Hitting All the Right Buttons

The days are flying by of late, what with now working fifty hours a week, it’s been hard to get a chance to blog, (and I am aware I need to answer comments but that will be done at a later date) so it came as a bit of a surprise when Crissy told me we were nearing our six hundredth subscriber on  our YouTube channel.

When you read this we will be at that specific number and so can announce that we already have our plans to pay forward all the kindness that has come our way – especially over the past year and a half – by donating to a charity chosen by our winner.  We will also be sharing some other prizes out for other lucky entrants, see our Facebook page for that, link below.

Here is your chance to win in The Johnsons’ Road to 1,000 Subscribers! Milestone Giveaways and Raffle! Join in these 4 easy steps:

1) Subscribe to the Johnsons’ YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheJohnsonsLoveAndLaughter

2) Like The Johnsons’ Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/TheJohnsonsBabyPower/

3) Share your favourite The Johnsons’ YouTube video on your Facebook timeline and story with a witty caption and tag your chosen loved one, following with #TheJohnsonsPayItForward.

4) Send the screenshots of steps 1 to 3 to the Johnsons’ Facebook page and the link of your chosen charity. Wait for the confirmation of your raffle entry.
Raffle draw will be done once we reach 1,000 subscribers.

Not Another Live Stream

Now that our YouTube channel is up and established we will be doing a livestream tomorrow, details on the missus’ blog, if you’re asleep at that time you can catch up with it later when the whole stream will be uploaded. There will be some book talk unsurprisingly, pop along if you wish…

Lost in invisible cities

It is a very hot summer day here in England – something very unsual for I don’t really associate this country as bright and sunny.

As you all know, these past two months have been very busy for my husband and I. We started our YouTube channel – The Johnsons mainly because we were bored in lockdown. Two months later, we are making genuine friends and making connections from all over the world. I would like to invite all of those who bothered to read this post for our second live streaming tomorrow, June 26, 2020 at 12:30PM +GMT.

This is where it all began.

View original post

Lists (because that’s what gets the views #shameless)

Whilst we are all appreciating our living room walls as never before, it makes sense to share what has been diverting my attention and hopefully will give you something to do as well.

Found at Pixabay.com

Grabbing some reading time is always handy for a book blog, as well as a mixture of sci-fi, philosophy, essays, I have also been hunting through obscure books thanks to Gutenberg.  Free books, albeit read on a screen, is a treat.

From that I can segue neatly onto the proofreading. Originally conceived to assist Project Gutenberg, Distributed Proofreaders is now the main source of PG e-books.  I do my bit everyday and am bookmarking some obscure works to read once they have been through the various rounds of proofing and formatting.

For those of you with any interest in how I look or sound, I present to you a vlog in which Crissy and I ramble a bit about LDRs and such.  If anyone wishes me to do a book vlog, please let me know, and also feel free to share any ideas for said project.

Keeping with YouTube, we have been watching lots of informative documentaries too.  BBC’s Horizon has some good stuff, as do the mainly literature based documentaries that can be found.

Books Burn Badly – Manuel Rivas

On 19 August 1936 Hercules the boxer stands on the quayside at Coruña and watches Fascist soldiers piling up books and setting them alight. With this moment a young carefree group of friends are transformed into a broken generation.

Out of this incident during the early months of Spain’s tragic civil war, Manuel Rivas weaves a colourful tapestry of stories and unforgettable characters to create a panorama of twentieth-century Spanish history. For it is not only the lives of Hercules the boxer and his friends that are tainted by the unending conflict, but also those of a young washerwoman who sees souls in the clouded river water and the stammering son of a judge who uncovers his father’s hidden library.

As the singed pages fly away on the breeze, their stories live on in the minds of their readers.

Post 200, The Vlog!! House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

After much promising and teasing, I have finally gotten around to doing my 200 post and as promised it is in the form of the vlog, below, which will give you a glimpse, not only into how I butcher the Queen’s English on a daily, if not hourly basis but also into how excitable I get when talking about books.

The blog has gotten off that particular track within the last 100 posts as I’ve spent more time exploring my own thoughts and experiences and on the odd occasion my own writing… not to mention the ongoing Doctor Who posts which will all be crammed in by November 23rd.

After that I will be stepping up the book reviews once again as well as keeping up with all the other things that make you guys come back.  As always any suggestions, comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome.

On one final note – if you haven’t already watched the video – you will notice that it is completely ad-libbed as that is the freeform style I usually use when crafting a post.  In reality you shall be experiencing the embryonic musings of my mind as I structure my thoughts for what would in usual circumstances be a written up (and more methodical) review.  Essentially you dear viewer, are cast in the roll of person I talk at, at the pub or coffee shop and just as those lucky people whom I soliloquized to in person discover, the first round is on you.