Bloggiesta progress update #2

I’m still trying to figure out how to use the Google Reader sharing thinger, and if I make comments there, do they show up on the original post?  IDK… I’m trying to find a more effective way to use the blogroll without it taking up 29 inches long of blogspace.  Meghan at Medieval Bookworm has a nice little widget, why can’t I get one for mine?  *whine whine whine*

Other things I’ve done:

I updated all the links on my I Want More Kool-Aid! page.  Apparently, the BookMooch link there took you to a member’s only page, and was therefore sorta broke.  I also added my Goodreads profile, so if you want to add me on goodreads, now ya can 😉  And my facebook link is on there, too.

I removed the Giveaways page.  I’ve really been bad about keeping up with that thing anyway.  There was only ONE giveaway listed, and it was for my giveaway of Something Beyond Greatness, which was HOW LONG AGO?

***** ADD break – Since the kids came home and noticed RIGHT AWAY that I was busy and took IMMEDIATELY to fighting like cats and dogs, I put on my MP3 player and cranked it up…. Currently playing:  Mere Saath Chalte Chalte (from the Humko Deewana Kar Gaye soundtrack)

 The girls in this video are all so beautiful, and I just love this movie!  AND… It’s hard to listen to Hindi music without dancing!  Okay, back to work 🙂 ******

Okay, I cut the ARC-alanche list and pasted it over the Mt. TBR Inventory, deleting all the previous mess.  Then I added the link to my LT catalogue, and renamed the new page It’s an ARC-alanche!!  I had went through and updated the list in anticipation of focusing entirely on these books this year, and STILL I had a book that had escaped the pile… lol.  I think it’s complete now.  As I review books, I’ll add the links and strike off the completed titles.  1 down, 66 to go

And now I’ve got my challenge page updated, including the books I plan to read for each challenge so I can strike them out and link the reviews as I finish them.  I’ve retitled the page Reading is Challenging!

Yay!!  Getting soooo much done!

Okay, so one thing I need to do is to go through and check all my images to make sure they have alt titles, as MawBooks pointed out that the ALT title helps the search engines find the images, and by that, my blog 🙂

Then I’m good to go on checking out the mini-challenges, I think 😀

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Free Books and an Award, WINNING ROCKS!

You are a winner!!!!

 

Who doesn’t want to hear those four words?  I’ve been hearing them a lot in the last couple weeks and I’ve gotten behind a bit on sharing it, not to mention I have the Great Goblins! Giveaway winner to announce!

First, I’ve got a funny story to tell…  It would seem that it has been decided by the book gods that I MUST read The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson, because I’ve won it three times now in three different blog giveaways of it (I only accepted the first one and asked the other two to draw another name so someone else could enjoy it 🙂 )  Thank you Joystory, Fresh Ink Books, and Gramma’s Reads for  hosting these giveaways 🙂

The latest book giveaway that I won was for Shanghai Girls by Lisa See from Devourer of Books.  I have both Peony In Love and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, but haven’t gotten to them as yet, and I think I’m waiting to just have a big Asian book read-a-thon or something… lol.  Thanks Jen!

One book that I was uber-geeked out about since I first saw it’s banner in Shelf Awareness, then saw the website and trailer for it, is BoneMan’s Daughter by Ted Dekker.  So I was doing the happy dance when The Literate Housewife announced she was hosting a giveaway for the book.  When I saw my name as one of the winners, I actually screamed with joy… Missy, my little rat terrier, came running to see if her mommy was okay, even.  Thank you, Jennifer! 😀

AND I’d like to say THANKS! to texasheartland of Texas Banter Book Reviews for giving me this lovely award:

Here are the details of this award:

1) Put the logo on your blog/post.
2) Nominate up to 9 blogs which make you feel comfy or warm inside.
3) Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4) Let them know that they have been nominated by commenting on their blog.
5) Remember to link to the person from whom you received your award.

Okay…. comfy and warm inside?  Well… I’d say winning books there makes me feel warm and comfy inside, so all the afore mention bloggers are 5 of my nominees, and for the other 4 of the “up to nine” I’m going to stretch a little 🙂

• Lost In Books – great blog and great Twit 😀 (which is not an insult, 😉 )
• Must Read Faster – relatively new blogger, just a month since she popped her blog’s cherry 🙂  She is learning fast, reading fast, and tweeting fast 🙂
• Wrighty Reads – a LibraryThing friend, fellow Zombie Chicken blogger, and, most importantly, fellow left-hander!  YaY! for LEFTIES!
• Books and Movies –  Carrie’s Blogroll is a directory of the best blogs in the blogosphere 🙂  (and yes, Mt. TBR is on it 😉 )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now for the Great Goblin! Giveaway winner…

I cannot tell y’all how much fun, absolute and plain FUN, I had reading Goblins!  And I was happy that there were so many entries to win it… if only I had a copy for everyone who entered!  But, alas… I only have one to give away.  And the winner of that copy is….

Carrie K. ! 

 

There are two more book giveaways coming soon, one for The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy and one for The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, so keep an eye out for those announcements!

Thanks to everyone who visits Mt. TBR, to my fellow LTers, BookMoochers, PBS’ers and Tweeps.  Y’all make reading and blogging so much fun!

MWAH!! Big Kisses of THANKS!

 

Buy Books for Christmas! (and Chanukah… Kwanza… New Year’s… Tet… Valentines… Just because…)

I recently received an email from author Josh Henkin, whose book Matrimony I will be reviewing and will be giving away in January, about the troubling future of the publishing industry. AND, with the decline of publishing, the loss of the voices of new authors and authors whose ideas may not be of the mainstream flavor. Though I very rarely do this, I want to pass along his email.

Dear Friends,

As many of you know, the book industry is in serious trouble. It was in trouble when economic times were good, and now that times are bad, things have gotten really precarious. Book sales across the industry are down as much as 40 percent, publishing houses are laying off people and cutting imprints, one big publishing house announced that it was no longer reading new manuscripts, and a major chain bookstore is on the brink of bankruptcy. Many of these problems have been a long time coming (the decline of newspapers and especially of book review sections has been a big blow, as has the closing down of many independent bookstores), but in recent months the problem has become especially acute. I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but these are alarming times. What’s at stake is the future of books, and of reading culture. Although books will continue to be published (Stephenie Meyer and J.K. Rowling will publish their next books), for everyone except a handful of bestselling authors, the future is far more uncertain. What’s at stake is the wealth and diversity of book culture. Many classics (books we read in our English classes in high school and college, books our children read or will read), simply wouldn’t be published by today’s standards and, if they were published and didn’t sell well immediately, they would be removed from the bookstore shelves. This is why it’s so important that you buy books for the holidays. There’s a website dedicated to this enterprise, Buy Books for the Holidays,which you might want to check out, and publishing houses are running ad campaigns focused on holiday book-giving. You really can make a difference. A typical paperback novel costs less than fifteen dollars, far cheaper than a necklace or a sweater or dinner at a nice restaurant. Thanks for reading this, and have a happy and healthy holiday.

Best,

Josh
http://www.joshuahenkin.com

Of course, I use BookMooch and PaperBackSwap, both being swap-sites of sorts for books, but I do buy new books as well. Books that never pop up on my wishlist, books I want to read now and don’t want to wait, and books from the bargain bins and twofer sales. Thanks to the swap sites and LibraryThing, I actually purchase more books new than ever before. Go figure.

So, to support the publishing industry and starving authors everywhere, I will be hosting a second Book Bucks Giveaway! 😀
From now until December 31st you can throw your name into the hat for a $25, $15, $10 and $5 gift card to your choice: Borders, Amazon or Barnes & Noble bookstores. The cards can be used either at the brick-and-morters or online shopping.

The rules are as follows:

No biting, scratching, or holding… erm, wait… wrong list… :-))

1. Post a comment to this post for your official entry and specify which store you would like your gift card from. Without your comment here, you won’t qualify for the bonus entries.   If no preference is stated, then you’ll receive one for Borders… I’m lazy and we have a Waldenbooks right here in town.

2. Post a link to this contest on your blog, then post the link here in the comments for a bonus of 5 entries.

3. Comment on any blog entry between now and December 31st for an additional entry per comment. There is a limit of 5 comment-bonus entries per day, so make sure to stop by every day to get your bonus entries! There are over 100 posts on this blog and I’m very busy trying to reach my goal of 75 books by December 31st. I have 17 more to go, which means there will be a post a day, as well, so you won’t run out of chances for your daily bonuses 😉

4. If the winner(s) is outside the US, instead of the gift card, I will mail the new book(s) of his/her/their choice. The postage will be on me and won’t come out of the gifted amount 😉

5. If you go to the Buy Books for the Holidays site, you can pick up the code for a widget button. Include the button in your sidebar for another 5 bonus entries.

Happy Holidays and Happy Reading!

Why You Shouldn’t Eat Your Boogers – Factoid #6

MMMmmm… the smell of new shoes is one of those things that rank right up there with glue, gas and permanent markers! And nothing in this world can make or break your day like the fit of a pair of shoes. Too tight, and you’re as cross as a bear. Too loose and you feel like a clown escapee from Ringling Bros. But a nice pair of shoes that fit just right can boost your confidence and energy level into overdrive and make you feel invincible!

But how do you get that perfect fit? My mom always smashed my big toe with her thumb and told me to wiggle it to see if I had room, but how ’bout this….

I sit true that X-rays were once carried out in shoes shops?

It is ironic that X-rays can both cause cancer and be used to treat it. Nowadays, with the use of very small doses of radiation to produce high-quality X-ray images, the risk of cancer after properly supervised X-ray examinations is extremely small.

Between the 1930s and 1950s, a device called the shoe-fitting fluoroscope was a common fixture in shoe shops. It was a unit that usually consisted of a vertical wooden cabinet with an opening near the bottom into which the feet were placed. When you looked through the viewing holes on the top of the cabinet you would see a fluorescent image of the bones of the feet and the outline of the shoes. When the feet were in the shoe-fitting fluoroscope, the customer was effectively standing on top of an X-ray tube. The fluoroscope helped to measure shoe size and tested the fit of a new pair of shoes. When it was realized that X-rays could be harmful, the use of the fluoroscope declined.

The fluoroscope was widely used by doctors to view inside the body. X-rays were also used to shrink infected tonsils, and thousands of children received this treatment. Decades later, it was realized that this treatment could cause thyroid cancer.

“Um, Mr. Bundy? Should I have a sixth toe suddenly start growing after my last shoe fitting?”

Yeah, I think I’ll stick to my mom’s way….

This post is part of the Boogers and Book Bucks Giveaway. Don’t forget to enter at the original post for your official entry. Comments here count as a bonus entry 😀

Why You Shouldn’t Eat Your Boogers – Factoid #4

Okay, after yesterday’s… and the day before… post, I am sick (literally) of buggy facts. So today is a bug-free factoid!

Today, I wanted to post the answer to a question most of us have asked at least once in our lives.

What does human flesh taste like?

In 1972, survivors of a Uruguayan plane crash were stranded in the Andes. To avoid starvation, they decided to eat the flesh of fellow passengers killed in the accident. After they were rescued, survivors said that they had cooked the meat briefly and “the slight browning of the flesh gave it an immeasurably better flavor – softer than beef but with much the same taste.”

However, infamous murderer Arthur Shawcross, who took the lives of eleven women in New York from 1989 to 1990, said cooked human flesh tastes like a nice roast pork.

Whether human flesh tastes like pork or beef, the fact remains that it can be dangerous to partake of such a diet. In the 1960s, there were epidemic levels of a rare and fatal brain disorder called kuru among the Fore (pronounced for-ay) tribespeople who lived in the highlands of Papau New Guinea. Many of them died from kuru during this period, and their deaths are thought to have been caused by the transmission of a virus-like particle, through the tribal practice of cannibalism.

Traditionally, when a member of the group died, he or she would be dissected and wrapped, and then steamed in a fire. During the funeral the brain would be presented to the closest female relative, and she and her children would be given the honor of eating it. Unfortunately, the virus-like particle which causes kuru is found in highest concentration in the brain. Consequently, the Fore’s traditional rites were the key factor in the spread of this disease.

The tribespeople believed that kuru was caused by sorcery and could not be convinced that it was due to eating human remains. However, despite this, most of them did stop eating human body parts once they were ordered to do so by police and threatened with imprisonment. Once the cannibalism was stopped, the disease also abated.

Fritz Haarmann (1879-1925) became known as the “Butcher of Hanover” and was thought to have been responsible for the deaths of up to fifty boys and men. After Germany’s First World War defeat, Haarmann opened a butcher’s shop The shop prospered, mainly because he sold cheap, fresh meat at a time of great hunger when meat was scarce. After attacking and killing his victims, Haarmann would chop up their bodies and make them into sausage meat, which he cooked and served to his favorite customers. In 1924, a woman who had bought some of his beef became suspicious and contacted the police. The meat was sent to an expert analyst, who somehow concluded that the meat was in fact pork! Nonetheless, the police eventually found grisly evidence for twenty-seven of the murders, and Haarman was sentenced to death by beheading.

Discussions around our dinner table while I was growing up got around to this topic from time to time. Often, when my working mom was asked “what’s for dinner?” for the twenty-seventh time of the evening, she would irritably replay “Long Pork” and give us the stink-eye.

But is it pork? or is it beef, like the the Andes crash survivor’s said? Issei Sagawa, the son of a wealthy Tokyo industrialist, said it had no smell or taste, but rather melted in his mouth like raw tuna. I, personally, am not willing to find out.

For more info on cannibalizing serial killers, visit Cannibals Anonymous. Some of the info is creepy (okay, all of it), and after a few bites of stories, you definitely get your fill, but it is a buffet of abnormal psych laid out in a most palatable fashion.  I never knew there was such a variety of psychopaths!  😉

This post is part of the Boogers and Book Bucks Giveaway. Don’t forget to enter at the original post for your official entry. Comments here count as a bonus entry 😀

DRUMROLL please….. The WINNER is…

Thanks to everyone who entered My First Ever Giveaway!!  The response was overwhelming!  Here are a few STATS:

There were 265 unique entries.  These are the official entries posted in the comment section on the contest announcement. 
We had a total of 732 combined entries. That includes the entries on the original post, plus the extras such as posting on the link your own blog and commenting on other Mt TBR posts.
On the first day of My First Ever Giveaway!! there were 395 views on Mt. TBR, my busiest day previously had been 130 visits. And BLESS Ya’! Many of you have stayed 😀
My First Ever Giveaway!! had a total of 1.142 visits… Wow!

Now, for the part y’all came here for: THE WINNER IS…

All entries were entered randomly onto a spreadsheet, then I input the number range, 1 through 732, at Research Randomizer and the following people have won:

The Grand Prize package is the $20 Borders gift card and, because we had over 700 entries, the winner will also receive a copy of Dogs Do the Silliest Things, a delightful little book with funny and sweet pictures of dogs and fun quotes like

Outside a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. -Groucho Marx

on the opposite page. And the Grand Prize winner is: M at The True Confessions of a Book Lover Named M!

 

Winners of the $10 Borders gift cards are:
Jessica, email ID jessleighj
Dawn, email ID dawn.rennert

and the winners of the $5 Borders gift cards are:
Suey at It’s All About the Books
judy brittle

Congratulations to all the winners, you have 48 hours to email your address so I can send you your prize!

For those of you who didn’t win, don’t FRET! I’m giving away a signed copy of Mishka: An Adoption Tale, an touching children’s book about love, family and home told from the point of view of Mo the Bear. Enter to WIN! I will be giving away more books as well, so make sure to visit often 😉

The Sunday Salon

Let’s see, this week I’ve been friends with a snowman and a rabbit. I’ve b,een to Papau New Guinea, Boston, Czechoslavakia, and the Congo. I’ve lived in Kabul and Pakistan in a time women had no rights. I’ve been enraptured by the stories of a second-grader in Watertower and China. I’ve been out to the county fair, where we ate swamp fries, roas’nears and elephant ears, and drank lemon shake-ups to our hearts content. AND, yesterday morning, I took Maggie for breakfast at her favorite place, The White House.

Okay, the first four sentences were things I did in books, I read and reviewed The Rabbit and the Snowman, The White Mary, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Gooney Bird Greene.

But we did go to the county fair and we really did eat breakfast at the White House. Of course, when the county fair is open, you have to go more than one day. You have to see the animals and the merchants one night, and do the midway on another night.

So Monday was roosters, rabbits and merchants night, which is my favorite. I love going through the merchants buildings and signing up for every single drawing every business, church or club offers. In the past I’ve one a DirectTV satellite package, Avon baskets, shirts, and other stuff I can’t remember. This year, though, so many were offering gas cards. That kinda sucks, since I don’t drive… but I signed up for them anyway.

On Wednesday, we went for bracelet night at the midway. I even got a bracelet, which is stupid because I have vertigo. Maggie and I rode an up and down kind of ride. It didn’t spin, so I thought I’d be safe… wrong. But I know to focus on one spot to keep from getting sick… Maggie, poor Maggie, did not. She quickly exited the side of the ride and lost her lunch. She was pretty much ready to go home after that. I have a question for any med-savvy people, Maggie has eczema that flared this week, so she’d taken Benadryl, can that make you more prone to motion sickness? I told her that’s why she got sick.

Oh well, we went to look at the horses after that. We scratched several piggie’s backs and made our way back to the midway for our last ride. By then Mag’s stomach was settled, and our tradition is to save the Ferris wheel for our final fair event. The thing creaked and groaned and scared poor Maggie, who thought with certainty we were going to plummet to our deaths. I told her it just needed some WD-40 and we were safe, though I secretly agreed with her and I never get frightened on rides!

We lived.

Breakfast at the White House… I’m sure you’ve been dying to know. Here in Logansport, there is a restaurant called “White House”. It is owned by Lester, who has been cooking at the White House since my momma was a little girl, and that’s saying something! Mags and me, we always order the same thing, eggs over easy, toast with extra butter, smoked sausage and bacon, home fries with onions, chocolate mile for Mags and coffee for me. We always have the same waitress, Karen, so we never actually have to tell her what we want, unless we are adding a pancake with peanut butter like we did yesterday. Mag’s loves Karen, who’s watched her grow since we had our first breakfast there when Maggie was three. Like most places Maggie goes, she gets away with a lot at the White House… she brings flowers and a smile, and all the orneriness she can muster!

Also this week, I found FRED, where Julie shared the Fart in the Duck, Fyrefly asked Where the Hell is Matt and Suey shared her addiction to Vlogbrothers.

My First Ever Giveaway!! is winding down… only 11 days until it closes! Right now, I have 584 entries, and am giving away a $20, a $10, and a $5 Borders gift card. 16 more entries will add another $10 gift card, and at 700 I was going to add another $5, but I’ve been thinking… that’s such a great number, that it might be more. So… if you haven’t entered to win yet, do it now!

Tuesday Thingers- I’ll swap ya Tuesday for a Sundae

Today’s topic: Book-swapping. Do you do it? What site(s) do you use? How did you find out about them? What do you think of them? Do you use LT’s book-swapping column feature for information on what to swap? Do you participate in any of the LT communities that discuss bookswapping, like the Bookmooch group for example?

I certainly do book-swapping, how else could I have such a magnificent Mt. TBR? I’m grateful for BookMooch, because without it I wouldn’t have found LibraryThing, and without LT I wouldn’t be blogging. I heard about BookMooch on NBC’s Today Show, when they’d had a segment on free and almost free sites on the internet. The name “BookMooch” was catchy and easy to remember, which is a good thing because it was a week or so before I finally got around to signing up.

From BookMooch, I found LibraryThing through the “LibraryThing add” button. After a month or so on LT, I found out about PaperBackSwap, which is different enough from BookMooch to warrant both accounts. I’m very thankful for LibraryThing, because through the “other places to find ARCs” thread (now ARC Junkies group… YaY!) I found a lot of opportunities to get ARCs, and finally graduated to a blog, and more books than I could read in 2 years snowed in and alone!

I like the LT swap column fair enough, though it’s rarely accurate, and includes the UK only sites in the “books available” numbers. I do participate and enjoy the BookMooching group on LT. My current favorite BM thread is the “Book search for friends” one.

I not only enjoy getting books, but also sending them out to people who I know have been dying to read a book I’ve enjoyed, usually… though there was one book I was so glad to get out of my house (it was the worse book I’ve ever read).

Don’t forget to enter to win a $20 Borders Gift Card… or a $10… and now that there are over 500 entries, a $5 gift card is on the table! If we hit 600, I’ll add another $10, and at 700 another $5! That’ll make $50 in My First Ever Giveaway!

Ye Grande Olde TBR(e) Challenge!

 

I’ve been back and forth over this idea… I’ve commented a few times on Fyrefly’s post Ye Grand Olde TBR(e) Challenge! … but after buying a bunch of books at Goodwill and Waldenbooks, only to come home and find out two of the books were duplicates of what I already have in my library (and that isn’t the first time it’s happened, either!) So I am now repentent and ready to throw my lot into this Challenge.

BookMooch is my CRACK, as are the ARC offers and Goodwill’s book racks and Waldenbook’s bargain bins, not to mention the thrift stores! So, from here on I will:

1. Not buy anymore books for Mt. TBR (sometimes I buy ones I know are wishlisted on BM.)
2. Maintain at least a 3 to 1 ratio of books read to books brought in. (If I don’t give myself some wiggle room, I’ll lose it!)
3. Seriously, only request ARCs and Reviewer copies that I would really love to read, not just get “FREE BOOKS!”
4. Only mooch or request books already ON my wishlist, and not put new ones on it. (toss the one’s I’m not dying to have onto the Save-for-later page.)

That’s about it. Check out Mt. TBR and tell me if there’s anything you’d like me to get to sooner! (I still haven’t the heart to add the 20 books I got Thursday, July 3rd!)

OH! and don’t forget to enter to win a $20 Borders gift card in My First Ever Giveaway! So far, I have around 270 entries. If I hit 400, I’ll add a second prize of a $10 Borders gift card, and a $5 card at 500. So enter to win, blog for more entries, comment for more, and tell others about it!

MY FIRST EVER GIVEAWAY!!

 $20 GIFT CARD FOR BORDERS

 Welcome to my FIRST EVER BLOG GIVEAWAY!!!

This is my first blog giveaway, and I’m excited to be doing it!  I want to say thanks to everyone who reads and comments on my blog, and to share the love I went to Waldenbooks today and got a $20 Gift Card.  The one I’ve got has the Lorax on it and he says “I speak for the trees”.   They didn’t have a picture of it at the BordersOnline store… bummer.  But anyway, I want to GIVE a lucky reader FREE BOOK MONEY!!

 So, to the rules: 

    1.  Leave a comment on this post as your official entry.  If you don’t leave a comment here, then I won’t know you’ve entered.

    2.  You will get an extra entry per comment anywhere else on my blog.  Remember to comment here first, though!

    3.  Post a link to the contest on your blog and get 5 extra entries.  Make sure to let me know you’ve posted the link so I can credit you.

4.  Open to anyone, anywhere, so long as you have a way to get mail.  I will mail the card to the winner, so you have to be able to get it. 😀

5.  All entries must be received by July 31st.  I will draw the winning name August 1st and post it. 

6.  If I have a large enough response for this, I will choose a second or third winner and award $10 and $5 gift cards accordingly.

 

UPDATE: The contest has ended and the winners have been posted… Check them out!