Blog Hop and Follow Friday!

Hello blog hoppers!

Welcome to The Smarty Owl.

Newbies: be sure to check out our reviews!

Old Followers: thanks for coming back :)

Again. Lack of posts. We hate it as much as you guys do. This week, our schedules have been brimming with heaps and piles of boring homework, sluggish days, and power-walking back and forth in our ocean of a high school, in a race to beat the bell. As you might have noticed, I even hadn't had time to write this post any sooner (it's 9:10) and I stole the same layout from last week in an effort to micro-optimize my time (I really should be doing my homework.) Anyway, I hope you have a great week! I am expecting my long overdue Sleepless review to come out sometime this week so stay with me here :)

and sorry for the boring colors. really annoying technical difficulties with colors right now >:(

Follow Me Friday is hosted by Parajunkee's View

Book Blogger Hop is hosted by Crazy for Books

I'm totally loving Crazy for Books questions by the way. Very creative.:

Post a link to a favorite post or book review that you have written in the past three months.

Answer:

---My favorite review of Okapi's would have to be her Poison Study review. It is the best one she has written. She masterfully interlaced supporting evidence with strong, confident opinions and weaved them together in beautiful prose. That specific review had been a finalist in a book review competition, and I believe she deserved that honor through and through.

See her awesomesauce review of Poison Study by Maria V. Synder HERE

---The piece I'm most proud of producing is my Firelight review. It just so happens that it was my latest review, which just confirms that I'm improving a little more each day.

See my review of Firelight by Sophie Jordan HERE

Blog Hop and Follow Friday!

Hello blog hoppers!

Welcome to The Smarty Owl.

Newbies: be sure to check out our reviews!

Old Followers: thanks for coming back :)

And also to our loyal followers, we are oh-so-sorry for the lack of posts this week :( High school is hectic! We still need to fix up a scheduling system, but no worries, we'll deliver :)

Follow Me Friday is hosted by Parajunkee's View

Book Blogger Hop is hosted by Crazy for Books

And without further ado, this weeks blog hop question:

Do you judge a book by its cover?

Answer: Despite the constant hearings of "don't judge a book by its cover" I must admit that I honestly do. It is not right, and it doesn't do the book justice, but while browsing shelves, I really can't help but snigger at the books with bad covers. Covers honestly make an impact on whether you pick up the book at the store. A novel with an alluring, interesting, unforgettable cover will linger in your mind forever until you finally have to submit and buy it. Unattractive covers however, make you lose interest even if the synopsis is intelligent. Those covers always give you the feeling that the book might just be as bad as the cover. Of course, with everything in nature, there are exceptions. The Harry Potter covers are a bit childish and not very curious, yet the content and words hidden beneath it proves to be infinitely better. The Twilight covers are elegant with just enough mystery in them to pull you in. Although once you get to the meat of the novel, you realize the cover was giving you false hope. This is just my personal opinion.

I love covers that have actual connections to the novels, yet still make you long to uncover the unknown by reading it. And that is also how we judge our covers here on The Smarty Owl. After every review, there is a paragraph displaying our thoughts on the cover. We rate them out of 5, 5 being the best. We also provide an explanation for our rating so be sure to check it out in the future!

Example: Our cover examination for The Book Thief

"Cover: 3.5/5 - I personally enjoyed the cover. First of all I thought it was well designed artistically and second, this cover would have hooked me at the bookstore (if my mother hadn't bought my copy for me). Like the actual book, the cover has quite a bit of symbolism in it too. In our perspective (Okapi and I pondered about the symbolism in the cover for a bit), the dominoes represent the people, both Jewish and German, who are getting knocked down by the hand, who we think is a representation of Hitler using words to hurt people. Thus causing a whole chain reaction leading to death, violence, and hurt to many. Though such a strong message is portrayed in such a simple picture, we believe that the picture could relate to the book a bit more, and therefore our rating of a 3.5 out of 5."