Love Thy Neighborhood Book Readers Giveaway

Time to stock up books for 2016? or
Want to finish remaining books of your 2015 books challenge?
Whatever is your reason, ‘Love Thy Neighborhood Book Readers Giveaway‘ got you covered.

Books Giveaway Prizes:

1st Prize: 12 Books of your choice

2nd Prize: 6 Books of your choice

3rd Prize: 3 Books of your choice

50 participation prizes: Rs 100 gift coupon from Amazon/Flipkart.

How to enter the giveaway:

1. Share about Lenro (use Lenro’s link: http://lenro.co) on your Facebook/Twitter timeline.
2. Tag your Book Reader friends in the post. That’s it!

Don’t forget to tag Lenro (@lenrobooks on Facebook & @lenrobooks on Twitter) so that we get to know about your entry. You can tag you book reader friends in post’s comments as well as in the subsequent tweets.

Here are sample posts:

Sample FB post:

Prize selection criteria:

• 1st prize (12 Books of your choice): Most innovative Facebook post or Tweet.
• 2nd prize (6 Books of your choice): Lucky winner chosen randomly from all the posts and Lenro’s Facebook & Twitter followers.
• 3rd prize (3 Books of your choice): For the most social person who tags the maximum number of book reader friends.

Last Date of entry: 31st Dec, 2015

Winners will be announced on 2nd Jan, 2016

Please help us spread the message. Share this giveaway!

Want to know more about Lenro?

Lenro connects neighborhood book readers.

Using Lenro, you can:
– Find and meet book readers in your immediate neighborhood.
– Borrow/Lend books with neighborhood book readers. For free!
– Meet like-minded book readers in your area & discuss everything about your favorite books, life and so much more.
– Save Money. Spread the love of books.

Let’s get started. Join Lenro (http://lenro.co) and explore the world of books around you!

FAQs:

1. Can I post on my Facebook as well as Twitter profiles?
Yeah, each FB post and tweet are considered a separate entry to this book giveaway contest . Posting on both Facebook and Twitter double your chances of winning and you also get more thanks from your book reader friends for informing them about a new way to read books for free.

2. Can I share to Facebook groups or post to my Facebook page?
Yeah, that counts. Don’t forget to tag Lenro.

3. As a winner, can I choose books of any amount?
You can choose books of any amount provided the total of 12 books comes out to max Rs. 5,000 (2,500 for 6 books and 1,250 for 3 books).

Any other query? Please feel free to reach us at jointheparty(at)lenro(dot)co.

Worth highlighting:

If you are a book reader, you would love our blog: http://lenro.co/blog/

10 Best Digital Marketing Books To Make You A Game Changer

The importance of digital marketing strategies is irrefutable today. However, the internet, we all know, is whimsical. Trends come and go and internet marketing can get really erratic and volatile. So how do you zero in on the perfect marketing strategy?

The key is to strike a balance — a balance between current trends and a solid strategy to fall back on. This might sound daunting right off the bat, but thankfully a number of good books penned by marketing gurus are available to help us in our search for that perfect marketing formula. Here we have compiled a list of the top 10 best digital marketing books available in the market. Take a look at techniques that work.

1. ‘Permission Marketing’ by Seth Godin

Turn strangers into friends and friends into customers – this is the simple and yet ground-breaking approach that this book advocates. What makes it a must-read is Godin’s formula of “permission marketing”.
An internet marketing genius, Godin uses lucid language interlaced with compelling humor to elaborate on his approach. He says that traditional advertisements like telemarketing calls, newspaper promotions, and television commercials are all designed to interrupt consumers from their task at hand. This kind of intrusive advertising ends up annoying them defeating the purpose of marketing. Thus, Godin talks instead about offering customers incentives that would make them accept advertisements voluntarily. This fundamentally different approach and out-of-the-box thinking is what makes this book an indispensable resource for anyone interested in learning the ropes of digital marketing.

2. ‘Contagious: Why Things Catch On’ by Jonah Berger

Have you ever wondered why some content go viral and some don’t? Why some pick-up lines work and others don’t? What makes you share an online article? How do you utilize the power of word-of-the-mouth? Berger presents a well-researched and insightful answer to all these questions in his book. This is the good kind of “contagious”.
What makes it an excellent read is the simple but compelling manner in which Berger writes, often with the help of anecdotes. In this age of networking, coming up with a viral ad campaign is every marketer’s dream. And Berger’s book provides you all the right resources of making your idea “catch on”.

3. ‘Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is about Help not Hype’ by Jay Baer

We all know that customers are smart enough to look beyond the curated hype to choose a product that is truly useful to them. And yet companies spend billions of dollars on advertising campaigns every year to beat drums about products that do not end up helping the targeted customers. Why, then, would a customer come back to your company?
This is the potent question that Baer poses. One of the best digital marketing books available in the market, it brings back to focus the golden rule ⎯ “Place the Customer First“. It is indeed, a wonderful resource for professionals who are looking for a no-hype, no-fluff guide to the basic blocks of marketing.

4. ‘Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World’ by Gary Vaynerchuk

There is no dearth of digital marketing books available today, and yet none of them manage to explain the importance of storytelling as well as this book does. Indeed, in the deluge of feeds that flood our mailboxes every day, only a good story can stand out. This book goes far beyond the “how-to” approaches for different platforms and does a great job of explaining the basic tricks of marketing with practical wisdom. It is a must-read for its simplicity and usefulness.

5. ‘Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers’ by Gabriel Weinberg

Startups have aggressively used digital marketing over the last few years as there is indeed no better platform to gain traction when you are just starting out. But then you must know how to utilize the marketing channels effectively. Weinberg’s book outlines 19 different marketing channels that every startup must know about. Needless to say, this book should be every entrepreneur’s best friend.

6. ‘Ogilvy on Advertising’ by David Ogilvy

If there ever was a messiah in the world of advertising, it is David Ogilvy. It is an example of those rare books that survive despite all the changing trends and all the changing times. Ogilvy outlines everything that an advertisement professional worth his salt must know about – from typography and graphic designing to smart writing. Though some of the examples might seem outdated in today’s context, this book will definitely influence the way you think. Often referred to as the go-to-guide for smart advertising, Ogilvy on Advertising is a classic that no one should miss.

7. ‘Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions’ by Dan Ariely

If you are trying to sell something, you cannot do so without understanding how your customer thinks. And this is why you should read Dan Ariely’s book. Essentially about Behavioral Economics, Ariely examines consumer spending patterns and how they are affected by marketing campaigns. The author has used simple and humorous language to make the complex concepts of behavioral economics understandable to the reader. It is insightful, well-researched and manages to hold the reader’s attention throughout. Read this book because you must know what your customer is thinking.

8. ‘Marketing Management’ by Philip Kotler, Kevin Lane Keller

A Classic in its own right, Kotler’s book has been used as an academic text in many a Business Management program. Now in its 15th edition, the book has kept pace with current trends, is logically structured and provides a comprehensive and insightful overview of the entire world of marketing.

9. ‘Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising’ by Ryan Holiday

This book is meant for today’s fast track generation. Crisp, concise and relevant, you can read the book cover to cover in five hours and yet manage to grasp all the complex concepts that the book manages to deconstruct beautifully. This indeed describes the future of marketing and should be read enthusiastically by both the newcomers and experienced marketing professionals.

10. ‘The Art of SEO’ by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Jessie Stricchiola, Rand Fishkin

You have a great web page, beautiful ad, and smart graphics. And yet, your website has no traffic. What good, then is your ad campaign? There, indeed, is no better place to bury information than in the second page of search results. This is where Search Engine Optimization or SEO comes into the picture.
Written by four experts in the field of SEO, The Art of SEO provides a comprehensive overview of the SEO concept. Several terms are explained at depth and various fool-proof techniques are explained. The big picture of SEO, indeed becomes a little clearer with this book.

There definitely is no shortage of books in the market on digital marketing. These might range from How-To guides, and Quick-hit SEO techniques to preachy literature about do’s and don’ts of the marketing. The list of best digital marketing books that we have compiled here is, however, the ones that marketing professionals swear by. Useful for both the beginner and the veteran, you can find the answer to all your marketing queries within these pages. Happy Reading!

This post was originally published at Lenro blog : http://lenro.co/blog/top-10-best-digital-marketing-books/

A Song Of Ice And Fire Series Review

Inspired by the War of the Roses, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is an ongoing fantasy series set in an unstable world, saturated in political rivalries amongst many aristocratic families contesting for the Iron Throne of Westeros. The story is told by switching the point of view of various principal characters over a wide geography of Westeros and beyond.

In an attempt to do something new and different with the genre, Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) takes a hard-edged & unromantic approach to fantasy, focusing on realism, grittiness and intrigue over heroism, ideals and morality. Unfortunately, it ends up being just another addition to the endless quasi-medieval, class-conscious fantasy of blonde princesses and barely dressed women at the feet of white-skinned heroes.

Many of the characters cast feature frequently used fantasy tropes. Daenerys – the young princess in exile, Jon – brooding bastard anti-hero protagonist yearning to step out of his father’s shadow, Eddard – the honourable noble, Arya – rebellious tomboy who learns to fight, Cersei – the evil, manipulative, succubus-esque Queen, Robb – the young rebel king, Varys – the sneaky spymaster, etc etc. The prose is repetitive, dull and full of redundant minutiae. Meals, heraldry & attire are described with an excruciating amount of detail. On one occasion, the contents of a stew are described at length, over two torturous pages. Often the same phrases are recycled by tweaking an odd word or two.

“The heavy cage was swaying. From time to time, it scraped against the Wall, starting small crystalline showers of ice that sparkled in the sunlight as they fell, like shards of broken glass.” [Jon p. 461, ADwD].
“The higher they went, the stronger the wind. Fifty feet up, the heavy cage began to sway with every gust. From time to time, it scraped against the Wall, starting small crystalline showers of ice that sparkled in the sunlight as they fell.” [Jon pg. 709, ADwD].

Whenever a character eats cooked meat/drinks wine, we get “grease/wine dribbled down his chin”. The plethora of gratuitous sex scenes also uses the same turn of phrase with mind-numbing frequency.

It seems the author could not decide what to write: A historical series or a fantasy series. Originally intended as a trilogy, ASOIAF gives us a glimpse of its main plot line in the first few chapters of A Game of Thrones (AGOT). In the prologue of AGOT, we learn that the Night Watch has manned the great ice wall for millennia against an ancient evil (ice-zombies named Others). For several centuries, this threat has been dormant and all but forgotten by the general populace of Westeros. The Night Watch, fallen far from its glory days, now comprised predominantly of murderers, rapists, thugs and outcasts, is incapable of even dealing with bandits. But now there are signs that the ancient evil is stirring. It’s easy to conjecture how this story would move forward: Ignorance, laxness, and general decadence ensures that the evil sweeps beyond the ice-barrier into the Seven Kingdoms threatening civilization itself. But when all seems lost a few outstanding individuals (Jon and Dany are the forerunners), possibly predestined to save the world (Martin has already played the prophecy card), will win an unlikely victory, save humanity, fall in love and walk into the sunset. Martin introduced politics, I suspect, intending to balance it with fantasy elements and prevent A Song Of Ice And Fire Series from becoming just another black and white fantasy. But with the books almost entirely focusing on the nobles and their squabbling, the fantasy elements are for the most part completely ignored, which results in the magic involved in the hatching of the dragon eggs, Catelyn’s resurrection and Bran’s chapters feeling oddly out of place.

There’s a lot of misogyny, sexual violence, several derogatory references towards female genitalia, vivid descriptions of risqué scenes and constant use of crude sexual imagery and word-play in casual dialogue. Of course, books or for that matter any form of art, shouldn’t gloss over harsh realities of life. But in trying to depict the worst that humanity has to offer Martin pushes the envelope on hardcore-ness. Nor do frequent descriptions of sexual violence and sexual acts automatically equal realism and grit.

The plot advances with the speed of a quadriplegic turtle. There is no development, no climax, no order or cohesion to the events. It’s the plot equivalent of a very inept chess player moving the pieces haphazardly on pure whim. Every time a character is on the cusp of forwarding the plot they disappear for hundreds of pages. Jon becomes the Lord Commander of the Night Watch and then does not make a reappearance for an entire book. In A Feast for Crows (AFFC) and A Dance with Dragons (ADWD) chapters of Tyrion, Brienne, Victarion, Sam, Quentyn, Davos, Jaime are for the most part travelogues, as they wander around searching for a plot line to be a part of. Sansa’s story arc post AGOT is basically a bunch of people trying to molest her. The entire sub-plot of Daenerys focuses on her preparation to cross the narrow sea to reclaim her throne. Then out nowhere, ADWD introduces another contender for the Iron Throne, who does what Daenerys has been trying to do for five books – land in Westeros with an army. This makes Daenerys sub-plot look completely ridiculous. After five books and 4600 pages, the ancient evil has barely begun to stir, most of the characters in Westeros scattered to the wind and Daenerys is still across the narrow sea. I think the series will only get harder for him to write (the delayed release of The Winds of Winter (AWOW) is an obvious indicator of that), as he tries to deal with themes and answer questions, providing a satisfying conclusion that justifies the endless profusion of aimless detail Martin’s provided so far.

This blog was originally published at : http://lenro.co/blog/a-song-of-ice-and-fire-series-review/ 

5 Books You Just Can’t Miss

1. The Amulet of Samarkand – Jonathan Stroud

Genre: Fantasy Fiction

This is the first book of the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud. Set in modern-day London, the book chronicles the lives of 12-year old magician’s apprentice Nathaniel and his only friend, the djinni Bartimaeus. It makes for an endearingly humorous and breathtakingly fast-paced read that is sure to leave a mark on the reader. In fact, this might be the very first novel where you’ll look forward to the footnotes more than the actual text!
Bartimaeus of Uruk, a djinni (in his own words) ‘with more resourcefulness (not to mention mindless optimism) in his toenails than other hundreds of porridge-brained spirits together’ exists in his own world, peppered with the most enchanting details and described in a delightfully sassy voice. While summoned by Nathaniel and bound to do his bidding, our darling Barty amuses himself with ‘plenty of fights, chases and sarcastic wordplay’ that helps keep his spirits high during the self-admittedly excruciating period he has to spend on our earth.

 2. Animal Farm – George Orwell

Genre: Roman à clef, Satire, Fiction

The book can be read and enjoyed as a traditional farm fable, where a group of animals are tired of being dominated by humans in all spheres of their life. So they stage an epic insurrection, overthrow the ‘evil’ humans and set up their own ‘independent’ way of life – ploughing fields, building windmills and harvesting the food on their own. Sadly, for these animals, things do not remain as rosy for long.
It makes for an enjoying read with an amusing ending, whether or not you get the numerous references to a communist society.

3. A Storm of Swords – R.R. Martin

Genre: Fantasy Fiction

Technically this is the third book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin, but my personal favorite among the lot. It has everything a reader might desire for in a novel – politics, plotting, romance, betrayal and drama – lots of it.

At 1298 pages long, it’s not a herculean task for a non-reader to complete it, but if you’re a lover of books, then you sure cannot give this series a miss!

4. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling

Genre: Fantasy Fiction

All the Harry Potter books are great. Period. But this one ended up being the one I could best relate with because when I read it, I was perhaps 13 or 14, like Harry – who was 15. Harry, in this book, was awkward, clueless, misunderstood and all of it angered him. And when he got VERY angry, he shouted in ALL CAPITALS!
Also, the bit about Cho Chang and him not being able to come to terms with his feelings for her was adorable 

5. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie

Genre: Crime Fiction

Ten people trapped in an isolated house with no means of escape for three days. Ten tiny china soldiers on the dining table that keep disappearing as mysteriously as the people get killed – one by one, with no way of ascertaining who the perpetrator is. It is almost as if a gruesome game is being played that would end only when each and every occupant is killed – a case that keeps the police stumped for years.

Thank God for the epilogue that threw light on events. This certainly is a murder mystery to beat all murder mysteries!

This blog was originally published at : http://lenro.co/blog/books_you_just_cant_miss/

Books Blog: For the Book Readers, By the Book Readers

Welcome to the core of our heart (yeah, the Lenro blog is a heart to heart communication). Let’s get to know about you:

• Are you an ardent book lover?
• Do you get obsessed with books’ characters/storyline/plots/etc and want to talk about them with other readers?
• Do you need friendly recommendations on your next book?
• Do you ever wish you get inside the author’s mind and understand how they wrote the characters you’re so involved with?
• Like to meet new people and make new friends who share the same book interests as you?

If you do, you’ve come to the right place! Welcome to the Lenro Blog! Where we strive to satisfy your craving for books and characters and more! Here you’ll find a quirky mix of in-depth book reviews and fandom talk as well as the dish on new releases and insights into your favorite books! We’re your friend whose opinion you can always rely on when thinking about which book to read next. Comment and let us know about any book that you’d like to be featured on our blog and we’ll gladly add it to the list! Be sure to leave us your views on our posts, we’ll be picking our favorite ones to be featured on our blog!

Come join the adventurous journey with us! We’re excited! Are you?