Readerbuzz's September Giveaway! A $25 Amazon Giveaway! and It's Time to Nominate Your Favorite Books for the Indie Lit Awards!

I'm happy to announce

Readerbuzz's September Giveaway!

Win an Amazon Gift Card!

(This is open to bloggers anywhere Amazon can ship!)

Rules for the Readerbuzz's July Giveaway are simple:

(1) You must follow me.

(2) You must leave a comment here

that expresses your interest in this giveaway

and includes an e-mail address

 (posted in an elusive way to thwart the wicked).

BONUS:
If you really, really want to win this giftcard,

you are welcome to receive extra entries by:

Following me at Twitter

and leaving a comment +1 

Befriending me at Goodreads

and leaving a comment +1

Befriending me at Facebook

and leaving a comment +1

I will leave this giveaway open until September 30th.

Good luck!

Readerbuzz's July Giveaway is scheduled to begin on September 1st at 12:01 am EST

and end on September 30th at 11:59 pm EST.


And...

It's Time to Nominate Your Favorite Books
for the Indie Lit Awards!

I bet you've read some fantastic books this year, right?

Why not nominate your favorites for an award then?!

What are the Independent Literary Awards?

From the website, here is a little about the award:

The Independent Literary Awards are book awards
given by literary bloggers.
All judges and panelists for theses awards
are completely independent
and do not receive compensation for reviews
nor their work on the award board.
The Independent Literary Awards is currently in its second year
and will be presenting the winners for
the 2011 calendar year in March of 2012.

What genres may receive awards?

The genres that will be represented and receiving awards for 2011 are:

·         Literary Fiction

·        Non-Fiction

·        Mystery

·        Speculative Fiction 

·         GLBTQ 

·         Biography/Memoir

·         Poetry

What, then, are the rules for making nominations?

■ Nominations are open to all readers
who do not make their income through the sales of books
(i.e. not authors, publishers, or publicists) —
hence “independent” from the publishing industry.

■ Books nominated must have a 2011 release date.

■ You may nominate a book that has already been listed
(the books with the most nominations
will be what we add to the Long List).

■ You may nominate books in more than one genre,
but only one per genre.

■ Nominations close December 31, 2011.

I'm happy to be serving as a Voting Member
 on the Non-Fiction team of the Indie Literary Awards!

I am anxious to read some great non-fiction titles,
so please, please, please head over to the links above
 and nominate some great books.
Please share this information on your blog
so that other great titles will be nominated.
Please tweet about it and Facebook about it.
Spread the word, literary bloggers!

Wordless Wednesday: MOMA Free Friday

 

For more wordless photos,

go to Wordless Wednesday.

Top Ten Books That Are On The Top Of My TBR List For Fall

Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in France

The Language of Flowers

The Night Circus

Dawn of the Belle Epoque:

The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

The Tiger's Wife:  A Novel

Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War

by Tony Horwitz

Rules of Civility



Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time

Ready Player One

1Q84

What are books are you waiting for this fall?

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

The Readerbuzz October Giveaway: Matched! plus It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

WHAT I'M READING TODAY

It's Monday and I'm reading One Amazing Thing by Chitra Divakaruni. It's the Gulf Coast Reads selection for 2011. Gulf Coast Reads is the combined effort of the Houston Public Library along with several other Texas Gulf Coast library systems, including, happily, the system in my county.

WHAT I FINISHED LAST WEEK

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs

A book about the pleasures of reading ought to be a pleasure to read. I did not find this book to be a pleasure to read....more....

The Wild Hog Murders: A Dan Rhodes Mystery by Bill Crider

It has been a long time since I’ve read a Bill Crider mystery. According to the reading log I keep at Goodreads, it has been since 2003. That's too long...more....

My Place by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins

Wheatley starts with present day Australia in this children's picture book from the 1001 CBYMRBYGU list and moves back ten years for each two page spread...more....


WHAT I WILL PROBABLY READ NEXT

How about you?  What are you reading today?

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between! D This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme Book Journey loves to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme. Book Journey offers a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.

Friendship Bread---Starter for a Real Book Club in My Town

I can hardly believe it. We have a real live book club in my town.

We started out with a bang.

We met for the first time in July,

and chose our first book for discussion,

 Friendship Bread by Darian Gee.

At our August meeting,

we shared bags of Friendship Bread starter....

and loaves of Friendship bread...

and Friendship Bread cookies.

Author Darien Gee skyped with our group here
in Texas from her home in Hawaii...

Would anyone like a bag of Friendship Bread starter?!

I'd love to hear any book club ideas 

from those of you who have been

in long-time, real-life book clubs.

Suggestions? Tips? Advice?

What is the Sunday Salon?

Imagine some university library's vast reading room.

It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in.

They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,

and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go.

Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and

compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual.

Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon

get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read.

And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs.

Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon,

an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities

 and fall into a good book. 

Click here to join the Salon.

That's the One I Want!

For more wordless photos,

go to Wordless Wednesday.

Top Ten Books You Loved But Never Wrote a Review For

I didn't start reviewing every book I read until 2002. I wish I had. Sadly, I have no record of my impressions of my Childhood Reading, the Science Fiction Years, or Nothing-But-Mysteries Days. Here are a few that stopped me in my reading tracks during those review-less years:

Studs Terkel's Working

It was the description of the waitress on the job that got me, the description she gave of how she loved to set the dishes on the table so quietly that she did not disturb the guests to her restaurant. I fell in love with this passage. This book became one of my first entry books into what has become a long personal study of happiness. The waitress mystified and intrigued me. How could a person with such a trivial job find such joy in her work? It was fascinating.

Robert Graves' I, Claudius

A man chosen to lead his country who was way in over his head. All around him was corruption and and self-interest and flagrant wickedness. Not so Claudius, the quiet voice of reason in an insane world. Despite being the one person who continued to do the right thing and despite being in a position of power, Claudius was not a ruler at heart and it was his inability to act that gives this novel its poignancy.

Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird

Keep this on the QT, but I've always dreamed of being a writer. Bird by Bird made writing seem so delightfully horrible that I've read this book over and over. It's peculiar that I've read this book on writing a half dozen times and yet I've never written a review of it.

Richard Adams' Watership Down

When I think of wonderful books that I've read only once and will probably never have time to read again, Watership Down comes to the top of my list. I became a rabbit in that world for the two weeks I spent reading this big book way back when it first came out. I still have days when I long to be a rabbit and go back to Watership Down.

Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

I should not have read this book when I was sixteen.

I'm not sure anyone should read this book when she is sixteen.

It was dark and despairing and bleak and reading it left me feeling dark and despairing and bleak.

Nevertheless, The Bell Jar was the truest picture of teen depression I've ever read.

If only someone could write a book that good that would help teens find their way out of depression.

Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha

My sister gave me this book, an Oprah recommendation, and I was off and running;

Oprah knew how to pick 'em.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game

Assigned reading for my sons in junior high. They raved about it so much (and, at that age, these boys weren't raving about much in the way of books) that I read it. A powerful story. A must-read.

Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove

What in the world made me pick up this western? A western, really?

But it is a book that hooked me after reading the first page. I fell in love with Gus and all the other odd characters in this story, set in Texas back in the days where the West was beginning to close its doors for business. Never read another Larry McMurtry or another western that hit me in the gut like this book.

Donna Tartt's The Secret History

How did I ever find this book, back in the day before I was able to find all the genuine book recommendations here in book blogger world? The Secret History is the story of a group of college kids who accidentally do something very, very wrong. A mystery of sorts. A brilliant story of the comradery that can quickly develop among young people and of the tragic consequences of following a charismatic, yet immoral leader.

Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins

I read Beverly Cleary books a gazillion times when I was a little girl. I missed the Ramona series, but I loved all the books about Henry and Ribsy and his friends on Klickitat Street. This one I read aloud to every class I taught, fifth grade and second grade, even though I was cautioned by a school librarian that this book would be too hard for my second graders. Before I knew it, every kid in my class was checking out (and reading, I'll have you know, Mrs. P---) Beverly Cleary.

Now I need to see what you chose as

books you loved but have never reviewed!  

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

WHAT I'M READING TODAY

It's Monday and I'm finishing up The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distractions. I wish I was getting more pleasure out of reading this book. Perhaps it is all the distractions causing the trouble....Oh well, more later....


WHAT I MIGHT READ NEXT

I'm contemplating reading one of a rather diverse list of possibilities. Please help me here. What would you read next?

WHAT I FINISHED THIS WEEK

The Slightly True Story of Cedar B. Hartley (Who Planned to Live An Unusual Life) by Martine Murray

What’s the most difficult part of life when you are a teen or a near-teen? One of the toughest parts has to be trying to figure out how much to blend and how much to be yourself at the same time that the world is telling you to blend, blend, blend. Cedar doesn’t really do blending.

What Cedar does do is people. Cedar has a green thumb for people. One of her friends tells her this, to Cedar’s delight. And thank goodness for that green thumb....more

Across Many Mountains: A Tibetan Family’s Epic Journey from Oppression to Freedom by Yangzom Brauen

The back cover of this book says that the first printing of this book will be 100,000 copies.

My response is, Really? One hundred thousand copies?...more

Emily, Alone by Stewart O’Nan

Before you are allowed to post a review of this novel, I’m going to have to ask you to present an official id. An official id with your dob on it. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think a person under fifty can really appreciate this book and I’m not sure those of you under fifty would have the patience to read a book where the biggest plot points are repairing a scratch on a new car....more

The Arrival by Shaun Tan

A wordless graphic novel, The Arrival is the story of a man who leaves his family to work in the big city of a foreign land. The pictures show a place both familiar and strange, people both familiar and strange...more



So, how about you?  What are you reading today?  What did you finish last week?  What are you thinking about reading next?

Don't forget to enter

Readerbuzz's August Giveaway!

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares!

(This is open to bloggers internationally!)

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is where we share what we read this past week, what we hope to read this week…. and anything in between! D This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

I love being a part of this and I hope you do too! As part of this weekly meme Book Journey loves to encourage you all to go and visit the others participating in this meme. Book Journey offers a weekly contest for those who visit 10 or more of the Monday Meme participants and leave a comment telling me how many you visited.

Sunday Salon: I Wish I Were a Better Blogger

I wish I were a better book blogger.

I wish I could write an amazing post every day. I wish each post were so good that hundreds of people would comment on my post and say things like, You are the best! and, You should write a book.

I wish people from the New York Times would send me e-mails and ask me to write book reviews for them.

I wish I were a better book blogger.

I wish I kept notes on every book I read, like I did when I was in college. I wish I'd spend hours a day rereading parts of books and writing brilliant observations about the plot and characters and literary devices used in the book.

I wish I knew how to post all my reviews (I have over 2,000!) with links in alphabetical order by author and title.

I wish I were a better writer. I wish I were a better book blogger.

Our school year is just beginning and last week our superintendent addressed those of us work at the schools, telling us that what we as teachers are doing is attempting to repair an airplane that is up in the air. The sermon this morning at church was about how God calls ordinary people from ordinary places. I like to think that this blog is my attempt, as an ordinary person from an ordinary place, to work on an airplane while the plane is in the air. Now and then, the plane may come close to crashing, but I keep working on the plane because, every now and then, I can peek out the window and see how beautiful it is to be flying.

How about you? What's the view from your window?

Don't forget to enter

Readerbuzz's August Giveaway!

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares!

(This is open to bloggers internationally!)

What is the Sunday Salon?

Imagine some university library's vast reading room.

It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in.

They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,

and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go.

Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and

compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual.

Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon

get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read.

And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs.

Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon,

an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities

 and fall into a good book. 

Click here to join the Salon.

 

Wordless Wednesday: Subway

Don't forget to enter

Readerbuzz's August Giveaway!

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares!

(This is open to bloggers internationally!)

For more wordless photos,

go to Wordless Wednesday.

Top Ten Favorite Books-about-Books

(This week, the creators of this meme are allowing every blogger

to create her own Top Ten list....)

I've never seen it listed in a literature text,

but one of my favorite genres is what I call Books-about-Books.

Here are some of my favorites:

Readings: Essays and Literary Entertainments

by Michael Dirda

So Many Books, So Little Time

by Sara Nelson

Inkheart

by Cornelia Funke

How Reading Changed My Life

by Anna Quindlen

Tomas and the Library Lady

by Pat Mora

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

by Dai Sijie

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

by Anne Fadiman

Reading Lolita in Tehran

by Azar Nafisi

Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World

by Lawrence Goldstone

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading:

Finding and Losing Myself in Books

by Maureen Corrigan

Do you have any good recommendations for books-about-books?

What Top Ten list did you write this week?

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Sunday Salon: Wanna Be 25% Happier?

Practicing gratitude can make you 25% happier,

according to research conducted
by Dr. Robert A. Emmons.

I would love to be 25% happier today.

So, here goes...

This week I am grateful for...

(1) I finished six books this week!

The Saturday Big Tent Wedding by Alexander McCall Smith

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins

With by Skye Jethani

Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park

(2) I received this beautiful handmade book

from James Chester of Ready When You Are, C.B.

in the mail!

(3) I was awarded the Liebster Blog Award this week
from the wonderful Carol of Books in the Burbs.

I've been lucky enough to meet Carol in real life.

Carol wrote about me this week:
"She is as friendly and charming in person
as she is on her blog."

Awww! Made my day.

(4)  And...I've now read 30% of War and Peace!

That's 432 pages read.

Only 1,008 pages to go!!

How about you?

What bookish things are you grateful for today?

Don't forget to enter

Readerbuzz's August Giveaway!

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares!

(This is open to bloggers internationally!)

What is the Sunday Salon?

Imagine some university library's vast reading room.

It's filled with people--students and faculty and strangers who've wandered in.

They're seated at great oaken desks, books piled all around them,

and they're all feverishly reading and jotting notes in their leather-bound journals as they go.

Later they'll mill around the open dictionaries and

compare their thoughts on the afternoon's literary intake....

That's what happens at the Sunday Salon, except it's all virtual.

Every Sunday the bloggers participating in that week's Salon

get together--at their separate desks, in their own particular time zones--and read.

And blog about their reading. And comment on one another's blogs.

Think of it as an informal, weekly, mini read-a-thon,

an excuse to put aside one's earthly responsibilities

 and fall into a good book. 

Click here to join the Salon.