Book Embargo

Something to Blog about, my friend Shana’s book, has been reviewed!!!

Over here at Arm Chair Interviews, there is a very nice and positive review. I shall cut and paste for any linkaphobes in the audience.

Something to BLOG About
by Shana Norris
Published by Amulet Books (February 2008)

Click on book
cover to order
at Amazon.com

Reviewed by Andrea Sisco

Shana Norris’ debut novel, Something to BLOG About, melds blogging and narrative–and the result is a cute and unique look at teens on their own turf. Norris gives the reader everything: boys, blogs, a nasty bully, a dating mom and an insecure heroine.

Libby (not Elizabeth) Fawcett’s decision to start a secret blog (meant for her eyes only) chronicles the happy, sad and mundane emotions and experiences of our misunderstood and occasionally clumsy heroine.

What could be more embarrassing than starting your hair on fire in chemistry class? Having your heartthrob, Seth Jacobs witness the entire tragic event. Could life get any worse? It could if your mother happens to be dating the father of your arch enemy, Angel Rivera. And how do you help your best guy friend (who is also your cousin) with his love life when you can’t manage your own? It’s a good bet you’d stop him from sending his secret love a HUGE bouquet of flowers that she’s sure to hate.

Writing in her online blog keeps Libby focused and sane (along with running). But through a series of events the blog finds its way to school and Libby wonders how she’s ever going to recover from the humiliation of everyone knowing her innermost thoughts.

Something to BLOG About has several things going for it. First, it’s fun, fast-paced and true to the teenage life. Second it is a book you can, without worry, allow your YA to read without concern that sex, drugs and mean-spirited kids will be encouraged.

Armchair Interviews says: It’s refreshing to read a young adult book that shares the teenager’s life with some humor and one that doesn’t encourage destructive behavior as the norm.

Author’s Web site: http://www.ShanaNorris.com

Like I said, a nice review. Makes me even MORE excited to be able to sell the book!!!

I know I know, Dog training? How does THAT relate to books? Well, it doesn’t but it relates to me!

My dog Kayden and I completed the Beginner’s Obedience class in the spring of 2007 at White Mountain K-9 in Plymouth, New Hampshire. The trainer, Mike, was great with my dog, and in each class showed us different ways for training. There are a variety of classes you can take, as well as a “Puppy Playgroup” offered.

I can also vouge for their cat grooming skills. I brought my Mama cat there, and she came back clean as a whistle, and perfectly pleasant. They told me that she was active and interested in the goings on while she was there (which is really saying something for her!).

If you live in central New Hampshire and are looking for a great training and grooming resource, check out White Mountain K-9.

I know most people know Orson Scott Card from the Ender’s series. I however, have yet to read the story of Ender, but LOVE the Homecoming series. I met OSC at Boskone a few years back, where he gave some great speeches and was a real pleasure. If you read the Wiki article, you may find that you have very different beliefs than him, but he still pens a great novel. From the little that I have researched he seems to be one of those great people who may dislike something (like homosexuality) but can still accept an individual person’s choices, and defend them.

Over here at OSC’s Hatrack you can read the first chapter of Memory of Earth, the first in the five book series.

An interesting side note. We had a customer who came in wanting to know about the Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman and its connection to God. Well really, who cares? Narnia is a great story, regardless of what it CAN mean, same with Golden Compass. Same with Homecoming. Again according to Wiki, The Homecoming saga is a fictionalization of the first few hundred years recorded in the Book of Mormon. But you can read it and enjoy it as a story, without caring (or knowing) how it relates to the Book of Mormon, or any religion. GreenManReview says just that in his review on the series.

Give it a read, tell me what you think!

We got a postcard in the mail a while back about a new vampire novel, looks fun!

From the Random House page,

All the official reports say they are dead-extinct since the late ’80s, when a fed named Arkeley nailed the last vampire in a fight that nearly killed him. But the evidence proves otherwise.

When a state trooper named Caxton calls the FBI looking for help in the middle of the night, it is Arkeley who gets the assignment-who else? He’s been expecting such a call to come eventually. Sure, it has been years since any signs of an attack, but Arkeley knows what most people don’t: there is one left. In an abandoned asylum she is rotting, plotting, and biding her time in a way that only the undead can.

Caxton is out of her league on this case and more than a little afraid, but the fed made it plain that there is only one way out. But the worst thing is the feeling that the vampires want more than just her blood. They want her for a reason, one she can’t guess; a reason her sphinxlike partner knows but won’t say; a reason she has to find out-or die trying.

Now there are only 13 bullets between Caxton and Arkeley and the vampires. There are only 13 bullets between us, the living, and them, the damned.

From Publishers Weekly
Minimally plotted and driven by nonstop action, this gory vampire tale is of a piece with Wellington’s zombie novels (Monster Island; Monster Nation). Special deputy Jameson Arkeley stopped a vampire rampage 20 years earlier, during which he whittled down all known bloodsuckers to a single survivor, Justinia Malvern. Kept alive at a sanitarium in rural Pennsylvania by minimal life support and bizarre laws preventing her extermination, wispy Justinia seems a threat to no one—until a series of vampire killings in the area suggest that she has found a secret way to spread her taint. Convinced that Justinia’s minions plan to spring her and revive her to full power, Arkeley commandeers state trooper Laura Caxton to help him find their lair and wipe them out before they can get their vampire queen the blood she needs. A surprisingly anticlimactic finale leaves loose ends that will likely be tied up in subsequent volumes of a projected trilogy. (May)

Have you read it? Let me know what you think.

The word is out. Kristen Stewart is Bella and Robert Pattinson is Edward. What do you think?

Can he be our Edward?

Can she be Bella?

I think it might just work!

Stephenie Meyer.

Why you ask?

Because the Host was so good, and yet here I sit BAWLING by the end, at 2:00 AM and I have an 8:00 AM appointment.

So yes, The Host was fabulous and Roger, my Little, Brown rep, ROCKS for sending it to me.

Thank you, and Goodnight

alien, eclipse, ian, jamie, jared, little brown, melanie, meyer, new moon, parasite, stephenie meyer, the host, twilight, wanda, wanderer, worm, stephenie meyer