed.  Thanks for reading!