Tagged: books
Autumn: The City by David Moody
Today I’m guest posting over at 20four12 again, this time I’m reviewing the sequel to the first book I reviewed over there: Autumn: The City by David Moody. It’s a non-traditional zombie tale that never, ever uses the dreaded Z word. So how effective is David Moody at creating suspense? Well, let’s just say I’ve never been held in that much suspense since I read my first Stephen King novel. While you’re over at Caleb’s awesome blog, check out his other reviews. He’s read far more science fiction than I ever will!
Are You a Blogger?
No, sadly, this is not my usual Monday rant. Yes, I am currently ready to call a certain someone unprintable names, but I figure it’s best to ignore them as they obviously have the reading comprehension and manners of a five year old. Maybe I’ll get back to ranting after the Christmas spirit wears off.
Anyway, that’s not what this post is about. Here are some important announcements/questions for your reading pleasure:
1. Would you be interested in being interviewed by me?
If you’re a book blogger or an author that blogs about books and writing, I would love to interview you. Why? Because I like doing interviews and I want to give my fellow bloggers/author-bloggers some publicity. It also gives my readers a chance to discover other great blogs. So if you’re interested in being interviewed, tell me below in the comments and I’ll be happy to get in touch with you.
2. I’ve figured out the prize for completing The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge!
(A big thanks goes to James Kennedy who suggested this in the comments!) Here’s what I will be doing: when you complete your challenge and another blogger completes the challenge on the same level or close to you I will put you in touch with one another. You can then guest post for each other either about the challenge (what you learned from it, if you might do it next year) or just exchange reviews. But how the grand prize is going to work is as follows:
Everyone who achieves Mad Reviewer earns 4 entries, Crazy Reviewer earns 3 entries, Slightly Sane Reviewer earns 2 entries and Sane Reviewer earns 1 entry. I will put the names of the bloggers who have completed the challenge (and I have verified that they were honest) in a hat and draw one. I’ll even do it on video so there are no complaints about honesty. So what is the grand prize?
The grand prize will be a book blogger’s prize pack of a free book of your choice with the option of me to put my own annotations in it (some people like reading others’ annotations, but if you don’t like it, that’s cool too) and promotion on my blog. Yes, it’s not exactly a large prize pack, but what I will do that other contest holders won’t is ship anywhere in the world, not just North America. The promotion on my blog can be for either your blog or if you have a book out, I’ll promote that.
If more people enter next year’s challenge, I’ll likely up the prizes. But for this first year I’ll stick with a free book and some promotion.
3. Would you like to guest post for me?
Guest posting can be a drain on bloggers. Believe me, I would know. That’s why when someone guest posts for me, I always return the favour. It helps both of us because we both get exposed to new readers and our readers get to read someone else’s thoughts. I’ve had two amazing semi-regular guest posters, Caleb Flanagan and The Streetlight Reader, but a little variety is always nice. For more information about guest posting, please check out this post.
4. I will be posting a short story I wrote on Christmas.
I had intended on reviewing a Christmas-y book for Christmas, but I changed my mind. I’m going to post a short story I wrote a couple years ago that I think a lot of writers and conspiracy theorists will be able to relate to. It’s around 300 words and that’s all I’m going to say about it at this time. If you celebrate Christmas, think of it as my Christmas present to you. If you don’t celebrate Christmas, think of it either a special treat or torture, depending on whether you enjoy it or not.
What do you think makes a good book?
I’ve written a lot about what I think makes a good book and maybe some time this month I’ll compile it into an article. But first I want to know: What do you think makes a good book? Is it characters you can connect with? An exciting plot? Fantastic world-building? I don’t think there’s one single thing that makes a book good every time, but what thing(s) make a good book for you?
The Library of a Book Reviewer
I’ve mentioned my library a few times in the past, but I figure I might as well show you what I’m talking about. So here is a picture of my family library:
It doesn’t look like all that much, but the room is at such a weird angle that I couldn’t fit everything in the picture. There’s about four generations of books going back around 100 years in that little library, which also doubles as a guest room. Apparently someone in my family loved both Dickens and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books because they seem to take up a lot of space. And if you’re wondering, no, my books aren’t down here. My personal collection is much, much smaller.
It’s hard to tell from this angle, but that’s the only way I could get the whole shelf in. As you can tell, there’s a lot of series and they’re all nicely arranged by alphabetical order. I may be an extremely messy person normally, but I’m obsessed with order when it comes to my books. However, if you zoom in you can tell this shelf only goes up to ‘M’ in the alphabet. That’s because there’s another shelf:
Yes, I am obviously running out of room. The next time I get any new books I’m either going to have to give some more books to my little sister to make room or start clearing myself a shelf in the family library. No, I don’t know how many books I actually own, but they’re a tiny fraction of what I’ve actually read.
Enough about my library, though.. What does yours look like?
Guest Post Tomorrow
Yes, I know it’s sort of sudden, but I finally got around to organizing my life. Tomorrow author Lynne Thompson is posting a guest review. It’s not a series I would ever pick up, so it’s great that Lynne is reviewing the series.
Speaking of organizing my life, I finally updated the ‘My Reviews’ and ‘Guests’ page. Now I know I have had 12 guest posts and 219 book reviews. And if you haven’t already seen, I updated my commenting policy as well as my biography on my about page. Yes, I finally thought of some interesting things I’ve done in my life. It only took 9 months!