Smugglers’ Stash & News

Hello everyone and Happy Sunday! If you’re in the USA, I hope you’re ready for a nice short work week! (I know I am…) Without further ado, let’s get down to business, shall we?

Giveaway Winners:

The winner of a copy of Cold Steel by Kate Elliott is…

Andrea Chettle

Congrats! Send us an email (contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we’ll get your book out to you as soon as possible.

R.I.P. Google Reader

Tomorrow, July 1, is the day that Google Reader goes away forever. If you haven’t migrated your RSS subscriptions over to a new reader alternative, you will lose all of that information as of tomorrow morning.

If you’re still on the fence and not sure about which new feed reader you can use for your RSS viewing pleasure (or if you’ve procrastinated…like us), here are a few alternatives we’ve found very useful:

Feedly – The most popular of the alternatives, Feedly is a simple, very pretty feed reader. There were some bandwidth problems early on (and may be happening today) because of the sheer volume of people transferring over and setting up new accounts, but it shouldn’t be a problem going forward! Google Reader migration instructions HERE.

The Old Reader – The reader to choose if you like the old Google Reader interface, don’t want any bells and whistles, just straight-up RSS aggregated in one place.

Flipboard – A digital news magazine, not so much a straight-up version of Google Reader, this one is Thea’s news aggregator of choice. Not only can you migrate over your meticulously organized google feeds, but you can also get a broad array of news from across the interwebs in curated categories (e.g. technology news, space exploration news, politics, etc). This is probably not for everyone as Flipboard’s magazine format can take some getting used to (it looks nothing like Google Reader did) and it doesn’t have a desktop solution. The app is available for free for both iOS and Android, though, and it is very pretty. Google Reader migration instructions “>HERE.

Newsblur – Honestly, not a big fan of this one as it’s a little slow and clunky and you have to pay an annual fee if you want to import more than 64 feeds. Your mileage may vary, though!

For other alternatives, check out these different articles.

This Week on The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, we kick off the week with an Inspirations & Influences guest post from Ryk E. Spoor, the author of Phoenix Rising. Plus, Thea reviews Proxy by Alex London.

Tuesday, Ana reviews historical middle grade novel P.S. Be Eleven by Rita Williams-Garcia. Plus, later in the day Bennett Madison is over to talk Inspirations & Influences about his controversial YA novel, September Girls (plus a giveaway).

On Wednesday, we take a break from Old School Wednesdays and officially announce our best books of 2013 – so far.

Thursday, we have Elizabeth Ross over for a guest post to talk about her novel Belle Epoque, followed by Ana’s review of Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch.

And on Friday we close out the week with Ana’s review of Jack Glass by Adam Roberts. Thea is over at Kirkus with a list of horror roadtrip books perfect for the long weekend, inspired by NOS4A2 by Joe Hill.

That’s it from us today! Until tomorrow, we remain…

Superfamilies by Andry Rajoelina

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers