readers advisory for all discussion

okay - so the easiest way to do this - to have everyone's queries remain discrete and manageable:

we will use the "so ask already" folder for all searches.

in the topic box, be as descriptive as you can to give a potential helper a quick sense of the kind of book you are looking for.

keep the responses grouped together under the same topic, so it will archive tidily. make sense?

flannery is right - it would be very helpful to respond to queries by putting your answer into link-form. if you don't know how, you can use the handy "some html is okay" link right above the comment box. if you still have problems (and trust me, i totally understand - this computer thing frequently puzzles me) i can compile them myself, so they all get grouped off to the side for others.

such a handy feature!

Just in case anyone is curious about how to make their recommendations into links that show up on the side, here are the two ways that work: (note: making them into hyperlinks with ... will NOT make it show up in the mentions on the side)

1. When you get to the place in your text where you want to mention an author or a specific book, hit 'add book/author' right above the text box. That will open a pop-up search screen where you can type in what you are searching for. Hit 'add' when you find the correct book. If it is an author, there is a separate tab for that on the pop-up screen.

2. If you know the author or book you are looking for is likely to be the most popular result with that name or the only result with that name, just type square brackets [] with 'book: title' or 'author: author's name' in between and it will automatically link up. For example, I would write [] with author: Mark Danielewski in between to link to Mark Danielewski, or [] with book: House of Leaves between if I wanted House of Leaves.

One additional note: If you use the 'add book/author' option, it will automatically put whatever you've chosen at the very end of your message so it is best to do it as you are typing your response rather than attempting to do it after the fact. Otherwise you will have to cut and paste the result back into your response.

If anyone has any questions, let me know! Or if people more skilled than I (not a hard feat to accomplish) want to chime in with more info, that would be great as well:)

Once you get comfortable typing the brackets, it is super easy to just keep fluidly typing. Like--Tommy, did you write your review of Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta yet? I've been patiently waiting for it. Oh, and I am almost done with Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey, but I'm not sure it is good enough that I would want to send it to you:-/ Muahahaha.

You've learned well, young grasshopper.

Raise the Red Lantern

just practicing. i'm doing it wrong and want to fix it before i further embarrass myself.

Lauren wrote: "Raise the Red Lantern

just practicing. i'm doing it wrong and want to fix it before i further embarrass myself."

I didn't know that was a book!! I loooooove that movie.

it is a book! well, it's in a set of short stories or novellas, but it's there. i also loved the movie (oddly, as a teenager, it was one of my favorites) which is how i found out about the book.

It was one of my favorites as a teenager too! Have you seen Red Sorghum? Sometimes it's hard to get a copy of that one. I went through a big Yimou Zhang phase (which, I always called him Zhang Yimou, but imdb always calls him Yimou Zhang and it makes me nervous) in college.

(Sorry karen! I know we should talk about teh books!)

i think imdb has it wrong. because i say "gong li" not "li gong" and there's that red hot chili peppers song about her also called "gong li"...so, clearly i am right. ;o)

it's that whole last name-first name reversal in the culture. very confusing for us westerners!

that said, i've not seen "Red Sorghum" - i did love "farewell my concubine" though. someday, when i watch non-disney movies again, i'll add it to my queue!

ok, I am trying out what Flannery described The Book of Lost Things

Thanks Flannery! I didn't know how to do this before.

I've been struggling with the HTML aspect of this site. I am HTML challenged. So, here goes my test of making the TEXT of my comments an actual link. And, to avoid anyone thinking this is shameless self-promotion, I will link to this group's home page.

Holy HTML, Batman... it freaking worked!!! Thanks, Flannery!

NOW... who can tell me how to size pictures correctly?

That's actually in the menu that comes up if you click "some html is ok" too:

Inside <> type:

img src="your jpg or whatever here" height="#" width="#"

- do you know how to access the size of an image?

- do you know how to access the size of an image?

usually a right click on the image and choose 'view image details' or 'image properties' will bring a popup window that will give you the size of the image. :)

Lynne wrote: "- do you know how to access the size of an image?

usually a right click on the image and choose 'view image details' or 'image properties' will bring a popup window that will give you the size of..."

...I know. I was asking if Sunny knew how to locate the information. Thanks.

When I try to add an image, it takes up the whole screen --- I can find the size of my pic. But, do I just change the height and width in my html text, or do I need to convert my pic in some way. I'm not sure I even understand what I just wrote. So, I have a pic that's 453 x 604 pixels. I can put it on Photobucket and link to it. Do I then just change the size in the HTML, and if so, what should I change it to?

You can either resize it in Paint or Photoshop, or just change the size in the html tag, whichever you find easier. Let's see - just to give you an idea, an avatar picture is 25 x 33.

This is 154 x 205:



I usually go the easy route and divide both dimensions by two or three, whatever looks about right. The Goodreads html guide says "Width must be 0-400, Height must be 0-1000".

Oh. OOOOOOH! *slapping forehead with hand*
I was clearly making this entirely too complicated.
Thanks, Tracey!

:D My pleasure! Lots of people helped me when I was learning too.

An HTML question:
Is there a way of inserting colored text (like Red )
Thanks

i don't think goodreads allows this, no.

:(
:(

Thanks for the quick answer

They have red in the "some html is ok" guide , I tried to inspect that but what they did there did not work I am still trying