Why follow a blog?

Do you find some blogs you read are very interesting to you? 

If so, you might think, "I'm going to come back to this website again to see if they have new things I'd be interested in." And you probably plan to do just that, but we all get busy and time flies, and before you make it back there, they've posted a whole bunch of great things you've missed... now you either have to spend a lot of time catching up, or just miss out on a lot of good stuff.

Or it could be that even though you plan to come back, you forget to bookmark the site and then one day you remember you'd like to go read more from that site. But all you can remember now is that it talked about ".... something...." You can't even remember the title or any keywords that will help you find it. That's awful!

Solution:
Why not try following a site? Some sites, like ours, have a "Followers" and "Join this site" button somewhere -- we recently added ours, which is on the right sidebar: scroll down a bit and it's easy to see. Click the button and you'll be asked if you want to follow with some account you already have, such as Google, Twitter, Yahoo or some other account. We are most familiar with Google, so my explanation will come from that direction, but I'm sure they're all easy to follow.

After signing in with a Gmail account, you can choose to be anonymous or to have your profile icon show on the site. In just a few easy steps, you'll be following that site you like! Now you'll get to see when new articles are posted! You won't have to miss anything, if you go look at your reader. Now how do you do that?...

Again, once you've signed into your Gmail account, at the top find the drop down menu "More", hover over that, find "Reader" and click that. All the sites you are following will be listed in the left sidebar under Subscriptions or Blogs I'm Following. In the larger middle section, you'll find the new posts of all the sites you follow, and when you click the title it will either show a "snippet" or the entire post. (I'm not sure why some are snippets and some are entire, but that's how it is for me now) You can also "plus" articles there, even if they don't have a Google+ button on their site.

If you happen to be a blogspot site owner, you can add sites you follow to your blog dashboard and see them all there instead of in Google Reader. (In case you are a blog owner, you'll want others to be able to follow you too, so here's some tips from Jeremy.) Even if a site does not have a "Follow" button, you can add them to either of these -- Google Reader or your blog dashboard -- and still get new posts there.

This really solves the dilemmas mentioned above, because if you like what's usually posted on sites, you don't want to miss anything!

We invite you to become a follower of our Noe and Cindy write blog, 

because we don't want you to miss anything either ;-)

Thank you for reading what noeandcindy.write !

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Pride and Prejudice movies, part 6

Pride & Prejudice, 2005
This version stars Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightley, two really great actors. However, in my opinion, this one should have been titled Pride and Peasants, considering the costumes look like they were found in a garbage bin and the Bennet home looked no better than the pig pen. Usually one must turn to Dickens for such filth and rags.

If you can get past the general squalor, there are some totally ridiculous incidents you’ll wind up seeing. Here’s a taste of that: the Bennets en masse listening at doors to private conversations, bursting in and laughing about it like fools; and even having Lady Catherine calling to make her sentiments known to Elizabeth in the middle of the night -- as if she would do such a thing!

I must say one of the beautiful things about England, as described at the time by Austen, is how people in general conduct themselves with proper decorum, and what is portrayed here is far from it. As glaring as these are, and for me it is almost too much to bear, there is another problem that is just as bad, but that must wait until we start discussing the characters.

I also can’t help but get the impression that this version was made without sufficient time to shoot the scenes properly. So many of them give the feel of being hurried along, so that in my imagination, I picture the director saying, “OK, everybody, we have to get this in one take, because our lease is almost up.”

I know it sounds like I hate this version, but I really don’t. I guess you could say, I’m more mad than anything else. I keep asking, “When is someone going to make a Pride and Prejudice that doesn’t have so many glaring flaws? Look at Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and even Mansfield Park -- someone has been able to take these Austen novels and turn them into truly wonderful movies, so why can’t they do the same with her best?!”

Well, even though this adaptation does test the strength of my love for the story of Pride and Prejudice, the movie does redeem itself by the strength of some of the performances and some terrific scenes. And I should say, it has one of my favorite conversations from the book, which most others leave out, except the 1980 version. That is when Elizabeth says, in an effort to stop her mother from going on about Jane and some previous admirer, “I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love?” We looked for a clip of that, but couldn't find one...

To own the truth, I can hardly wait to get into the particulars of characters and scenes. I find I am having to exert myself to keep from going there in these posts about the movies in general. So keep tuned, we’ll be getting to those in just a few more posts.

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Jane Austen site links

There are many sites about Jane Austen.
Just thought we'd mention a few of our favorites here...
some post often, some not so much...
no particular order here, they're all great...
keep coming back, though, as we may find more to add:

Click on the name, it's a link!
Jane Austen in Vermont (there's lots more links on this site!)
Austen Authors (the article this links to is great!)
Austenonly
Austenprose
Austen blog
Jane Austen. org
Jane Austen Regrets
Jane Austen Addict
Jane Austen Quotes
Jane Austen Today
Laughing with Lizzie

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Good advice for writers is a click away!

Jeremy Benson is a young talented writer and blogger in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 
One of his posted writings is this one: Contemplating Dreams

He is also very knowledgeable in the area of promotion which, as aspiring writers, is something we cannot get enough good advice on. His competence extends beyond this, as he also gives technical help in the way of posting and doing videos, such as:
Tutorial, Any Video Converter
Make Blog Followable
Author Marketing Club - Resource Site for Self-Publishing Authors
To find more, look under the labels Tools, Resources, or FAQs.

Jeremy has an open-minded consideration of other people’s writing, even though it may not be his personal preference. He even takes the time to do Honorable Mention pages of persons whose work he finds interesting or feels others might like.

On a personal note, a few times we’ve pointed out some things we thought might be helpful, and Jeremy has always shown a willingness to accept constructive criticism. And to his credit, his character as a  kind man is clearly seen in his handling of particularly rude remarks that were once directed toward him, rather unfairly it should be noted. His response showed restraint and thoughtfulness. Indeed, it could be viewed as a model on how to keep a situation from escalating (and notice that Jeremy did not even tell us the name of the man who was so rude). He gave us good suggestions on ways to act, reminding us of the Golden Rule: “All things, therefore, that you want men to do to you, you also must likewise do to them; this, in fact, is what the Law and the Prophets mean.” - Matthew 7:12

Even though we may not all have the same tastes in things, we can still learn something from each other, and certainly should treat one another with respect. We encourage you to take a look at Jeremy’s site for all the many things you can find there.