Win a Signed Copy of Unwind

So do you remember when I met Neal Shusterman?

Yeah, I do too.

What you may not know is that I have a signed copy of Unwind to give away to you!!

Mostly we want to say CONGRATS to all the NaNo winners and we want to say GREAT JOB to all the people who made a go at it but might not have won.  Basically, we're just proud of anyone who wrote this month, and as a reward, we're giving away this book.

I know: the excitement is unbearable.  So, here are just a few rules about the contest:

-You can enter once per day.  And you can do each THING once per day.  So you can tweet us every day and comment every day AND share the giveaway on Facebook.  So many ways to win!

-You have to live in the contiguous United States.  It's not that we don't LIKE people in other countries, but we just can't afford that shipping.

-Contest Starts today, midnight (so it's going on right now!) and ends, Saturday, Midnight.

-Winner will be announced on Sunday, December 7, 2014

-Winner must provide a valid address within one week of winning.  If they do not, the next winner will be chosen and the same rules apply.  If neither claim the prize, we will choose what to do with the book at our discretion. (probably give it away to one of our friends as an awesome Christmas gift.)

-Prize will be mailed via United States Postal Service, with no signature required. A delivery confirmation number will be provided to the winner upon mailing, via email. We are not responsible for delivery errors made by the USPS.

-At the end of the day all rules/regulations/entries/whatever else are up to our discretion. 

So start in with those entries, and we'll choose the winner in a week!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review Me Twice - Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

I actually loved this book.  I mean, just completely adored it.  The '80s and '90s pop culture references were awesome (not to mention the ultimate test of my nerdiness).  And there was just the right amount of explanation and back story without completely overwhelming me.

Which is saying a lot, because this story required a LOT of back story to really get what was going on.  But I loved it.  I loved Wade, our main character.  I loved watching him geek out over things and fall for a girl and figure his way out.

I loved that the whole book kind of imitated a game.  Wade and friends were the good guys and the Sixers were legitimate bad guys and you were rooting for the good guys the whole time!  And there were tests and trials and times that the good guys could have become the bad guys but they didn't!

It was just such a good book, and the fact that Wil Wheaton did the narration for the audio book that I was listening to, just made it that much cooler.

What a crazy book! I loved it. I read it instead of listening to it (I got the print version faster than I could get the audiobook).

If you don't know a single thing about the 1980s, I wouldn't recommend it. But I know more than I realized, so it was fun to see all the references. And there are a TON of them. I mean, I was drowning in '80s references.

I liked all of the characters. I had a theory about one of them from almost the moment we met them, and I was kind of upset that it was soooo obvious... but then I turned out to be wrong. So that was kind of fun, actually.

"Compelling." That's the word I would put down for my one-word jacket quote, if anyone were asking for it. I read the first few pages before I left for work on Wednesday, to entice myself to read the rest after I got home. It worked, because I got home, picked up the book, and didn't put it down until I was done with it. And it's not a particularly short book (372 pages).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't normally list things I'm thankful for publicly (it feels better to demonstrate my thanks instead of just listing them online) but there are a few things on my list that pertain to this blog, so I'd like to share them with you:

I'm thankful that there are so many great books in the world. And I don't just mean books that I think are great... I mean any book that anyone anywhere thinks is great. (So yes, that indirectly means I'm thankful for the Twilight series.)

Along that same vein, I'm thankful for authors. Without books, there aren't authors. But there can't be books without readers, either, so I'm also thankful for readers.

I'm thankful that I'm literate. We don't talk much about literacy here on the blog, but I plan to talk about it more in the future. Not everyone is so fortunate to be able to read, and I certainly take that skill for granted.

Not to get all sappy, but I'm thankful for my co-blogger, Cassy, because she's a great friend and a great co-blogger and I never would have gotten this far with a book review blog without her.

Favorite Audiobook

This week, we're reading Ready Player One and I, like probably Alex also did, listened to the audiobook.  Mostly because Will Wheaton read it and who WOULDN'T listen to that, but also because a friend of ours recommended the book, based off the audio.

So this week, we're giving you favorite audio.

I just ended up really liking Lean In way more than I thought I was going to (business books not really the books I tend to pick up.)  I really love Sandberg's approach to the idea of leaning into your career, not being afraid of it, and not forestalling it because of something that might, one day, happen in the future.

She is basically telling to you plan your career based on the here and now, not on the 'what if I have a family etc.' of the future.  But she doesn't do it in a condescending way.  I don't feel like I CAN'T go have a family as opposed to a career.  She makes that part of my life as a woman, that choice as a woman, just as valid.  If I want to choose to be a stay at home mom, to give up my career because that what I want in life, then do it.

But she is very clear it should be MY choice, and not the choice of my male peers or society's choice because I'm a woman.  I shouldn't ever stay home or forestall my career because I think that I'm expected to.  It's really a wonderfully feminist book, in the right kind of way (totally supportive and there's no male bashing.)

But I also love the audio book because this woman reads it.

Who is that, you may ask?  Why, that's Elisa Donvan.  Here, let me put her in more familiar surroundings.

That's right: she was Amber from Clueless.  And while there were not "whatever"s going on in Lean In, she still did a wonderful job reading the book.

Have you ever heard Neil Gaiman read his own work? Have you heard him say the word "Cinnamon"? Even if you aren't an anglophile, you can appreciate that he has an amazing story reading voice. I love his audiobooks. "Cinnamon" is a short story that, at some point, I found on iTunes for free or really cheap, I can't remember which. I think it's the only audiobook in my iTunes, ever. I remember listening to it on a plane once (actually, a couple times... pretty sure I was flying to Oregon, so that's a five-hour flight and then a two-hour flight).

"Cinnamon" is very much a fairy tale... It's about a princess and her parents and a tiger and you learn a lesson from it, but it's an odd lesson.

My Author count is hitting the stratosphere this year.

Because I like to keep you posted on all of the authors I see, here are some pictures from the book signing I went to tonight.

On the left is me with Rainbow Rowell (hard to tell, but she's holding a copy of Fangirl) and on the right is me and David Levithan.  I know: I can feel the jealous rolling off of you in WAVES right now.  It's practically tangible.

There were also some other awesome authors there, Coe Booth (Kind of Like Brothers), Tanuja Desai Hidier (Bombay Blues), and Bill Konigsburg (Openly Straight).  They were all funny and hilarious and wonderful and read passages from their books and really, if you get the chance to see David Levithan ever, go see him because he's hysterical, I think more so because he was with a group of people he was so comfortable with.

 And yes, I was close enough to David Levithan that the man was practically sweating on me.  It was fantastic.  And did I mention that he complimented my shoes?  I almost had to go die in a corner I was fangirling so hard.

Review Me Twice - Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

I have read this book no less than twelve times in my life.  Maybe more.  I don't know, I just know I've read it a whole lot.  I had to read it for Battle of the Books in the fifth grade and I have been in love with it ever since.

And I think that it's definitely one of Paterson's better ones, probably because she wrote it from a very personal place (it's based on what happened to her son's best friend.)  I like it because, while yes, it is very obviously a kids book, it doesn't shy away from things BECAUSE it is a kids book.  It approaches real topics like bullying and abuse and death and grieving.

I love the characters.  Jess and Leslie are two very real, fleshed out kids who have personalities and lives and problems and it's fabulous.  And even the minor characters become real to me.  Honestly, I just think that Paterson really hit the nail on the head with this book.

Plus, you know I can't resist a good banned book.

Least Favorite Book by Your Favorite Author

You can't please everyone all the time. We love our favorite authors (that's why they're our favorite authors) but we still have to admit that they aren't infallible. These are our least favorite books by our still-favorite authors.

You may recall that we've reviewed Coraline by Neil Gaiman. I don't hate it, by any means; it's quite good. It's just my least favorite of all the things I've read by him.

It's actually quite surprising how many of his books I haven't read, so this isn't considering all of his work. I haven't read Odd and the Frost Giants, or The Ocean at the End of the Lane, or The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains.

I like this book. But I LOVE the Sandman series, and American Gods and Anansi Boys and Good Omens and Fortunately, the Milk and The Graveyard Book and Don't Panic and The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and The Wolves in the Walls...

Ok, so I'm cheating a LITTLE bit, because Katherine Patterson isn't actually my favorite author.  But I suggested this post with her in mind, because this week, we're reading one of my favorite books.  Easily in my top five, Bridge to Terabithia.  It's awesome and amazing and I LOVE it.

But Patterson also wrote one of my all time LEAST favorite books.

It's basically a book about a girl where everything goes wrong in her life.  Her family falls apart, gets sent different places, she has to pay off debts, on and on.

Which, I guess on its own isn't a terrible idea for a book, but the execution on it is just so POORLY done.  The chapters are bogged down, the writing style so lethargic and there is absolutely nothing in it that holds your interest.  There's no action or events or anything that make you want to continue reading the book.

I specifically remember my mom reading it to me (because I had to read it for school and I was having the hardest time getting through it) and even my mom couldn't stand to read through it.

So when I had to read Bridge to Terabithia, by the same author, I was stunned at how much I enjoyed it.  I could not believe that they were written by the same person.