Saving For Retirement by Gail MarksJarvis

Saving for Retirement without Living Like a Pauper or Winning the Lottery by Gail MarsJarvis, Updated & Revised, August 2012 ISBN 0132271907 Kindle Edition.

This is copy of my review for this book for the Amazon Vine program.

I wasn’t exactly sure what this book would contain, secrets for how to get the money to save so you don’t retire penniless, or would it be about investing strategies? It turns out to be a well written guide book to the basics of investing in the different retirement accounts available in the USA. I was impressed by this book and even though I have read many books on investing, none were as clear and simple to understand as this book. I learned quite a few things, including what a Roth IRA can do for you. Any other time that I have read about a Roth IRA I never understood why it had such appeal. One simple paragraph or two and I comprehended. That is a sign of a good “How-To” book. Make it simple enough that not only can the reader understand, but they can also put the advice into practice.

One of my favorite things in this book was the constant pushing to remind young adults that starting to save now in a 401K or IRA would over the long haul leave them with a tidy retirement fund of somewhere in the vicinity of $1,000,000. Yes, we are aware of inflation on that amount over 30-40+ years, but how much better to have that million dollars even if its spending ability has diminished, than no money saved at all? This is a book every parent should read and then give a copy to each of their high school age kids or college kids at the latest, so they can secure a future for themselves. I will be passing my copy over to my son to read and I anticipate some good conversations with him about the book and what investing plan we both should come up with. I’m so late in the game but financial problems have reared there ugly heads for me way too many times, but I do look forward to trying to get our finances earning the best they can.

For anyone who doesn’t understand the stock market, how to invest in their 401Ks and IRAs, this book will help you to not only understand but make wise choices because of the knowledge they have gained. A must read book for the baffled.

One thing I was very impressed about in this book, is that it was written without ever once saying this or that fund is ‘sexy’. Somehow over the last few years, the word sexy has come to replace words like great, fantastic, etc. Since stocks and investing are asexual, they literally can’t be ‘sexy’ and I’m glad that this writer knew that. Unfortunately this bad habit of some writers tends to feel like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

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I've been on disability for about 8 years now, so effectively I'm retired, but that doesn't mean I have a nice little nest egg and with my hubby 9 years younger, he has almost 20 years to 'retirement'. Do self-employed people ever actually retire? Well anyways, I still want to try to squeeze as much out of what little we have invested as possible before his body gives up entirely. This book gave me lots of good ideas and ideas for things that I want to investigate. I hope you get a copy and study it yourself.

Here is one of my latest reviews for Amazon. It is for the book Get Up to Speed with Online Marketing: How to Use Websites, Blogs, Social Networking and Much More by Jon Reed. ISBN 0133066274

As small on line sellers at ecrater.com, our world has been rocked by Google deciding that they will no longer show listing of items for sale for free in their search. As small sellers, we can't afford to pay the cost of the product just to drive someone to buy from us. So getting this book and reading it was like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Ideas! Good ideas. I ideas I can use! Techniques I didn't understand. I have never marked up and highlighted a book as much as this one. I couldn't believe how much my understanding of the different social media sites worked.

One of my frustrations with the internet over the years is these new, neat things like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. hit our computers but nothing ever comes with instructions manuals anymore. It is difficult at times to truly understand how to use these programs to the fullest. That is what I liked about this book was the understanding of the different social media sites and how they worked and how a person can use them to drive interest and customers to their business.

Now that I have read the book, I plan on going through it and setting up a plan of action showing which social media sites I will be using (or using better) and how we will use them. This thing with Google could really be weighing us down, but after reading this book I feel hopeful. Unless you already have a PR team in place and lots of money to drive customers to your business, this is a good book to read for the basics. Even if you have a PR team, this book could help you know what they are talking about. The only thing that I missed with the book is Pinterest came on the scene in the midst of the book being published and so it isn't mentioned in the book. I guess I will have to figure that one out myself. I highly recommend this book to anyone running an online business of any type.

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NOTE TO THE AMAZON REVIEW TROLLS THAT LIKE TO DIS REVIEWS BECAUSE WITHIN 24 HOURS OF READING A BOOK LIKE THIS, OUR STORE HASN'T ACHEIEVED 1ST PLACE PLACEMENT ON ALL THE SEARCH ENGINES. I am not interested in your comments nor do I believe anyone else is. Online marketing involves work. We understand that. We will be working on our on line marketing along with everything else we do to run a business. This is a great book and will be helpful to many who read it. I know it will be helpful to us as we put many of its principles into practice.

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Over the bit of time that I have been writing book reviews for Amazon I have been astounded by the rude people that tell me basically that I'm stupid because if the book was so great why is my store, Moonwishes Sewing and Crafts, not ranking #1 in searches. Okay, well DUH! It takes awhile to work through new ideas and get them into practice! However, I think this book would be a great one for anyone who is selling on line to read. I plan to put a lot of the ideas into practice ASAP!

Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books

Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books
by Tony Reinke ISBN 978-1-4335-2226-0
A review of the book that I did for the Amazon Vine Program.

As someone that loves to read, it tends to be a bit frustrating when you get together with Christian people and other than their Bible (I’m making the assumption that they read them), they only seem to read "Christian" books. As if the act of picking up a non-Christian book and discussing it would be a bit on the sinful side. I have always disliked so-called Christian romance novels because they are written with dialogue that is totally unrelated to how people actually talk. Therefore, I was greatly interested in what Tony Reinke had to say about Christians and reading. The first good thing is that he is not only for Christians to be reading a variety of topics, they don't have to be the Christian romance novel drivel that many women tend to read or pretend to read. I don't really know as I can't wade through those books.

Then he goes on to not only encourage a reading plan but what types of books would be good to read and ways to make time to read (hint: turn off the TV), ways to share reading with your spouse and children. He encourages you to write in your books as long as you own them. Ways to learn and grow by reading the right kinds of books including books by the great theologians, fiction, fantasy, non-fiction books of every sort except for books such as pornography that you know before you pick them up that they have no redeeming value. His book is easy to read and comprehend. By following his guidelines you can better understand your Bible and God's purpose for your life and be educated enough that you can have a proper worldview. As your knowledge increases through reading, you will better be able to stand up and explain your faith to others.

I would highly recommend this book to any Christian adult that seriously desires a closer understanding of God and the world. The only thing that I think he missed in the book is study aides and I'm not meaning things like Cliff's notes. Over the last 10 years I have collected a small reference library which has helped my reading tremendously and includes a large dictionary (well actually my husband and I both have our own big, fat dictionary), a thesaurus, English to French, German, Spanish, etc. dictionaries, a US and world atlas, and if possible a good set of encyclopedias. Before you holler and say, "Hey that is expensive!", we were able, by going to library book sales and yard sales over the years, to get these reference works plus others for around $25 total. This way when you run into a word you don't know you can look it up. If a book mentions a famous person and you don't know who they are, look them up. If it mentions a place you don’t know where it is, look it up. You will be educating yourself and the information will stick in your mind and help you understand what you have read.

Reading has always been my favorite activity and my reading skills have given me a very broad base of knowledge that was useful in school and now as an adult. Even if you don’t like to read much, reading this book and following the advice in it, should start you on the path to enjoying reading more and gaining knowledge that you never thought was possible. If you have children in your home, following the guidance in this book will help you instill a love of books and learning into your children.

Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You

Off the Hook Marketing: How to Make Social Media Sell for You by Jeff Molander


In the world of books on how to sell on line, I have noticed many books make big promises but fail to deliver. In this book however, not only does the author take a different approach and thought pattern to using social media to sell on line, he also gives logical and practical examples. He gives urls to sites that show what he is talking about so that you can see how the different people took action to build their companies and make money via social media. After reading this book, not only was I full of new ideas for our home based on line business, but with the need to do homework. That homework consists of going to those many websites that he referenced in the book, reading the various blogs, websites, Facebook posts, and then studying their techniques so that I can truly understand all of what he was talking about and also to glean more ideas to put into practice. I have lots of work to do. I can say though, I took just one of the ideas that popped into my head while reading the book and applied it and got positive comments in return. Suddenly by customers were communicating with me in a way they never had before! Amazing! Of course, the whole idea is to make money, but I wasn’t even sure that my customers read anything I wrote. Now at least I know that some are paying attention and that more will as I continue to develop the concept that I am working on which will make customers want to buy from me instead of someone else.

We have been selling at various sites over the last ten years and one of the biggest problems I found to marketing and promoting our products was just exactly how to draw people into our store by way of our blog, Facebook posts or website content. What kind of content should we be using? The author makes it very clear what types of content to be using and what types of things to avoid, such as sending emails marketing a company on a daily basis which I think most of us hate. After a while that company’s e-mail heads to the junk/blocked box instead of the in-box.

If there was one bone that I had to pick with the author, it was in his use of the word ‘sexy’ in referring things like software and cell phones (at least 9 times that I counted in the book). I don’t know when our society started using the word ‘sexy’ to be a descriptive word for inanimate objects that by their very nature have nothing ‘sexy’ about them. There are so many other words that could and should have been substituted such as: captivating, fascinating, enthralling, educational, etc. Check out a Thesaurus and find some words that are more descriptive of what you are trying to say.

All in all a great book for trying to understand what you should be doing as a business person when faced with social media. This book does not help beginners learn how to start a business page on Facebook or start a blog, but it does help you to understand the types of content and information you should be posting.

You can visit the author at his website or at his blog where you can get a lot more good information about using social media to sell.

Seven Keys to Unlock Autism by Elaine Hall & Diane Isaacs

This is another book review that I did for the Amazon Vine Program. As a mother of a high functioning autistic son, I was thrilled to see how these women wrote a book with understanding of these special children. It is always obvious to me when someone is writing from the base of personal knowledge or one where they read some information about autism or saw Rainman and base all of what they write on these misconceptions.

Seven Keys to Unlock Autism: Making Miracles in the Classroom by Elaine Hall and Diane Isaacs

As a mother of an autistic man, I read this book with great interest. Both of the author’s of this book have boys that are autistic and it shows. It shows in their deep understanding of ones who live with this day in and day out. They aren’t talking ‘theory’ but what they have learned in the trenches and through their work with other autistic children and those that work with them.
Although this book is directed at teachers, it would be good for anyone in contact with autistic children and adults to read to get a fuller understanding of these people that due to developmental difficulties don’t progress at the same levels as so called ‘normal’ people. Actually at times they progress faster and then some things are very or completely delayed. Even if a teacher doesn’t have an autistic child in their classroom, the many ‘keys’ given in this book, I would think, would be helpful in maintaining a smoothly functioning classroom.
The last statistic that I saw on autism stated that 1 in 110 children have this difficulty. Some may have autism mildly and others much more profoundly, yet each of these child can teach us something and all of them want their voices to be heard. By learning more about them and how they function you will be doing yourself and them a favor of being someone that understands their needs and desires and can help bring understanding to others.

Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book

While I've been having a lousy summer physically, most of my reading has been cosy mysteries or sewing magazines and books. Then a few weekends ago I was able to get to my first yard sale of the season, which shows just how ill I've felt since I love going to yard sales! Not only did I find some nifty sewing notions, I found a great book that I picked up for $2. It is called Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book: What to do and what not to do in cooking by Mrs. Mary J. Lincoln. My copy is a revised edition that was published in 1906 by Little, Brown and Company. The book was originally published in 1883.

I love to read cook books as they are much more interesting than many history books, yet also show the history of our world and what was happening during the time frame of the book's writing. After reading the first few pages of this book, all I could think was why didn't this book get republished in the pre-Y2K preparation? It apparently has been republished in 2010 but to have had this book if the world had come crashing down, would have been  a treasure to have on the reference shelf. Of all the cook books I have ever read, this was the first to actually explain in great detail (everything in this book is explained in great detail) how to get your fire going and how to bake and roast items in your wood stove or if you are really up with the times a coal stove. I had read a lot of books pre-Y2K and never saw one that truly explained how to use the wood stoves that people were buying in preparation. It instructs on how to cook meat in the stove or on top of the stove after telling how to debone it if needed. It has many scientific explanations for everything, although how accurate scientifically they are after 125+ years is questionable. But if you want to know why meat needs seared quickly before putting in on to cook for hours this book will tell you.

You will learn more than you ever wanted to know about wheat and grain and the different ways it is ground and which are the best flours depending on what you will be using it for. Fiber and the wheat bran are condemned roundly as being indigestible and not good for you. I was happy to see that Pillsbury was considered to be a good flour and one that was available back then in Boston. You will learn how to make your own yeast if you don't have a friend or family member to loan you some and then how to keep your yeast growing so that you have it for all your bread making needs.

You will be instructed on saving drippings and meat and poultry fat to make your fat for cooking and if your meat looks like it will be too dry with cooking, how and what to 'lard' it with. How to measure accurately. Cautions to be sure you don't burn yourself on your stove or the pans you are using. How to have extra space for working near your stove--a wooden box is recommended to be drawn up near the stove. While reading you start to feel like you have been transported back in time to a kitchen at it's minimum. It makes you grateful for regular ovens, much less microwave or convection ovens! So many of the tasks that used to fall on women back during the 1880's have disappeared from sight at this point. I can't imagine trying to keep a cook stove going to bake the family bread during our current heat wave, although true to how she wrote, the author suggests that in the summer you might want to do your baking early in the day before it gets too hot. Thank you, but I will buy my bread from the store when it is 80 degrees out.

The book has many recipes and also a glossary of cookery terms used in that day. I love finding little treasures that help me to understand what is being talked about in older books as it is too easy to think a word means something else than what it is being used for.

If you love poking your nose into history by way of cook books, you will want to track down a copy of this book for yourself. I would hope that the republished book has stayed true to the original and weren't updated for today. The charm of reading this book in the first place is it's old time flavor.

Outsmarting Google by Evan and Bradley Bailyn

I know I haven't been around for awhile. I had knee surgery in April. Very successful surgery I might add. I figured during my recuperation time I would have lots of time to catch up on my book reviews and other sit around projects. Well between physical therapy, time laying in bed using a CPM machine I was exhausted. Sitting at the desk computer was totally uncomfortable until this past week or two and I discovered that using a laptop while having an ice pack on your knee defeated the purpose of the ice pack as the heat from the laptop kept melting the ice. I finally gave up. But I'm back again until the doctor revises my other knee.

One of the things that I do to keep busy is run an online sewing pattern store called Moonwishes Sewing and Crafts. I'm always looking for ways to get my site noticed more, so when this book came up as an option on the Amazon Vine program, I grabbed it and was very glad I did! Here is the review on Outsmarting Google by Evan Bailyn with Bradley Bailyn that I did for the Amazon Vine program.

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Many people have a website, an ecommerce site and a blog or two. But how do you get the attention you want and need. You especially need search engine attention if you are using your website or ecommerce site to earn money. If you aren’t getting noticed (i.e. you aren’t showing up in the first page or two of the search engines), you may be blaming the economy, the war, politicians, PMS or the phase of the moon. But really when it comes down to it, are YOU doing what you need to, to receive search engine attention and especially Google’s attention? This book tells you what to look for in your site and how to correct things so that you can progressively increase your ranking when someone searches for one of your keywords. This is a very practical book written for normal speaking people as opposed to a book written in techno-geek-speak. After reading the book, I immediately sat down to figure out what I could do to further the cause of my website, store and blog and you should too.


My only problem with the book itself was that the examples/illustrations were too small and I needed a magnifier to see and understand them. I would have also liked to see a simple step-by-step “to do” list at the end of the book as a easy guide to be sure you are doing what you need to do and keep your priorities straight. Then I realized that the Table of Contents takes care of that need fairly well.
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When checking the reviews from other readers, most of them were also enthusiastic about the book. A few felt that the authors were making guesses and were just writing about what everyone knew anyways. Well, I didn't know some of what was in the book and I felt like I learned a lot and that is what was important to me. I have more ideas to try. I hope you find that this book is useful to you also.

Cut Your Grocery Bill In Half Steve Annette Economides

With great pleasure I read this book for an Amazon vine Book Review. I gave it a 5 as a rating. Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half with America's Cheapest Family by Steve & Annette Economides. Click on the title of this blog topic and be taken straight to the Economides website and see what else they have to say.

Over the years, I have read many books on frugal living, frugal shopping, and how to feed a family with limited financial means. Some of the books were great and some were so-so. Some were very dogmatic and made you feel like if you didn’t want to follow, or couldn’t follow, their ways of doing things that you were stupid or throwing your money away. I still remember one book on feeding your family on something like $10 a week. The woman claimed that no matter what she wouldn’t go higher with her grocery budget. Occasionally I think about that book and wonder what her family is eating for only $10. Tough going at this point. All that to say that over the last 30+ years I have read a great deal on the subject and find this book to be one of the most well balanced books on feeding your family frugally and nutritiously. If you are having trouble making ends meet in today’s economy, or any economy, get this book, read it and do what you can. Systematically train yourself to follow their guidelines to get your food budget under control


I have been hearing bits and pieces about this couple for years now but except for the occasional magazine article, hadn’t been able to read enough about their ‘system’ to know what exactly they were doing. They have already published a book called America’s Cheapest Family Gets You right on the Money. I haven’t read it yet, but will be trying to locate it at my library. In writing this new book on Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half, They took the time to write a lengthy book (300+ pages) with lots of ideas and ways to feed your family without going broke. If you have been practicing frugal living prior to reading this book, you may not get as much out of it as someone who hasn’t, but you will get fired up to see what else you can do to save in this department of your finances. If you and your family are eating out every meal or most of them and you can’t get your financial ends to met, then you need this book.

One of the first things I will mention that I really liked about this book, is Annette believes in cooking, and the family apparently believes in eating, tasty well made meals. Too many frugal eating books depend too much on the “it doesn’t matter what it tastes like, it is good for you, eat it.’ If you don’t know how to cook cookbooks are recommended, preferably from the library. The Betty Crocker and/or Better Homes and Gardens large cookbooks published in the 1950-60’s are some of the best all round cookbooks, especially the picture or illustrated ones. The better you learn to cook, the more the family will be happy to stay home and eat at home where the food tastes better.

Along with pitching the thought of learning how to cook, the book has many practical suggestions for planning, shopping, storage, equipment you might need (and where to find it cheap). This is a family that believes in yard sales, second hand thrift, scratch and dent sales, saving until you can afford to buy something. They also write understanding that their audience will be coming from many different skill levels in handling their personal finances, so at the end of each chapter there are special hints for three different levels of shopper. No where are you made to feel bad that you aren’t suddenly transformed into a chef that feeds a family of 10 on $50 a week by the time you are finished reading the book. This is a learning process. Take it slow and keep working at it and eventually you will find that all the money you were wasting at restaurants is now in your pocket or being used for other things. And oh yes, if you aren’t into cutting coupons or don’t have a source for them, this book isn’t based on couponing to the max. If you have them and they will help, use them and if not, no problem.

An absolute 5 star book that will be very helpful for any family, no matter what level their income, that is struggling with their finances. The only absolutely essential thing that you will have to do is change your mind set to one of wanting to do what is necessary to trim your grocery budget. You can read all the books in the world about saving money, but until they become actions, none of it does you any good.

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Whenever I write a review of a book, I never look to see what anyone else has said about the book until I have posted my review so I am not influenced by the reviewers. For this book, there were some reviews that I just didn't understand, such as one person saying this was a slim volume with not much information. A book of 300+ pages, I don't really think can be construed as a slim volume! Some mentioned that they felt the family ate too much meat, or all the ideas they wrote are already out in books and the Internet. Maybe so, but for someone desperately seeking a way to bring their grocery bill under control, this book has the information you need, presented in a simple and understandable format.



If you want more ideas on frugal living, here are some websites to visit, the first being the Economides family website: http://www.americascheapestfamily.com/

The Dollar Stretcher http://www.stretcher.com/index.cfm
Living on a Dime http://www.livingonadime.com/  They have published a cookbook that has many of the recipes I grew up on. Cheap and filling.
Frugal Coupon Living http://www.frugalcouponliving.com/
Saving Advice http://www.savingadvice.com/

Freestyle Machine Embroidery by Carol Shinn

While looking through my many needlecraft magazines, I came upon a project done by Carol Shinn that I thought was amazing, so I was delighted to see that she had published a book on her techniques called Freestyle Machine Embroidery: Techniques and inspiration for Fiber Art. I have been looking for quite a while for a book that showed how to do freestyle machine embroidery which is not the same as doing machine embroidery using digitized designs. With freestyle machine embroidery, you use your sewing machine as a paint brush and thread as the paint, sewing down layers of color to make a picture or design.


In my quest I have come upon books that while supposedly about this type of embroidery, spend half the book talking about painting backgrounds, etc. Well if I could paint backgrounds I think I would stick with painting and forget trying to learn how to machine embroider the picture. This book, however, explains some simple projects that you can do with painting blocks of color (or you could print the blocks out using special ink jet photo transfer paper) and then explains how to use your threads to sew out these simple designs. Once you have learned these simple techniques then you go on to learn how to show transparency of colors in your designs. There are plenty of pictures so that you can understand the step by step process including showing the blocks and the spools of thread used in the project and how they combined.

The author explains the materials she uses and the whys of what she uses and at the same time going on to describe other material that can be used and how you would need to stabilize it. She also spends time on explaining how a design can distort due to the quantity of thread taking up fabric depending on the way the stitches lie. This is the first I recall hearing about the possibilities of distortion from all the books I have read on freestyle machine embroidery in so it was certainly good to know. Along with her own work she shows examples of other artists and explains their basic techniques and philosophy about what they do.

At the back of the book was a page of recommended reading with a long list of books that I hadn’t heard of. I think my Amazon wish list will be expanding if I can’t find the books through my local library. All in all Freestyle Machine Embroidery was a terrific book and one I highly recommend if you are interested at all in this sewing technique. Perhaps after reading this book, I will now be able to go back to my other books on machine embroidery and understand the techniques for combining the thread better.

This is basically a copy of a review that I wrote for Amazon. I gave this book 5 stars as it is very informative, inspirational, has great photos and lots of them. I learned a lot from this book and as soon as I have time for yet another project will be trying out her technique.

Blogging To Drive Business by Eric Butow & Rebecca Bollwitt

I had already chosen a book on blogging to review, Create Your Own Blog, when I had the opportunity to pick this book also. I thought that I might be able to compare them and if content was missing from one then I should be able to pick it up in the other. Well I must say I was very disappointed with Blogging to Drive Business. It was apparently written for someone who is a CEO of a large brick and mortar company that needs to be convinced, still at this point in time, that his company needs a web presence. Unless I missed it, this book didn’t address the needs of a completely internet run business or a sole proprietor business. In general the book covers the philosophy of being on the internet, who in the company should handle writing the blog entries, how to hire a blogger, etc. As to the actual composition of the blog for the company, that part of the book skimmed through those points, giving a paragraph or two to each of the major blogging sites with no real recommendations given or points on how to really go about setting up and using the blog. If you didn’t know anything about blogging in the first place, I doubt that you will get much information from this book to help you. Although the authors tried to make the information flow in some kind of order, they continually seemed to go off track.


The illustrations were mostly screenshots and were all too small also, but even with my magnifying glass I couldn’t see what the point of most of them were. The font size of the text also seemed to be on the small side which makes reading difficult. Terms and expressions were thrown around assuming that the reader would be familiar with them. This was rather odd as the book seemed to take the stance that it was geared towards the reader that didn’t know anything about blogging or using the internet to drive business to their company, but if the reader didn’t know the internet terms then they would be lost and not understand what the authors were writing about.

As someone that owns an on-line store, I didn’t feel that I got anything out of this book that would truly help make my store more of a success or enable me to drive more business to it by using a blog. I found a couple of nuggets that might be helpful but certainly not an entire books worth so I was glad I got the book for free to review and hadn’t spent my money on it.

This is a copy of my review of Blogging To Drive Business for Amazon, I only gave it 2 stars, both for technical difficulty of small fonts and impossible to see screenshot illustrations, and also because its content is seriously lacking and chaotic. If you want to learn how to both blog and drive business with your blog I would suggest Create Your Own Blog instead.

Create Your Own Blog by Tris Hussey

I choose to read this book, Create Your Own Blog, when it was offered to me as I had been thinking of starting another blog and was wondering what was new on the Blogging front. A book like this, the first thing you need to worry about is how out of date it has become between the writing of it and the actual publishing. This book was published in January 2010 and my reading of it took place in April 2010. While some things had changed such as TypePad now has a free `microblog', for the most part the book itself was packed with lots of useful and timely information. It was presented in a clear manner. As long as you have basic knowledge about computers such as receiving and sending emails, surfing the net itself, etc. and are interested in having a blog of your own, this book is a very good guide. It's format covered what you needed to know in a very logical manner and can be used to help you set up, promote and keep up with your blog.


My only complaint about this book was the size of the screenshots. Considering between one quarter to one third of the book consisted of screenshot examples, they were all too small to see without a magnifying glass. As the screenshots were an important part of the message of the text itself this would be detrimental to those who are visual learners and need to see what to do.

After reading the book, I was able to sit down and start a blog and was able to add in bits and pieces that I hadn't known were available until reading this book. You can see the blog I created at http://www.moonwishesreads.blogspot.com/ . I still have things I would like to do with the blog and many posts to add to it, but this book was a great help and has plenty of ideas for also promoting your blog to get readers. I definitely recommend this book, but keep a magnifying glass handy!

This is a copy of my Amazon review of Create Your Own Blog. I gave the book 4 stars due to the problem with the illustrations being too small to see without a magnifying glass. If you are looking for a book to help you start your own blog, this book should do the job.