The Blogger Trailmap by Chivi Frost + #Giveaway

The Blogger Trailmap: How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level in Easy Steps
Published by Zavesti on the 7th October 2018.

How I got this book:
Received a review copy from the publisher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Buy direct from the Zavesti website

Add The Blogger Trailmap to your Goodreads

"The Blogger Trailmap" is great both for beginners who are about to start a blog, as well as those bloggers who are established and ready to grow.

This book brings for you a proven plan, tools & templates you need for incredible success. This power-packed concise guide can help you in many ways:

Templates to set clear goals and craft a blogging roadmap, avoid common mistakes, and how to get started quickly.
With a focus on action, this book brings for you the tools, templates, and checklists to help you quickly Implement what you learn in every section of the book.
Gives you a proven framework for creating content which people would love to read and share.
Simplifies every critical aspect of a blog - e.g. Magnetic Headlines, Copywriting, Swipe Files SEO, Sales Funnel, Landing Page and email Harvest.
Crush it on social media without going crazy - Build a list of raving fans and subscribers on autopilot without constant hustling.
Secrets to rank high in search engines with SEO best practices so that you can grow your traffic and get readers to come find you.
An easy-to-follow, systematic process to make money through your blog & grow your business.

Above all, you will learn that you don’t need fancy tech or cool tricks to grow your blog!

Whether you are a hobby blogger or blogging for profit, I am confident that this book would give you game-changing ideas to make your blog more meaningful and hugely successful.

I don't often read how-to or self help books, but when I was offered a copy of The Blogger Trailmap I thought I would like to read it. I hoped there would be a few nuggets of information to help me in my own blogging journey and this turned out to be the case. Frost has put together a guide which I think would be most suitable for new bloggers although there are also ideas that seasoned bloggers might not yet have considered. The Blogger Teailmap focuses on concepts rather than specific instructions so it's more geared towards discussing what a blogger might want to do than on explaining exactly how to go about it.

I was put off a little by the amateurish looking cover design and the smattering of strangely worded sentences inside the book. Proofreading needed! However these don't impact greatly on Frost's ability to put their message across. One aspect I particularly liked is that The Blogger Trailmap advocates a circular method of promotion whereby a blog can promote a tangible product with social media interactions promoting both avenues. In this case, publisher Zavesti creates blogging tools which are linked to from within The Blogger Trailmap and provide additional content to that within the book, and vice versa. It's a perfect example of practicing what they preach!

Meet The Publisher

Zavesti.com brings game-changing marketing ideas for independent creators like bloggers, YouTubers, artists and self-published authors who want to make a living from a home based business. The books and the resources on zavesti.com have been used successfully by our team to hugely grow social media subscribers and customers for our clients. A  huge collection of free resources on zavesti.com is now available for you to promote your blog or market your self-published book.

And now it's time for the Giveaway!

Zavesti have kindly offered 3 ebook copies of The Blogger Trailmap. This giveaway is open internationally until midnight on the 11th December.

Entry is by way of the Gleam widget below.
(GDPR: Gleam will ask for your email address so that I am able to contact the winners. I will then need to pass the winners email addresses on to Zavesti so they can send out the ebooks.)

The Blogger Trailmap by Chivi Frost ebook giveaway

Etsy Find!
	I'd rather be blogging  tote bag by Bloggers Do It Better in London, England Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

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Books by Chivi Frost / Blogging books / Books from America

Hearts Among Ourselves by A Happy Umwagarwa

Hearts Among Ourselves by A Happy Umwagarwa
Published by Dog Ear Publishing on the 5th September 2018.

Featured in Cover Characteristics: Hands

How I got this book:
Received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Check for Hearts Among Ourselves in these bookstores:

	The Book Depository
	Wordery
	Waterstones
	Amazon US / Amazon UK

Karabo is a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, which claimed the life of her father and sisters, and now she is left alone and lonely in the midst of wounded hearts of Rwanda. She does not know the whereabouts of her mother.
When Karabo goes to live with her paternal uncle Kamanzi, a colonel in the new army, she meets Shema, another genocide survivor, one of her uncle’s young escorts. Shema’s charm gives Karabo some jingling. She will surrender her heart to him, but it’s complicated —Shema knows only a part of her story. Shall she reveal the other part of the story to him? She is bamboozled.

Hearts Among Ourselves is a story of love, hatred, and the intersection of the two. Karabo and Shema, two grieving orphans, grow up in a torn society—caught between the world of the living and the dead, and the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis.

Some say love is like water—it flows with everything on its way. Will Karabo and Shema be swept up in its current or tossed to the shore?

A Happy Umwagarwa has a unique voice which truly allowed this story to come to life for me. Her unusual use of Emglish gives a particularly authentic feel to Hearts Among Ourselves and helped me to feel almost as though I were reading a memoir rather than a novel. Narrated in the first person by Karabo, a young Rwandan genocide survivor, we see her grow from orphaned child to confident young woman while coming to terms with her country's past and finding her own place within a very changed society.

Umwagarwa uses Karabo's story to explore questions of ethnicity and identity in a deep and interesting way. I think everyone knows that the 1994 genocide was Rwandans of Hutu ethnicity massacring Rwandans of Tutsi ethnicity. However Umwagarwa introduces characters who don't fit conveniently into such a simplified narrative. I learned that Rwandans take their ethnic identity from their father so Karabo identifies as Tutsi, however her mother was Hutu. Taken in by a paternal uncle, a Tutsi, after her family was killed, Karabo has to deal daily with hatred expressed towards Hutus. She is, of course, painfully aware of her own dual ethnicity, but this fact is wilfully ignored by people around her and Karabo feels unable to acknowledge it even to the man she loves.

The love story aspect of Hearts Among Ourselves is, unfortunately, what I didn't like about the novel. It is an Irritating Love Triangle, especially because I couldn't actually understand why Karabo was so enamoured of either potential partner. Both seemed overly full of themselves and insensitive to Karabo's emotions! So I struggled to empathise with this which was a shame as Karabo's deliberations do continue at length. Looking past the romance though, I found Hearts Among Ourselves offered a valuable insight into Rwandan culture and the ongoing efforts of her people to reconcile.


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Books by A Happy Umwagarwa / Contemporary fiction / Books from Rwanda

Children Of The Ghetto: My Name Is Adam by Elias Khoury

Children Of The Ghetto: My Name Is Adam by Elias Khoury
First published in Arabic as Awlad al-Ghittu, Ismi Adam by Dar al-adab in Lebanon in 2012. English language translation by Humphrey Davies published by MacLeHose Press in October 2018.

How I got this book:
Received a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Check for My Name Is Adam in these bookstores:

	The Book Depository
	Wordery
	Waterstones
	Amazon US / Amazon UK

Who is Adam Dannoun?

Until a few months before his death in a fire in his New York apartment - a consequence of smoking in bed - he thought he knew.

But an encounter with Blind Mahmoud, a father figure from his childhood, changed all that. From Mahmoud he learned the terrible truth behind his birth, a truth withheld from him for fifty-seven years by the woman he thought was his mother.

This discovery leads Adam to investigate what exactly happened in 1948 in Palestine in the city of Lydda where he was born: the massacre, the forced march into the wilderness and the corralling of those citizens who did not flee into what the Israeli soldiers and their Palestinian captives came to refer to as the Ghetto.

The stories he collects speak of bravery, ingenuity and resolve in the face of unimaginable hardship. Saved from the flames that claimed him, they are his lasting and crucial testament.

I don't know how to begin to review this intense, dark, complex and emotional novel! I nearly didn't read past the first fifty pages as our egocentric narrator, is incredibly irritating, however he also tells a compelling story and once I found myself swept into this fictionalised account of the Israeli invasion and massacre of Palestinians in the city of Lydda I couldn't look away. I hadn't previously heard of Lydda. My knowledge of Palestine had been limited to a hazy knowledge of British interference there in the early 20th century and then oblique portrayals such as Joss Sheldon's Occupied. I now have a shocking awareness of the inception of post-war Israel and the disturbing similarities between how Jews had been treated across Europe, and how they then treated the Arab population in Palestine.

Khoury has written My Name Is Adam from the perspective of an aging man who was born in or near Lydda a few weeks before the city was invaded. Adam doesn't know his true parentage so aligns himself with a trio of potential fathers, all heroes in one way or another. Interestingly to me he doesn't seem to make any attempt to identify his birth mother, although Manal, the woman who raised him, fulfils the maternal role. Our narrator wants to be a glorified writer, but cannot find a story to tell until he is directed towards the story of Lydda. I could have done without his initial circular waffling on this point and the 'found notebooks' device didn't work for me either as I felt they just added a blurry layer that wasn't needed. I understand including the telling of the story of lovesick poet Waddah Al-Yaman, but all the protestations about not having had an affair with his Korean student were wearying to say the least! This novel isn't an easy read for several reasons. It's ultimate subject matter is horrific - ethnic cleansing and genocide. It also uses the story-within-a-story device for multiple overlapping stories, and neither of the narrators are men with whom I could easily empathise. That said, I still think My Name Is Adam is probably a masterpiece. That it is titled as the first Children Of The Ghetto book intrigues me because I have no idea how Khoury could follow this, but I am determined to read that second novel when it appears!


Search Lit Flits for more:
Books by Elias Khoury / Contemporary fiction / Books from Lebanon

Monarchy by David Starkey

Monarchy: from the Middle Ages to Modernity by David Starkey
Published by HarperCollins in 2006.

I registered my copy of this book at BookCrossing.com

How I got this book:
Borrowed from my partner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Check for Monarchy in these bookstores:

	The Book Depository
	Wordery
	Waterstones
	Amazon US / Amazon UK

David Starkey’s magisterial new book Monarchy charts the rise of the British crown from the insurgency of the War of the Roses, through the glory and dangers of the Tudors, to the insolvency of the Stuarts and chaos of the English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the rule of a commoner who was ‘king in all but name’, the importing of a German dynasty, and the coming-to-terms with modernity under the wise guidance of another German, Victoria’s Prince Consort Albert. An epilogue brings to story up to the present and asks questions about the future.

The crown of England is the oldest surviving political institution in Europe. And yet, throughout this book Starkey emphasises the Crown’s endless capacity to reinvent itself to circumstances and reshape national polity whilst he unmasks the personalities and achievements, the defeats and victories, which lie behind the kings and queens of British history.

Each of these monarchs has contributed, in their own way, to the religion, geography, laws, language and government that we currently live with today. In this book,Starkey demonstrates exactly how these states were arrived at, how these monarchs subtly influenced each other, which battles were won and why, whose whim or failure caused religious tradition to wither or flourish, and which monarchs, through their acumen and strength or single minded determination came to enforce the laws of England.

With his customary authority and verve, David Starkey reignites these personalities to produce an entertaining and masterful account of these figures whose many victories and failures are the building blocks upon which Britain today is built. Far more than a biography of kings and queens, ‘Monarchy’ is a radical reappraisal of British nationhood, culture and politics, shown through the most central institution in British life.

I remember reading Monarchy when it first was published and it is cram packed with information. However, there is so much to learn and (not!) remember that a second reading seven years later felt encountering like a new book.

I like David Starkey's writing style which is often drily humorous. Having also read his book solely about Elizabeth I shortly before Monarchy, much of the early section was familiar. However, he gives plenty of space to the shorter reigned monarchs and I was very interested in how much of the 'divine' hereditary succession was actually the result of political wrangling behind the scenes. The seemingly incessant violent disputes between the opposing Christian factions of Catholics and Protestants was in some respects hard to fathom - they're all supposed to be the same overall faith aren't they?!

As non-fiction books of this topic go, Monarchy is far more accessible than many and, as an overview or to inspire more in depth study, I'd recommend the read.


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Books by David Starkey / History books / Books from England

Xingu by Edith Wharton #FreeBook

Xingu by Edith Wharton
First published in America in 1916.

X for my 2018 Alphabet Soup Challenge, my 1910s read for my 2018-19 Decade Challenge, and my 10th read for my Classics Club Challenge.

How I got this book:
Free download available at Project Gutenberg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A group of rather pompous ladies are excited by the forthcoming visit of novelist Osric Dane to one of their cultural Lunch Club meetings. However when Dane proves to be more formidable than any of the Lunch Club members, they allow themselves to be rescued by newest member Mrs Roby, a lady at whom everyone has formerly sneered.

I chose to read Xingu for three reasons: I needed an X for my A-Z Challenge, I had never read Wharton before and felt that I should, and the ebook was free! This is a short work at about thirty pages so, even with brief pauses to look up obscure words (Wharton's vocabulary was far superior to mine!), I read Xingu in about an hour. It's a brilliant portrayal of snobbery and social etiquette. As someone who isn't much for joining in clubs and societies, I was wickedly reminded of the one-upmanship I have witnessed on occasional visits to similar gatherings myself, and I loved the cattiness of the Lunch Club women. I would be interested to know just how close to real life Xingu is because I am sure Wharton would have known women just like these. There are wonderful phrases and descriptions throughout the story. I'm not usually one for quoting from stories, but to give you a flavour of Wharton's superb turns of phrase, this is describing the meeting's hostess, Mrs Ballinger:

Her mind was an hotel where facts came and went like transient lodgers, without leaving their address behind, and frequently without paying for their board.

Miaow!

Etsy Find!
	'Books kept her warm'  Edith Wharton quote  art print by Sweet Sequels in Texas, USA Click pic to visit Etsy Shop

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Books by Edith Wharton / Short stories / Books from America