Welcome to the new home of Hughes Reviews (and other wordy stuff)!

I’ve been wanting to make the change from Blogger to WordPress for awhile now.  I use WordPress for my teacher website and found it to be more user-friendly and to have a more streamlined appearance.

There are a couple different ways you can follow my new site:

• Subscribing by email (sidebar to the right)
• Liking my new Facebook page (also to the right)
• Following me on Twitter @wordyhughes
• WordPress users can also “Follow”

Choose the one that’s best for you, and I look forward to restarting my blog and sharing my love of books with you  🙂

I realize I’ve been dead on the blogosphere.  I’d intended to have a few days at home before heading to the beach, but then had some car issues that forced me to change my plans.  I’m currently vacationing at the beach where we have no internet service.  (I’m blogging from Panera right now.)  I have my iPhone, and have been reading lots of wonderful blog posts that I’m eager to comment on, but commenting is not convenient via iPhone.  Can someone please invent an app for that?!?!

I’ve been reading loads, and will have lots of reviews to type up when I get home. Here’s what reviews will be coming soon:

Across the Universe by Beth Revis (much delayed from grad school)

Feed by MT Anderson (much delayed from grad school)

Iron King by Julie Kagawa (finished reading)

Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa (finished reading)

Iron Queen by Julie Kagawa (in progress paperback)

Iron Knight by Julie Kagawa (purchased)

Falling For Hamlet by Michelle Ray (in progress hardback)

Souless by Gail Carriger (in progress eBook)

And here are a few pics from my vacation:

Tanning on the Beach

Eating Crabs

Follow @wordyhughes
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I’d been waiting until I had an iPhone to join Twitter.  I’m really looking forward to connecting with bloggers and the book world in a whole new Twitterific way  ^_^


Woot Woot!  I’m trying to find everyone, so if I haven’t found you, follow me and I’ll follow you back!

Yes, I’m at grad school.  And yes it’s a lot of work.  And yes sometimes I feel overwhelmed.

But when it comes down to it, I’m spending my days lounging around reading books.  Whether comfortable in a porch rocking chair or cuddled on a couch in the library, it struck me that not many people can afford to spend their days like this.  Reading for 3-6 hours at a time.

And when I drive around down here, it becomes glaringly clear that the opportunities I have would be considered luxurious to a lot of the people around me.

I don’t know why I’ve been given such a good life.  Good family.  Good home.  Good education.  Good health.  It probably has a lot to do with this good country I live in.  So as much as I complain about the politics and the current state of education, I do see how lucky I am.

Happy 4th of July everyone.

My home page is iGoogle, which allows me to have all these lovely little gadgets.

I love the countdown gadget the most because it lets me countdown the days to awesome things like vacations, last day of school, Deathly Hallows…

But I’ve also discovered a fantastic other use for it.  I’m inputting important conference registration dates and grant application dates.  For example, there’s a local conference that fills up quickly in the fall, so I put in the registration date, and now I can keep track of how many days until I can start checking of registration info (still 87 days to go).  There’s also a grant I want to apply for through SCBWI, but I can’t submit the application til February, so I put in a countdown for that too.

And yes, I could just do this on a calendar or in a planner.  But I’m not terribly good at using either.  I try.  I use my computer every single day.  I figured this was an excellent way to keep these dates in my sphere of attention.

Anyone else struggle with keeping track of dates?