IMM Videoooo!

Books fondled in this video:
Karma for Beginners by Jessica Blank**
Road to Tater Hill by Edith M. Hemingway
Sphinx Princess by Esther Friesner
The Fatal Child by John Dickinson
The Fairy Godmother Academy: Birdie's Book by Jan Bozarth
The Other Side by Marley Gibson & other peeps
Catwalk by Deborah Gregory
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Ring of Fire by P.D. Baccalario (&, I think, Hitler)
Rage: A Love Story by Julie Anne Peters
The Naughty List by Suzanne Young
Intertwined by Gena Showalter
My Soul to Take by Rachel Vincent
The Splendor Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore

**This is NOT a road trip book, as I ignorantly say in the video (thanks, Yan!). I thought the cover implied it, but if you look in the rearview mirror, you can see naughty stuffz happening! Scandalous! The summary actually sounds really good, though. I should have read it before I did the video. Hmm. Good thought process.

Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

I bought this book an engagement ring yesterday. The wedding's planned for next summer.

Quick summary: Patch comes to town, doing the bad-boy allure thing, and throws a lot of attention and innuendos in Nora's face. Nora knows there's something off about him, but she's finding him a little hard to resist. And, I mean, if you look at the front cover, can you blame her?

From the very beginning to the very end, there's a lurking and subtle sense of suspense behind every conversation and movement. In random scenes, you get a whiplash of danger that you wouldn't have suspected two sentences ago, and then you're thrown right back into the subtlety. I was literally on alert every single word of this book. It's scary, it's edgy, and it's one of my new favorite books.

Every single page is dipped in gold. I smiled, laughed, gasped, bit my knuckles, and hyperventilated my whole way through Hush, Hush. Really, I felt the same way about Patch that Nora did - I was suspicious, but damn, just give me another scene with him already.

I could glee-fest over this book for several more paragraphs, but I'll keep it short and sweet. It popped up onto the top five of my favorite books in history. Ever. I don't reread books very often, but I can already tell this is going to be an exception. It'll be my comfort read, my cheer-me-up read, my escape read, and my vacation read. It's a book I can rely on. It's crazy-amazing, and I'm expecting you all to read it.

I'm more in wait of the sequel than I was for Catching Fire. And, you know, that's saying something.

Wedding invites are in the mail. I hope you'll all come.

kfg$*sj!@3e! dude!

Guess what? Watch the video!

Bubble Comedy - Ghost Stories

The winner of If I Stay is Priya! Email me with your address and I'll send it out soon! & 700 comments = 7 bookmarks. Nicely done, guys. I'm proud of you. Even though you haven't beat 1000 yet. *cough* I should keep record. Anyway...

This week, I'm giving away (to one winner) Skeleton Creek and Give up the Ghost by Patrick Carman. Both are scary, ghostly books that connect with the internet. You can read a chapter, and then go to the website the book specifies - that website will lead you to a video that goes along with the book, and so on. I think these will not only attract regular readers, but are great for reluctant ones. So push it on 'em, guys.

Most of you know the drill, but if you haven't played Bubble Comedy before...

-There are no rules.

-You can comment as MANY times as you want, and each one gets you an entry. BUT you have to say something in your comment(s). You can't post something blank, or the same phrase over & over again. Spice it up, because I'm reading all of these. A lot of them are pretty dang amusing, actually. And if you want to give book or movie recommendations, go right on ahead. :)

-Every 100 comments equals a bookmark added to the prize. (And, authors/pubs, if you'd like to send some bookmarks for me to include for the winners, just email me. I have a decent bin right now, but I have a feeling they'll run out quickly, with these crazy commenters I love so much.)

*I can only send to U.S. addresses, so if you're foreign (and don't have anyone in the U.S. who can ship prizes to you), I'm sorry.

*Contest will run for roughly a week, when winner(s) are announced and a new contest pops up.

C-C-C-Comment, Toros. Rah, rah!

Interviews

I was interviewed twice recently - both times by authors. Answering questions about myself is a very fun distraction, and when the questions are being asked by crazily creative authors, it's even more interesting. For the first interview, Hayley Anne Perkins - whose fantastic book Green I got to be a test reader for - asked me a lot of thought-provoking Q's. For the second, Julie Kagawa's rather spunky characters from The Iron King pestered me out of some very random A's.

I'd be tickled if you checked them out and commented. I really, really would. You can find out my opinion on books, movies, zombie apocalypses, and more.

Here's a link to Perkin's interview, and here's one to Kagawa's.

Thank you kindly!

Getting to Know the Characters of Fire: TOUR

Kristin Cashore is on a tour of blogs for her release of Fire (Oct 5th), the 5-starred companion novel to Graceling. You can head to a ton of different stops to learn more about her characters, but you don't have to look any further for stop #4. Make sure you check out the previous ones, though, along with the stops to follow. The full schedule can be found here. And now, without further ado, I present to you...

Immiker, a little boy with one eye gray and one eye scarlet, has some creepy talents that his father, Larch, can't quite put his finger on. Every time Larch thinks he's figured it out, he seems to forget. Larch is, in fact, a generally forgetful person. Could it have something to do with...? No, certainly not. Immiker would never.... Hm. What? I can't remember.... what was I saying?

What a teaser. You can check out a sample of Fire here, since I'm sure all the character-talk has gotten you intrigued. If you'd just like to read a summary, though, never fear! Here you go, five-fingered from Goodreads...

She is the last of her kind... It is not a peaceful time in the Dells. In King City, the young King Nash is clinging to the throne, while rebel lords in the north and south build armies to unseat him. War is coming. And the mountains and forest are filled with spies and thieves. This is where Fire lives, a girl whose beauty is impossibly irresistible and who can control the minds of everyone around her.

Exquisitely romantic, this companion to the highly praised Graceling has an entirely new cast of characters, save for one person who plays a pivotal role in both books. You don't need to have read Graceling to love Fire. But if you haven't, you'll be dying to read it next.

And now, after you've checked out all the fun stuff, you can enter to win your very own hardcover copy of Fire - SIGNED!

Just comment below for an entry, but you can get an extra entry if you:

1) post or tweet about this contest
2) tweet about Fire (with the hashtag #firetour)
3) embed the widget or sample chapter (above) on your blog

Just let me know what you've done to promote Fire in the comments for your extra entries!

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

I'm going to go ahead and share my thoughts on If I Stay, since I'm giving away my cherished copy. *tear*

The idea for this automatically hooked me. The main character, Mia, is in a coma, watching the living but dancing with death. And it centers around such a big question; it's one I think all of us think about, at one time or another. Life or death?

It was very, very, very powerful. I've mentioned before that certain "unnameable" factor that I sometimes get - when I close a book, and it leaves me with this crazy, intense feeling. For me, it's only happened a few times, like with A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, The Host by Stephenie Meyer (which surprised me), and Beauty Shop for Rent by Laura Bowers. And now, I've added If I Stay to that list. I think it's just this feeling that says "you'll remember this." It feels like it sinks into me and becomes a tiny part of who I am. Corny, sure, but also true. I'm not sure what exactly makes me feel it, but it's definitely good and it's definitely something I've felt on more than one occasion. Maybe it's just an intense love for good literature. Either way, If I Stay inspired it.

Every tiny detail in this book just adds up to one perfect whole. From Mia's music talent to her incredibly sweet boyfriend, I felt for this book. There was so much raw pain in it, but there was also hope and love. Kind of like life.

This book is a masterpiece. Let's hope the movie is, too.

Bubble Comedy - Win If I Stay!

Dani (#63) and Shadowofwonder47 (#75) are the winners of last week's Bubble Comedy - both of you email me your addresses and I'll have your books shipped out to you! This week, I'm giving away a copy of If I Stay by Gayle Forman. I haven't reviewed it yet, but I was in complete awe after I finished.

The last normal moment that Mia, a talented cellist, can remember is being in the car with her family. Then she is standing outside her body beside their mangled Buick and her parents' corpses, watching herself and her little brother being tended by paramedics. As she ponders her state (Am I dead? I actually have to ask myself this), Mia is whisked away to a hospital, where, her body in a coma, she reflects on the past and tries to decide whether to fight to live. -Publishers Weekly

If you've never played Bubble Comedy before:

-There are no rules.

-You can comment as MANY times as you want, and each one gets you an entry. BUT you have to say something in your comment(s). You can't post something blank, or the same phrase over & over again. Spice it up, because I'm reading all of these. A lot of them are pretty dang amusing, actually. And if you want to give book recommendations, go right on ahead. :)

-Every 100 comments equals a bookmark added to the prize. (And, authors/pubs, if you'd like to send some bookmarks for me to include for the winners, just email me. I have a decent bin right now, but I have a feeling they'll run out quickly, with these crazy commenters I love so much.)

*I can only send to U.S. addresses, so if you're foreign (and don't have anyone who can ship prizes to you), I'm sorry.

*Contest will run for roughly a week, when winner(s) are announced and a new contest pops up.

Go comment, yah hooligans.

Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

Since the 8th anniversary of 9/11 was so recent, I decided to pick up Love is the Higher Law. I was only nine years old at the time of the attack, and it amazes me that I still remember that day. I didn't fully comprehend what had happened, but I comprehended enough to know it was something big. I remember coming home not to a babysitter, as usual, but to my mom waiting at my bus stop. I remember clips of the news. Teachers in a trying-to-remain-calm frenzy. I only remember tiny glimpses, but not what I felt or how it impacted me.

Love is the Higher Law not only lets you into the minds of people who experienced 9/11 first-hand (as residents of NY), but lets you really understand the emotions people went through. The fear, the awe, the camaraderie - you get to see everything in this book.

I'm really surprised there aren't more novels about 9/11 and its aftereffects. For this generation of teenagers especially - while we're old enough to have experienced it, but not necessarily old enough to remember everything - I think it's important to be able to bring 9/11 to the forefront and give it attention. It's a very important day in our history, and it should be treated as such.

This book was the first non-collaboration by David Levithan that I've read. I enjoyed both Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List (which I preferred), but it was great to get to see some of his standalone work. He has a very varied writing style, which is needed to make seperate POVs convincing. The 3 characters this book focused on were all interconnected, but I really liked getting to see their separate side of things. I really related to Claire - her thought process and beliefs seem to be very similar to mine. I think a lot of people will be able to share some type of wavelength, if not complete understanding, with her. Peter and Jasper each also had their own personalities, even though they were sometimes subtle in distinction. Sometimes, all the characters thoughts merged together and sometimes they altered.

It was a really powerful book, to say the least.

Will you share your story? Where were you on September 11th, 2001? What do you remember?

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I don't think I really need to summarize this, do I? If you somehow don't know what Catching Fire is, find out here and here.

I read this a couple months ago, thanks to the ever-generous Drea, but held off on posting my review for a couple of reasons:

1) The release date wasn't until September, & I knew if I accidentally posted the tiniest spoiler I'd probably be pelted to death.

2) I was kind of speechless.

I'll admit that, while I was dying in wait for Catching Fire's release, I never really expected it to be as good as The Hunger Games. I mean, HG was just so suspenseful and jaw-droppingly intense that I never figured it's sequel could live up. It did. While the beginning started off a little slow (as it also did in The Hunger Games), it picked up quickly and got pretty crazy. I loved it.

And while I want to say the third book can't possibly be as good and suspenseful as these two, I'm guessing it will. Suzanne Collins throws some pretty hard-to-hit curve balls.

So let's move on to characters. Katniss, in particular, kicks some serious ass. She's my idol, and I'll happily be dressing up as her for Halloween (don't worry, I'll post pictures.) And what I also love about these books is the fact that they're not gender based. It has romance, sure, but it also has action action action. I know two non-reading guys that read and loved it. While the romance is definitely there, it's not the main focus of the book (even though some of us would like it to be ;)), and so there's more of a variance in the plot.

And I can't leave this review without a mention of how hardcore it is. SPOILER: The way the Game was set - the clock, alongside the blood rain and skin-eating fog - made me cringe. It was way awesome. END OF SPOILER.

Here's to hoping the movies live up. But with Suzanne Collins writing the screenplay, I'm sure it'll do just fine.

So. We're left with the big question.

Team Gale or Peeta?

Bubble Comedy Contest

The RNG chose number 66 out of the 214 comments for the last Bubble Comedy contest, which was Ellie! Congrats! I'll send Hottie to you at my next P.O. trip! Just email me your address. :) Also, because of the 200 comments, you'll be getting 2 bookmarks.

This week I'm giving away 2 copies of Marni, which is a nonfiction book by a teenager - it's part of a series edited by Deborah Reber and published by HCI Books, who bring us all the lovely Chicken Soup books, as well as A Child Called It. Here's the summary from the back of the book:

Marni pulls. Pulls her hair, that is. Unable to deal with the mounting stress at home, in school, and with friends, Marni's compulsion to pluck out her eyebrows, eyelashes...even the hair from the top of her head, helped her to quiet her mind and escape the pressures of the world around her.

Marni first began pulling the summer just begore entering high school, and she was immediately hooked. Unfortunately, by the time she discovered that her habit was an actual disorder - tri-chotillomania or "trich" - it was way too late.

I actually knew someone who had "trich", so it'll be interesting reading about someone with the disorder through their eyes. The three girls who are in this teen memoir trilogy (the other books are called Chelsey and Emily), have serious guts to open up their entire lives to the public. I can't wait to read them.

If you missed Bubble Comedy last round, here's how you play:

-There are no rules.

-You can comment as MANY times as you want, and each one gets you an entry.

-Every 100 comments equals a bookmark added to the prize. (And, authors/pubs, if you'd like to send some bookmarks for me to include for the winners, just email me. I have a decent bin right now, but I have a feeling they'll run out quickly, with these crazy commenters I love so much.)

*Only open for U.S. residents, or who have a U.S. address I can send to.
*Contest will run until Monday, September 14th, when a new contest pops up.

Get commentin', folks.

This contest is officially over. Scroll up to see the winners & a new prize!

Mackenzie, Lost and Found by Deborah Kerbel

Mackenzie's fifteenth year is nothing like she ever expected it to be. After moving from Canada to Jerusalem, she's awed by the customs, scared by the tactics, and loved by some great new friends - including Nasir, a boy she's forbidden to date by both of their families.

I usually love to read books that take place in a foreign country (I can't travel across seas yet, so I have to live vicariously through lucky fictional characters), and this isn't an exception. The way Jerusalem was described - from the buildings to the traffic - was very vivid and believable. The setting was so spot-on, it practically painted you right into the scenery, so that you can ogle the sights yourself. It just makes me envy travelers even more. *sigh* One day.

While the romance was interesting, I didn't feel a complete connection to Nasir. Their relationship seemed to go way too fast, and I didn't feel the latter half of the book measured up to the beginning. In the first half, Mackenzie's gum-buying and Nasir's creeper-staring relationship was cute and authentic, but once it started to get deeper, it seemed to snap into surrealism. And there was a rapidity to the plotting in the end that I wished hadn't been so rushed.

Those things aside, I really did enjoy this book. It's memorable for the culture it brings, and although the ending was abrupt, I liked the subtle imperfectness of it. And the character of Mackenzie's father was completely quirky and likeable. He was a cape-wearing arhcaelogist - can you really get much better?

Maximum Ride Prize Pack Promotion!

ENTER TO WIN A SET OF JAMES PATTERSON PAGETURNERS!
MAXIMUM RIDE – IF SHE LIVES, THE WORLD LIVES, IT’S THAT SIMPLE.

I'm extending the latest Bubble Comedy contest until this upcoming Monday, and a new free book will be posted then. But I have good reason! I've been offered the opportunity to host a great promotion, which has a ton of awesome readable prizes for two very lucky readers! But, first, read the info:

Read “MAX” - the newest book in the bestselling Maximum Ride series. On sale in paperback 09/01/09!

Still reeling from their most recent adventure, Maximum Ride and the rest of the flock must head out to sea to uncover the secret behind a brand new series of disasters—fish are dying off the coast of Hawaii, hundreds of ships are being destroyed. As if that weren’t enough, they’re also being tracked by a criminal mastermind with, oh yeah, an army of mercenaries. Can the flock save themselves and the ocean, and the world, from utter destruction?

The Fine Print:
The Maximum Ride: Max Promotion is open to legal US residents who are at least 13 years of age as of August 31, 2009. There will be two prizes for each Promotion. Each prize consists of the following eight (8) books: Maximum Ride: Max (paperback); Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment (paperback); Maximum Ride: School’s Out – Forever (paperback); Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports (paperback); Maximum Ride: The Final Warning (paperback); Maximum Ride: Manga (paperback); The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (paperback); and Daniel X: Watch the Skies (hardcover). The approximate retail value of each prize is $72.00. Winners will be confirmed on or about September 28, 2009 by email. Prizes will only be shipped to confirmed winners with addresses in the US. Prizes will be shipped within 30 days after a selected entrant is confirmed as a winner.

So what are the prizes?

Two (2) winners will receive a James Patterson Prize Pack:

* Maximum Ride: Max (paperback)
* Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment (paperback)
* Maximum Ride: School’s Out – Forever (paperback)
* Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports (paperback)
* Maximum Ride: The Final Warning (paperback)
* Maximum Ride: Manga (paperback)
* The Dangerous Days of Daniel X (paperback)
* Daniel X: Watch the Skies (hardcover)

Comment (once!) for your chance to win!