Sunday Status: 7/1/12

Books I Finished Since the Last Update
The Duke's Perfect Wife by Jennifer Ashley
Centauri Twilight by Cynthia Woolf
A Rogue by Any Other Name by Sarah MacLean
Sweet Enemy by Heather Snow
Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace by Kate Summerscale

Books I am Currently Reading
A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

Books To Be Read Next
Four Sisters, All Queens by Sherry Jones
Anything on by priority pile...

Reviews of the past two weeks
Incarnate by Jodi Meadows
Sweet Enemy by Heather Snow

At The Broke and the Bookish
I Suck at Girls by Justin Halpern


Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books I'd Recommend For People Who Liked Author X

Summer is awesome here this year. I am all about the outdoor reading by the pool, or on those super hot days the alternate reading by the pool and jumping into it. I still have some new things in the works, so stay tuned. It is taking a little longer than I thought.

RAK

Since it is the end of the month it is time for my RAK wrap up post!

Books I Received:

Firelight by Kristen Callihan
From Danielle at Ramblings From This Chick

I am sooo excited to read this book! When I found in online earlier this year, it sounded really interesting and not something that I read all the time.

Thanks, Danielle!




Books That I Sent:

One Night in London by Caroline Linden
To Danielle at Book Whore

I am not sure if Danielle got it yet as I sent it out toward the end of the month. But I have read some Caroline Linden before and really enjoyed the book. Hopefully she will enjoy this one as well.






Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 6/10/2012

Books I Finished Since the Last Update
Beguiling the Beauty by Sherry Thomas
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Unlocked by Courtney Milan
I Suck At Girls by Justin Halpern

Books I am Currently Reading
The Duke's Perfect Wife by Jennifer Ashley


Books To Be Read Next
I have so many in a pile... I don't even know.

Reviews since I've been gone
At The Broke and the Bookish
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long


Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books I'd Recommend As Good Beach Reads

So I am back now! Yay! Mini-hiatus should be over now and regular posts should resume :)

Thanks for hanging on until I came back!

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 5/20/2012

Books I Finished This Past Week
Unraveled by Courtney Milan

Books I am Currently Reading
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Beguiling the Beauty by Sherry Thomas

Books To Be Read Next
Unlocked by Courtney Milan
Sweet Enemy by Heather Snow
Divergent by Veronica Roth

Last week in reviews
The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is Top Ten Blogs/Sites You Read That AREN'T about Books

There are some fun things that I have planned for this blog in the near future. Before those fun things can happen though, I will be on vacation. I am going to try to have some posts queued up while I am gone. We shall see. You may just get nothing and have to stare and the lovely main page here. hehe.

The reason why I am sure I will not be able to post often is the destination....

JAPAN!

I am super excited! And I am not going for work either! Yay! I'll be back in two and a half weeks so look for sparse posts from now until then.

Cool Posts from around the Net
Wondering about the suits that are going on with the big publishers? Dear Author has a GREAT summary.

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 5/13/12

Books I Finished This Past Week
I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long
The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan

Books I am Currently Reading
Unraveled by Courtney Milan

Books To Be Read Next
Unlocked by Courtney Milan
Sweet Enemy by Heather Snow
Divergent by Veronica Roth
Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Last week in reviews
The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is Top Ten Tuesday Freebie Week!

Coolest book related thing that happened to me this week? I went to my cousin's 16th birthday party and my other cousin brought me the first two books in both The Song of Ice and Fire series and The Dark Tower. Awesome unexpected books!

Cool Posts from around the Net
Check it out! I have not watched it yet, but here is a link from Discover a New Love about what happens behind the scenes at a romance novel cover shoot.


Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 5/6/12

Books I Finished This Past Week
The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook
Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

Books I am Currently Reading
I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long

Books To Be Read Next
Sweet Enemy by Heather Snow
Divergent by Veronica Roth

Last week in reviews
An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone
DNF Roundup by Julie Anne Long

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Favorite Quotes From Books

Last week, I was super busy and barely had time to surf the net.. mostly because I was super absorbed in The Iron Duke.
One cool thing that is happening this week is that the two most recent Waiting on Wednesday's that I have done are releasing this week, Enchanted by Alethea Kontis and Four Sisters, All Queens by Sherry Jones.

Something to look forward to forward to on a Book to Movie (or in this case TV series) is Sherlock starts today on Masterpiece theater!! Yay!


Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 4/29/2012

Books I Finished This Past Week
Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen
Incarnate by Jodi Meadows
Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long

Books I am Currently Reading
The Iron Duke by Meljean Brook

Books To Be Read Next
I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long
Sweet Enemy by Heather Snow

Last week in reviews
Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen
Like No Other Lover by Julie Anne Long

At The Broke and the Bookish
Book vs. Movie: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books You'd Like To See Made Into A Movie

For the month of May, I have finally gotten around to getting all prepared for Random Acts of Kindness (RAK) hosted by The Book Soulmates. I have a new bar in my menu that goes to a wishlist of the books I would like to receive. I don't like to own too many books (my shelves are overflowing as it is!) so the potential of giveaways stemming from this is high. This is partly why I included a list of May releases I am interested in. If I don't love it (or collect it for some reason), I will most likely give it away on here :) Sounds exciting right?!

In other exciting news, AmandaSue won the No Strings Attached Bloghop Giveaway and picked The Vow: The True Events That Inspired the Movie by Kim & Krickitt Carpenter. I wanted to see that movie! I didn't know there was a book about their story as well.

Cool Posts from Around the Net

So I am sure you all heard about the crazy shit that went down at The Story Siren this past week. Plagiarism is not to be taken lightly. I was never a big fan of hers or anything, and now I wont be, but it sickens me to see the victim blaming people are doing in her new apology post.

Don't know what I am talking about? Here is a link from Smart Bitches that pretty well summarizes what happened (includes links to the victims blogs). Here is a link talking about the reaction to the apology and the victim blaming that went on from Gossamer Obsessions. Examples of the hatemail at Smart Bitches. Grit & Glamour, one of the victims, with her response to the clarified "apology".

Quite the dramafest, but what are you going to do. I am in the firm camp that what she did was wrong. Plagiarism, even if it's something small, isn't a small offence. People work hard for their content. People work hard for their designs. It makes me sad to see the reaction to this.

But you know what can make me happy? This link to Jim Hines posing like a man from book covers. lol :)

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 4/22/12

Books I Finished This Past Week
Paris In Love by Eloisa James
Like No Other Lover by Julie Anne Long

Books I am Currently Reading
Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen

Books To Be Read Next
Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long
Incarnate by Jodi Meadows

Last week in reviews
Paris In Love by Eloisa James
Book vs Movie: The Hunger Games

At The Broke and the Bookish
The 7-Minute Back Pain Solution by Dr. Gerard Girasole, Cara Hartman

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten All Time Favorite Book Characters

Welcome any new followers who stopped by from the blog hop! That No Strings Attached Giveaway has one day more, so enter while you still can if you have not yet!

Cool Posts from Around the Net
Remember when I mentioned a new book centric store, GoneReading? Well they have some really cool new merchindise (like this book journal or these cute as all getout reading family car window decals).

They also have a SWEET Mother's Day giveaway going on highlighting more cool products for readers as well as giveing away $100 to the store PLUS $25 to Amazon. I entered. :)

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Debbie at A Library of Our Own has a great new feature called Bookishly Beautiful. It features bookish artistic pieces. Some of the art on this first one is outstanding.

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Reading Romances had an interesting question posed to the blogging world of readers and authors alike last week regarding author etiquette and reviews. There is a linky with many blogs and their vvarieng opinions on the matter of authors and reviews. Check it out if you are interested in the topic, which earlier this year and in the past has caused a major stink.

---

So yesteday I spent most of my day on FictFact. FictFact is a fun new tool I've heard about to track the series that you are reading. You add a series and they keep track of what is the next book and if there are new ones coming out. I am still new to it (and I did notice some things amiss with their data), but getting an email when the next Maiden Lane book comes out? Awesome.

If you are curious, here are the series I am following :)

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 4/15/2012

Books I Finished Since the Past Status
Unclaimed by Courtney Milan

Books I am Currently Reading
Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen
Paris In Love by Eloisa James

Books I Abandoned
The Price of Innocence by Susan Sizemore

Books To Be Read Next
A slew of Japanese travel books :) My next international destination.

Last week in reviews
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Tips For New Book Bloggers

Hey all! I am actually posting again regularly! The jet-lag has pretty much ceased to bowl me over and send me to bed at nine... So in addition to me reviewing the backlog of books read, some good some not so much, we have an AWESOME giveaway hop coming up on Tuesday, the No Strings Attached Giveaway!! One entry, one click. It's that easy!

I'm excited to get back into the blogger world, so instead of me linking cool posts from other blogs, since I have been out of the loop for a while, link me to your favorite posts that I missed while away! Let's get me caught up again.

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 3/25/2012

Books I Finished This Past Week
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Books I am Currently Reading
The Price of Innocence by Susan Sizemore
Unclaimed by Courtney Milan

Books To Be Read Next
Mrs. Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale

Last week in reviews
At The Broke and the Bookish
The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books I'd Play Hooky With


I will strive to actually review one of the books in the queue that I have not reviewed yet! That's something to look forward to! Also I will have a challenge post for the Bloggiesta this weekend up as well. Fun times ahoy :)

Cool Posts from Other Blogs
Seriously, I was on the interent to (in decending order) 1)work 2)check facebook 3)find things to do in Dubai 4)update my travel blog 5)check email. All of that probably totaled to like 4 hours the whole week. Well minus work.

Hopefully there will be more this week, but it is not top priority to be in front of a computer. There is a beach across the street!

Also, I left you with this picture of a penguin that I saw in the Dubai Mall Underwater Zoo. There was an aquarium in the mall (!) and that is what matters. The penguin that it. That's how huge it is. The mall not the penguin. And that is how I spend my days. At malls. They are big things here... it's like I'm 14 again.

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 3/4/12

Books I Finished This Past Week
Boo.. the first zero of the year. This week kicked my butt.

Books I am Currently Reading
An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone
Grimm's Fairytales by The Brothers Grimm

Books To Be Read Next
The Price of Innocence by Susan Sizemore
This One Time With Julia by David Lampson

Last week in reviews
The Harlot by Saskia Walker

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Favorite Covers.

I don't know how much fun things we have to look forward to this week. Another hell of a work week will be upon me soon. But we'll see.

Cool Posts from Other Blogs
I've just started stumbling over to Dear Author and low and behold I find a super informative post about the latest publisher verses Amazon story. IPG, aka Independent Publishers Guild, is balking at Amazon's contractual changes toward them. While I am no Amazon lover by far and avoid purchasing from them unless necessary, IPGs tactic was to tell readers to fight with their pocketbook. Jane makes her case for "Why should we? What have you done for us?" brilliantly. I am enthralled by reading about how publishers react to the digital age of reading and thus loved reading this letter and the comments that followed.

Speaking of fun Dear Author posts, this one talks about a whole bunch of new fun stuff happening with paypal and censoring reading material. Another informative read to keep one up on the book world.

Moving on, I wish I could remember how I stumbled on to this, but if you know a guy who you are trying to get turned on to reading Guys Read may be just the place to help! Noted as the "place to come if you’re looking for something to get a guy reading" this may be the perfect stop for the girlfriend/sister/mother/friend who is looking to get that man in her life into the world of books.

Speaking of getting people into the magical world of books, Gone Reading is this awesome new start-up that sells a variety of things tailored to the book-lover. The best part about Gone Reading is that "100% of after-tax profits to provide new funding for libraries". I LOVE libraries and I LOVE reading. This is the perfect site for supporting both. They have some pretty cool merch, I am eyeing the penguin T-shirt (yay! pun AND penguins) and the monkey charm bookmark. So check it out. If you find something that suits your fancy remember it is going to a good cause.

Finally, despite being solidly out of the country for the weekend it falls on, I've decided to participate in the Bloggiesta the last weekend in March. I am most interested in the community aspect of the day which again will be challenging as I will be 9 hrs ahead of the US. And potentially riding a camel.

Still, I am going to make a to-do list and I even signed up to host a mini-challenge. Sounds like a lot for the first timer, eh? But whatever. I shall prevail! And hopefully not fall off that camel...

Also, I may be splitting up this status post and moving the Cool posts and giveaways into its own feature. I'm thinking on it :)

Giveaways from around the net
Winners from my 100 Follower Giveaway will be announced soon!

Giveaway hops going on that I have stumbled into:
Leap Into Books Giveaway Hop runs until March 5
Lunar Love Giveaway Hop runs from March 8 to 13th


Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 2/26/2012

Books I Finished This Past Week
The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe

Books I am Currently Reading
An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone
Grimm's Fairytales by The Brothers Grimm

Books To Be Read Next
How To Dance with a Duke by Manda Collins
The Price of Innocence by Susan Sizemore
This One Time With Julia by David Lampson
Firelight by Kristen Callihan

Last week in reviews
Scandalous Desires by Elizabeth Hoyt
Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

At The Broke and the Bookish
I wrote a lovely discussion post about love triangles and YA Lit.

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books I'd Give A Theme Song To.

CompBilbio is hosting a giveaway! The 100 Follower Giveaway runs until end of night Saturday, March 3rd EST. Enter now for a chance to win your choice of any book reviewed on this blog!

So far on GFC we went from 100 to 151 (+51) and on Feedburner we went from 101 to 128 (+27) for a total of +78. We are 22 followers away from an additional prize and only half the contest time is over.

Cool Posts from Other Blogs
I actually have tons of cool posts I found from a variety of ways this past week. First, over at BookRiot I was stumbling around, and they pointed me toward these cool sites, each a new way of finding the next book that you can read. One is Whichbook.net and the other Yournextread.com. I haven't had time to play around with them yet, but they seemed like cool ideas!

The Smart Bitches linked me to a few things this week. One was The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World. Seriously, that first one there would be so awesome! My other favorite was the 1920s theater!

Another was a post about the current "trend" I guess you could say about plagiarism in some self-published novels. Apparently it has been happening (and being outed) quite a bit in 2012 and the discussion around it at this post and at others linked to it, is quite fascinating! How anyone could ever think about doing this to some else just baffles me, and even leaving the moral piece aside, thinking they would get away with it? In the internet age?! I don't even have words...

The Goodreads Blog has a really cool post about how people find books using Goodreads as well as other methods. I am actually surprised at some of the findings considering my own bookish habits (they don't match the data too much!). Check it out! It's super insightful.

And finally, in completely not related to books except tangentially through movies, Feminst Frequency has a really cool video post about the 2012 Oscars Movies and the Bechdel Test. To summarize, it takes the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture and scores them against this simple test: 1)Does the movie have at least two, named women 2)who talk to each other 3)about something other than a man. You would be surprised (and saddened) how many actually fail.

Giveaways from around the net

That Facebook giveaway I keep talking about for a bunch of author's backlists is still going on. Hurry though! It ends this Wednesday!

Giveaway hops going on that I have stumbled into:
Young Adult Paranormal Activity Giveaway Hop - Ends Tuesday the 28th
February New Releases Giveaway Hop - Ends Wednesday the 29th


Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 2/19/2012

Books I Finished This Past Week
Unveiled by Courtney Milan
Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood
Review Coming Soon

Books I Abandoned
The Devil in Disguise by Stefanie Sloane

Books I am Currently Reading
An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone
Grimm's Fairytales by The Brothers Grimm

Books To Be Read Next
An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone
How To Dance with a Duke by Manda Collins
The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe
The Price of Innocence by Susan Sizemore

Last week in reviews
Unveiled by Courtney Milan
Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books I'd Quickly Save If My House Was Going To Be Abducted By Aliens (or other natural or unnatural disaster).

Last week, my last contest for a copy of When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James for the Romancing the Valentine Giveaway Hop was Deanna! Congratulations, Deanna and thank you to all who entered.

CompBilbio is already hosting another giveaway! The 100 Follower Giveaway! It runs until end of night March 3rd EST. Enter now for a chance to win your choice of any book reviewed on this blog! Thank you to all of my followers :)

Cool Posts from Other Blogs
Me, My Shelf, and I (wow do I absolutely adore that name!) took some time to write about book stores and ARCs. She has run into a sad site where Half-Price Books was selling some ARCs. A very interesting read, especially if you don't know much about ARCs.

In a previous Sunday Status, Jamie at The Perpetual Page Turner had a cool blog post on lessons her mom taught me applied to book blogging. She put up part two and it is just as interesting as the first.

Giveaways from around the net
The Broke and the Bookish, the other haunt on the net where you will see my reviews, has TWO giveaways going on right now! One is for a copy of NAME and the other is for a $100 gift card to Barnes and Noble sponsored by CouponCabin.com! You can check out links to both of them on the giveaway page! They end the 22nd and the 25th respectively. Good luck!

Awesome Facebook giveaway!!
Here is author Shana Galen and what she has to say about the contest:

I’m so excited because I am part of the Best Contest Ever! Elise Rome, Lila DiPasqua - Author, Heather Snow, Vanessa Kelly, and I are giving away the COMPLETE signed backlists of our favorite authors. As you know, I’m giving away Julia Quinn's complete signed backlist. To enter, just click on the Indulge in Our Favorite Authors tab on my Facebook author page and answer the question. Then pop over to the other authors and answer their questions as well. The contest ends February 29, so someone is going to win all these Julia Quinn books very soon!

The link in that quote is to Heather Snow's link, but after you Like it and enter, it gives you the links to the other 5 authors. What an AWESOME contest! Still 10 days to enter!

Giveaway hops going on that I have stumbled into:
Valentine's Day Books With Love Blog Hop - Ends Today!
The I Heart YA Giveaway Hop - Ends Monday the 20th.
The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop - Ends Wednesday the 22nd
February New Releases Giveaway Hop - Ends Wednesday the 29th
Young Adult Paranormal Activity Giveaway Hop - starts the 24th through the 28th

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 2/12/12

Books I Finished This Past Week
The Harlot by Saskia Walker
Everneath by Brodi Ashton
Reviews Coming Soon

Books I Abandoned
Raziel by Kristina Douglass

Books I am Currently Reading
Unveiled by Courtney Milan
Grimm's Fairytales by The Brothers Grimm

Books To Be Read Next
The Devil in Disguise by Stefanie Sloane
An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone
Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

Last week in reviews
The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long
A Hint of Wicked by Jennifer Heymore

At The Broke and the Bookish
Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books That Broke My Heart A Little. This one is my week, though I have a twist for this blog here.

The Romancing the Valentine Giveaway Hop hosted by Reading-Romances is going on RIGHT NOW. Better act fast though, it only runs until Monday at Midnight!

Jeez, I sound like a infomercial... for just four payments of $19.95

Cool Posts from Other Blogs
At the GenreReviews Livejournal, they featured a post where the writer and her husband try to replicate romance novel covers. They not only replicated them, but switched the roles and talked about why they were demeaning to both genders and which ones worked well. It was a really interesting and fun read that I found through Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Speaking of Smart Bitches, last Sunday, The Broke and the Bookish posted my review of Everything I Know about Love. I tweeted the review, as I usually do, and since it was great I tweeted at the author.

There was this line at the end of the reivew that apparently sparked many peoples love (which is kind of funny because I had no idea how to end the review, so I wrote this:

Never feel guilty for reading something. A book can mean anything to anyone.

Well this line led to retweets by SB Sarah and a ton more people, causing me much elation.

BUT WAIT! There's more! (ha. infomercial me!)

Bumming around the other day, I realized The Broke and the Bookish had a TON of traffic coming from Smart Bitches. So my utter elation was complete because SB Sarah LINKED to my review in a very interesting post about the degradation of fantasy, scifi, and especially romance as a genre in the eyes of everyone else. It is a really interesting post about Reader Shaming. But I was too happy to get too mad about the articles linked within it, because yes! A link to review from my romance novel favorite site!

Giveaways from around the net
Awesome Facebook giveaway!!
Here is author Shana Galen and what she has to say about the contest:

I’m so excited because I am part of the Best Contest Ever! Elise Rome, Lila DiPasqua - Author, Heather Snow, Vanessa Kelly, and I are giving away the COMPLETE signed backlists of our favorite authors. As you know, I’m giving away Julia Quinn's complete signed backlist. To enter, just click on the Indulge in Our Favorite Authors tab on my Facebook author page and answer the question. Then pop over to the other authors and answer their questions as well. The contest ends February 29, so someone is going to win all these Julia Quinn books very soon!

The link in that quote is to Heather Snow's link, but after you Like it and enter, it gives you the links to the other 5 authors. What an AWESOME contest! It doesn't have an end date, and I just checked. It's still going!

Giveaway hops going on that I have stumbled into:

• Romancing the Book runs until Feb. 14
• Love Is In The Air Blog Hop runs until Feb. 14
• The Follower Love Giveaway Hop also runs until Feb. 14

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week! Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day!

Sunday Status: 2/5/2012

Books I Finished This Past Week
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long 

Books I am Currently Reading
Raziel by Kristina Douglass
Grimm's Fairytales by The Brothers Grimm

Books To Be Read Next
Unveiled by Courtney Milan
The Harlot by Saskia Walker
The Devil in Disguise by Stefanie Sloane
Everneath by Brodi Ashton
An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone

Last week in reviews
Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Things to look forward to
Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books You'd Hand To Someone Who Says They Don't Like To Read. I'm not sure I will do this one. I am actually really bad at recommending books to people, especially if they don't like reading. It will be an interesting one to read the picks though.

I've also decided that I will be participating in the Romancing the Valentine Giveaway Hop hosted by Reading-Romances. Look for that giveaway to be posted on Monday! I am super excited for this!

Cool Posts from Other Blogs
Reading Romances posted their February Challenge for their Reading Romances Challenge. I think I may do two from this month, even though it is a shorter month. One is going to be the "embracing cover" and two may be the historical fiction/romance set in a significant setting. We'll see.

Parajunkies, I discovered, does a really cool feature called Book Blogging 101 and this weeks topic was Book Blogging and Social Etiquette. It was a really interesting read, and a really interesting feature.

Speaking of interesting features, Jamie at The Perpetual Page Turner did this pretty awesome post 3 Lessons My Mom Taught Me That I Apply To Book Blogging. I think this is going to be a new feature for her, and this weeks was really interesting and full of more insightful comments.

Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl opened my eyes to something I didn't even know was out there, Active Fiction. In her post she talks about the sales Amazon has going on their Active Fiction titles as well as briefly talking about what it is. I also found this article from the Vancouver Sun that talks about Active Fiction and what it may mean for the future of reading. I don't think that the traditional book will ever disappear, but this Choose-your-own-adventure type of novel updated for the interactive age sounds pretty cool.

That said, Goodreads finished their complete disconnect from Amazon last week. If your shelves look a little messed up, that is because they are still trying to get things fixed. I know I applied to be a librarian just so I can fix the original publication dates on all of the books on my shelf. If you need something fixed that you know is wrong, just head over to the Librarians Group and someone there will fix it up for you.

Giveaways from around the net
Awesome Facebook giveaway!!
Here is author Shana Galen and what she has to say about the contest:

I’m so excited because I am part of the Best Contest Ever! Elise Rome, Lila DiPasqua - Author, Heather Snow, Vanessa Kelly, and I are giving away the COMPLETE signed backlists of our favorite authors. As you know, I’m giving away Julia Quinn's complete signed backlist. To enter, just click on the Indulge in Our Favorite Authors tab on my Facebook author page and answer the question. Then pop over to the other authors and answer their questions as well. The contest ends February 29, so someone is going to win all these Julia Quinn books very soon!

The link in that quote is to Heather Snow's link, but after you Like it and enter, it gives you the links to the other 5 authors. What an AWESOME contest!

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!

Sunday Status: 1/29/12

Sitting around today, I decided I wanted to start doing some sort of status post to let ya'll know what is going on with me. Since I just started it, there may be some format differences as I go along, but for right now I am pretty excited to start.

Lots of book movement this week since I flew 4 hours on an airplane twice. Not much else to do but read and sleep. I like doing both. :)


Books I Finished This Past Week
Trouble at the Wedding by Laura Lee Guhrke
Look for a review of this in the coming weeks!
Winning the Wallflower by Eloisa James
A cute little novella that introduces Olivia from James's recent novel. I actually wish this was full length, because I really liked the characters and it could have done well with more time.
Heiress Without A Cause by Sara Ramsey Ramsey's debut novel which I reviewed for my January entry into the 2012 Reading Romance Challenge.

Books I am Currently Reading
Raziel by Kristina Douglass
To be honest, I don't know if I am going to continue this one. The alternating first person POV is hindering the progress of the story and so far after 50 pages I have almost no connection to the characters. We'll see.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
I am actually really enjoying this book so far. I am about 1/3 done and so far, so good. I am thinking this book will be a Book vs Movie post.
Grimm's Fairytales by The Brothers Grimm
Because I had my Nook handy, I started reading these again. I read through The Three Snake Leaves, a story that left me completely puzzled as to its moral, and Rapunzel, which I should delve into more in a full post.

Books To Be Read Next
Everneath by Brodi Ashton
I've been waiting for this one to come in a the library for a while! So glad that it is here!
The Perils of Pleasure by Julie Ann Long
This is part of the my 2012 TBR Pile Challenge. I have been meaning to read this series for most of forever. I have this as an ePUB for this weeks flight.

Last week in reviews
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
"The story was good, the characters were good, the setting was good; I am not sure if there is much more to say."
Heiress Without A Cause by Sara Ramsey
"I didn't love either of [the leads], but I didn't hate them either, and I particularly enjoyed certain aspects of each. That is probably one of the more vauge statements that I have written."
The Stud Club Trilogy by Tessa Dare
"Ah, romance! I love a series that ties together but is still loose enough to read on its own"

Things to look forward to
As always, new reviews will (hopefully) continue to pop up every week. Top Ten Tuesday this week is about Top Ten Books I would Recommend to Book Clubs.

I've also decided this week that I will be participating in the Romancing the Valentine Giveaway Hop hosted by Reading-Romances. Look for that giveaway to be posted on Feb. 6th.

Cool Posts from Other Blogs
Over at BlogHer, I stumbled into an article on Pinterest and Book Blogging. They talk about using it to your best advantage as a book blogging site. Apparently the author gets more hits from Pinterest than from Twitter, even though she has way less followers on Pinterest. Pinterest and Blogging was also a cool eye opener for the general blogger.

I mean this totally makes sense to me considering I have found at least two websites that I really liked through Pinterest. Sounds like something worth investigating.

Related, Well Read Wife has a master list of book bloggers on Pinterest.

Speaking of Pinterest, if anyone wants an invite let me know in the comments. If you want to check out my boards (there is a LOT of cool recipes!) here I am on Pinterest.

Moving on, Literary Exploration has a super interesting post called There is no such thing as free books. It talks about her philosophy regarding ARCs and requesting review books. If you are new to blogging or just interested in a different perspective, check it out.

Giveaways from around the net
The biggest giveaway that I could find EVER going around right now is the Young Adult Giveaway Hop hosted by I am a reader, not a writer. There are 226 sites participating and some pretty cool prizes, so I would head over to the list and check it out.

My fellow Broke and Bookish blogger, Jana aka That Artsy Reader Girl, is hosting a 100 followers giveaway to celebrate that milestone! Act quickly though, the giveaway ends at midnight tonight! Even if you missed it, Jana's blog is awesome, so you should check the site out anyway!

Speaking of giveaways, isn't Rafflecopter awesome?!


So I think that is enough for now. I just decided to do this today on a whim, so hopefully next week I will gather cool links and giveaways as the week goes on, and not just have massive amount of info from today.

Let me know any feedback. Also if you have some cool links, comment with them! Until next Sunday, have a great week!