I was looking at My Friend Amy’s blog yesterday and ran into a really interesting contest.  Because it seems so fun, I  decided to invite several bloggers to participate in this easy and cheesy event.  Here are the details:

Do you take the Dare?

Florinda – The Silver Linings Playbook

Meghan — The School of Essential Ingredients

Jack – Mudbound

Michelle — A Question of Attraction

Joanne — The Help

Congratulations to all of you!  Please send your snail mail addresses to chartroose at yahoo dot com.  If you don’t want the book you won, let me know and I’ll choose another winner.

Also, Jack, I’ve seen “Starter for 10.”  It was pretty good, and I love James McAvoy.

I’m going to be changing back to a Monty Python banner.  I would keep Rupert, but it kind of makes me feel like an old lech.  He’ll be turning 21 next month, so he’s just a baby.  I do think it’s time for me to post another hunk-o-rama photo spread, though.  Maybe I’ll do it on Friday, and get back to serious book blogging (har) next week.

Well, fellow bloggers, I took a much longer break than was originally intended.  It just felt so GOOD to be a non-blogger for awhile.  I don’t think I could ever be a journalist working to deadlines — ugh!

Now I’m ready to rock-n-roll again, and because I’m feeling a little guilty about abandoning my online friends for so long, I’ve decided to host one of the biggest giveaways in the history of chartroose giveaways.  This time, I’ll be giving away five new books (which I will buy after the winners are chosen).  These are novels I have purchased on Kindle but haven’t read yet.  I will pick FIVE WINNERS on Wednesday, July 15 at around noon, and then I will buy the books from Amazon and have them sent directly to the winner’s homes.  The choice of book for each person will be random (if you’ve already read one of them, let me know in the comments and I’ll be sure to give the novel away to another winner).  This giveaway is open to all comers, including expatriates and strange old British people.

When you leave a comment, please do me a favor and let me know whether you love or hate my new Rupert Grint banner.  Do you want me to go back to Monty Python?

Here are the novels I’ll be giving away:

Publisher’s Weekly Review:
Pat Peoples, the endearing narrator of this touching and funny debut, is down on his luck. The former high school history teacher has just been released from a mental institution and placed in the care of his mother. Not one to be discouraged, Pat believes he has only been on the inside for a few months–rather than four years–and plans on reconciling with his estranged wife. Refusing to accept that their “apart time” is actually a permanent separation, Pat spends his days and nights feverishly trying to become the man she had always desired. Our hapless hero makes a “friend” in Tiffany, the mentally unstable, widowed sister-in-law of his best friend, Ronnie. Each day as Pat heads out for his 10-mile run, Tiffany silently trails him, refusing to be shaken off by the object of her affection. The odd pair try to navigate a timid friendship, but as Pat is unable to discern friend from foe and reality from deranged optimism, every day proves to be a cringe-worthy adventure. Pat is as sweet as a puppy, and his offbeat story has all the markings of a crowd-pleaser.
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Publisher’s Weekly Review:
In this remarkable debut, Bauermeister creates a captivating world where the pleasures and particulars of sophisticated food come to mean much more than simple epicurean indulgence. Respected chef and restaurateur Lillian has spent much of her 30-something years in the kitchen, looking for meaning and satisfaction in evocative, delicious combinations of ingredients. Endeavoring to instill that love and know-how in others, Lillian holds a season of Monday evening cooking classes in her restaurant. The novel takes up the story of each of her students, navigating readers through the personal dramas, memories and musings stirred up as the characters handle, slice, chop, blend, smell and taste. Each student’s affecting story — painful transitions, difficult choices — is rendered in vivid prose and woven together with confidence. Delivering memorable story lines and characters while seducing the senses, Bauermeister’s tale of food and hope is certain to satisfy.
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Publishers Weekly Review:
Jordan’s beautiful debut (winner of the 2006 Bellwether Prize for literature of social responsibility) carries echoes of As I Lay Dying, complete with shifts in narrative voice, a body needing burial, flood and more. In 1946, Laura McAllan, a college-educated Memphis schoolteacher, becomes a reluctant farmer’s wife when her husband, Henry, buys a farm on the Mississippi Delta, a farm she aptly nicknames Mudbound. Laura has difficulty adjusting to life without electricity, indoor plumbing, readily accessible medical care for her two children and, worst of all, life with her live-in misogynous, racist, father-in-law. Her days become easier after Florence, the wife of Hap Jackson, one of their black tenants, becomes more important to Laura as companion than as hired help. Catastrophe is inevitable when two young WWII veterans, Henry’s brother, Jamie, and the Jacksons’ son, Ronsel, arrive, both battling nightmares from horrors they’ve seen, and both unable to bow to Mississippi rules after eye-opening years in Europe. Jordan convincingly inhabits each of her narrators, though some descriptive passages can be overly florid, and the denouement is a bit maudlin. But these are minor blemishes on a superbly rendered depiction of the fury and terror wrought by racism.
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Publishers Weekly Review
This entertaining first novel by an English television writer tells the story of Brian Jackson, an unworldly but affable college freshman whose main ambition in life is to compete on the BBC quiz show University Challenge (a Jeopardy-like game show in which schools compete against each other; in the U.K., the show is a national institution). Between securing one of the four coveted spots on his school’s team for the show, Brian chases after two girls: Alice, a beautiful but aloof actress who is also on the squad, and Rebecca, an artsy intellectual who thinks Brian’s ambition to be on the show is silly and bourgeois. A visit from Brian’s hometown pal Spencer brings the class tensions roiling beneath the novel’s surface to the fore, but Nicholls is more interested in comedy than pathos. Some of the humor is very British (“I’m sharing my house with a right pair of bloody Ruperts”), and Nicholls waxes overly nostalgic for his 1980s setting, but the writing is often sharp and funny (number four on Brian’s list of New Year’s resolutions: “Become lightly muscled”). Unexpected developments at the final University Challenge match bring the novel to a rather unlikely conclusion, but readers will root for hapless, engaging Brian as he struggles his way out of adolescence.
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Publishers Weekly Review:
Starred Review. What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and maiden publication of Amy Einhorn’s new imprint) set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia Skeeter Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing about what disturbs you. The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies and mistrusts enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who’s raised 17 children, and Aibileen’s best friend Minny, who’s found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.
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Later, Gators!

I’m feeling (and looking) a bit like this poor unfortunate, except I can’t even use addiction as an excuse!  There’s just too much work and not enough down time happening right now.

I have a traumatic brain injury presentation to give next week, so I’m kind of stressing out about that, especially since I haven’t even started preparing for it.  I’m presenting to a bunch of directors and administrators, and I’m really afraid that I’m going to f*#k it up, thus ruining my budding reputation (har) as a bad-ass speaker.  Actually, I HATE public speaking, but people keep wanting me to do it and I have problems saying no.  Hey, maybe I should totally mess it up so they never ask me again!

I’m a hospital librarian, and we are a dying breed.  Many of my colleagues are either having their hours cut or are losing their jobs altogether.  One of my closest librarian friends here in town recently lost her job, and she worked for her employer for over twenty years!  She found out that they were going to shut the library down on a Monday, and by Friday of that same week, she was out the door.  She had to fight for a severance package too (those bastards).  She fine, though; she’s now working at the Univ. of Texas, Austin.  They snapped her up right away.

I’m one of two medical librarians in the Springs who is working full-time (or working at all).  The other full-timer works for the military, so she doesn’t really count.  Non-military folks aren’t usually allowed in her library, so it’s basically little ol’ me who provides most of the specialized medical info and resources for this neck of the woods, and it has become pretty demanding.  I’m getting calls from physicians I’ve never even heard of, and some of them are asking for complex and lengthy medical information searches.  I’m also starting to provide fee-for-service work to a couple of government agencies here in town (that have a biomedical focus).  It seems like I’m THE medical information broker for Colorado Springs and its surrounding communities.  Maybe I should ask for a raise!

I’m pretty burned-out at the moment.  If I’m not searching for CDC Tuberculosis guidelines for a freaked-out family practice physician, I’m providing telephone reference to a person who wants to find out about a drug-drug interaction, or I’m showing a group of nurses how to search for evidence based nursing information on one of our databases, or I’m trying to locate a very old medical book entitled A Treatise on the Scurvy, which was written in the mid-1700’s and can’t be found in any of my affliated lending libraries.

So, I’m going to take a blogging break for a week or two, and I’m going to try to catch up and de-stress a bit.  If all goes as planned, I will return to blogging a new gal, and I will be every bit as lovely as my alter-ego was when she was in her prime.  In case you’ve forgotten, I look almost exactly like this when I’m feeling rested and healthy, well, except for the hair.  And the pearls–I don’t do pearls.

(BTW — I’m a liar. I’m waaaay better looking than Grace Kelly)!

SEE YOU IN ABOUT A WEEK!

In case you haven’t noticed, I kind of follow my own agenda, so I’m many months late with this weekly geeks post.  I have 76 Bloglines feeds, and out of those 76, there are probably 20 or so I try to read the minute I notice there has been a new submission (unless I’m too busy to care).  Out of those 20, there are about 8 that I feel compelled to comment on more than any of the others.  I’m now going to list “The Excellent Eight”, complete with icons!  Someday, I may figure out how to add these pictures to my sidebar without making a mess of things. 

1. Eva — A Striped Armchair
Eva must be some kind of a genius. She reads quickly and critically and then writes great posts about her reading adventures on her blog. She’s just a young ‘un (early 20’s), and she can do practically everything! When I grow up I want to be like her. (For some peculiar reason, I always call her Evil-ah in my mind). I’ve even thought of this little icon for Eva:

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 2.  Heather – Age 30+…A Lifetime of Books
Heather appeals to my geeky science fiction/fantasy side.  I became an instant fan when I learned that she read The Hobbit when she was six years old and enjoyed it!  Okay Ms. Smarty-Pants, you may be my superior in the reading arena, but can you talk like such a convincing retro hippie chick that people will start hallucinating the moment you open your mouth?  I’LL BET NOT!  (Now that I think about it, they might start hallucinating as a means to escape my hippie chick impersonation.  What.ev.er).  Anyway, Heather is very erudite and cerebral and I love to read her blog posts.  Due to our mutual LOTR addiction, I always picture Heather as a lovely elf maiden:
 

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3. Jennifer — The Literate Housewife
I felt connected to Jennifer from the moment I became aware of her existence. There’s just something about her; a good aura I experience whenever I look at her blog and whenever she responds to mine. It’s almost like we’ve known each other all our lives.  If Jennifer lived here in Colorado, I know we’d be great friends.  I can just picture us giggling together like schoolgirls.  I know that Jennifer loves Jane Austen and old fashioned stuff, so if I were to choose an icon for her, it would be something like this:

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4. Verbivore — Incurable Logophilia
Verbivore has inspired my current reading life more than any other blogger I visit.  I think she’s probably WAY smarter than I am, and, I hate to admit it, but she may even be a bit cooler than I am too.  She’s very well-read and she writes beautifully and speaks French fluently and is a true aesthete.  She introduced me to Nadine Gordimer (I was totally blown-away by July’s People, BTW), and I’ve been rereading some of her reviews for more inspiration.  Whenever I picture Verbivore, I see a sleek, sophisticated “woman about town.”  Here is my Verbivore icon:

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5.  Lisa  — Books on the Brain
Lisa was one of my first readers, and she immediately drew me into her warm and cozy world of, well, Lisa.  She has such an ease about her that I feel like I’m home every time I venture over to her blog.  Her writing style is comfortable as well, and I really appreciate this, especially when I just want to relax and enjoy a few of my fellow bloggers’ observations during a stressful workday.  I’ve never met Lisa, but I have the feeling that she has some major charisma going on there.  I’ll bet she draws people to her wherever she goes.  It doesn’t hurt that she’s beautiful, too!  Here’s my icon for Lisa:

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6.  Care — Care’s Online Book Club
Care will probably hate me for saying this, but she seems adorably sweet and vulnerable to me.  She has told me that she’s not at all shy or demure, but I don’t believe her.  She’s lovable and cute and cuddly, dammit, and I don’t care what she says!  I enjoy reading Care’s blog because it’s a fun mishmash of humorous ramblings about what she’s reading, written in a kind of unique journal style.  She’s an original, that’s for sure!  So, Care Bear, here is my picture for you (and yep, it’s totally saccharrine):

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7.  Trish — Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’?
Trish was one of my original commenters, and I remember thinking I had really hit the big time when I visited her blog and realized that she had a huge fan base.  That she would deign to speak to little ol’ me thrilled me to no end, and I continue to be thrilled every time I hear from her.  Trish has got it all:  she’s humorous, smart, creative and dynamic, and I’ve been told that she’s pretty amazing to hang out with!  Here’s my icon for Trish:

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8.  Jill — Fizzy Thoughts
I don’t remember how I met Jill here in cyberspace, but I do know that once I did, there was absolutely no turning back!  I think Jill is the one of the most humorous book bloggers out there, and she’s super creative too.  She’s always making up silly rhymes and songs, and her site is an absolute joy to visit.  I have the feeling that Jill and I may have strangely similar personalities.  If we were twins, Jill would be the funny one and I would be the evil one.  I’d get us into trouble, and Jill would joke our way out of it.  I just know we’d make quite a pair!  I now think of Jill as Jillora, and this icon matches the name perfectly:

  (Night elves can be pretty intimidating)!

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That’s it for now.  I’ll be doing this again soon because there are many more bloggers I want to celebrate.

Later, Gators!

Sorry, everyone, for being a day late with the winner announcement.  Things have been Krazy with a kapital “K” around here.  This HAS to let up sometime!

I did my eenie-meenies, and here are the winners:

Vasily has won The Borrowers books, and
nomadreader has won the Westerfeld series.

Congrats to both of you!  It looks like you have blogs, too, so perhaps we can become blogging companions.  Please e-mail your snail mail addresses to chartroose at yahoo dot com.

Deuces, dudes!

This week is Children’s Book Week.  I’ve always loved kid’s books, and 
sometimes when I need a little pick-me-up, I’ll curl up with A. A. Milne or Rudyard Kipling and escape into a great adventure.  It works every time. 

Lately, I’ve noticed a vast improvement in teen reads (except for the current overabundance of ridiculous vampire romances.  They totally suck!  Yep, they’re bloody awful!)  Teen novels are much more realistic than they used to be.  Their themes cover everything from drug abuse to bullying to homosexuality.  Every once in awhile, I’ll read one and be very impressed by the sophistication of the story.  It’s wonderful that authors are acknowledging the humanity of teens, and it’s about time!

In honor of Children’s Book Week, I’ve decided to give some books away.  These were are favorites of mine, and I can’t wait to choose the winners. 

The first group of books I’ll be giving away is this series in paperback format:

 I LOVED these back in the day.  (I haven’t read The Borrowers Avenged yet, since I wasn’t aware that Mary Norton had written a later one).  They will be arriving at my house soon.  If it takes awhile for the winner to receive them, and the last one seems a little too dog-eared to be new, then please forgive my “borrowing!”

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The other series I’ll be giving away is this one:

These are excellent teen sci-fi novels–I enjoyed them almost as much as John Christopher’s Tripod Trilogy.  I haven’t read Extras yet, so it may be a bit more worn than the others, although you probably won’t be able to tell since I bought all of them used (and most are paperback) from abebooks.com.  Older daughter has taken my set of these books and refuses to return them.  Such insolence!  I’m surrounded by thieves!

If you’d like a chance to win either or both of these series, leave a comment specifying your desires.  I’ll do the eenie-meenie game at around noon or thereabouts on Wednesday, May 20.  Good luck!

There are 3 winners for the twitter contest:

Heather J. will get the $25 B&N gift certificate.

Jill and Carrie K. will get something else.  I haven’t decided what that something is, but I think I’m going to make it kind of whimsical. 

Heather and Carrie–I need your snail mail addresses.   Send them to chartroose at yahoo dot com.  Congrats to all!

I’m not a twitterer, and I don’t really want to be one.  There is nothing I do that is so terribly important that I must announce it to the world immediately.  Also, I’m enough of a narcissist without resorting to this new “look at me, look at me” fad, not to mention that I’m a partial luddite at heart.  I refuse to carry my cell phone with me unless I’m traveling, and I turned down a free blackberry at work.  The last thing I want is to have a bunch of whiny physicians texting me all the freaking time.  Egads, I’m such an old curmudgeon!  Damn all those young techhies!  Why don’t they stay home and watch television like we did in the good old days?

Anyway, I would like to try a rather twittery game.  I got this idea from an NPR broadcast.  It was so incedibly funny that I thought I’d introduce it today.  It’s very simple:  I write a few easy “twitterish” lines about a book, and you guess the title.  Here are a few examples from NPR:

• “Times are hard.  Sister breastfeeding homeless guy.  I’m so outta here!”  The Grapes of Wrath
• “I hate that guy!  Actually, he’s kinda hot…”  Pride & Prejudice

I’ll write the twitters here.  You only need to write the book title in the comments section.  The first person to answer all correctly wins a $25 Barnes & Noble gift certificate.  Are you ready?  Here goes…

1.   You are not to think!  You are not to love!  We are watching you.

2.   Daisy, Daisy, have I got a mansion for you…

3.   Cannibals and flayers and FBI, oh my! (speaking of birds… Jodie Foster)

4.   Let go of my gonads!  Out, out, damn demon!  (author initials, WPB.  Linda Blair)

5.   Hey, throw this soda pop on the pony boy.  Maybe it will put the fire out.  (famous teen novel.  Matt Dillon & Patrick Swayse)

6.   I’m good, I’m evil, I’m good, I’m evil.  Dammit, where’s my lithium?  (This one is too hard.  It’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde) 

7.   It’s funny–one day you’re a man and the next you’re an insect.  Go figure…

8.   Do not eat those stinky pigs and hang your head in shame when you have your period.  This is nonnegotiable!

9.   Your hair is so soft.  Let me pet it.  Oops, sorry!

10.  When Irish eyes are infected…  (memoir tearjerker)

11.  Stay away from the maze.  You’ll freeze in there.  (watch out for that axe, Scatman Crothers)

12.  “Aargh, my ass is stuck!”  Let me help you, honey.  (famous children’s book(s), HUNNY!!!)

13.  How about a zipless quickie in the 1st class sink?

14.  Mom croaked.  Whatever. (author initials: AC.  He’s a French dude.  Life sucks and then you die.)

15.  Flies are yummy. (very famous horror novel.  Speaking of life sucking…)

16.  Have furry feet, will travel.

17.  I’m glad I was dressed as a ham.

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Hurry and answer now! 

Hey, all you slammin’ bloggery dudes and dudettes!  Chartroose has asked me to fill-in for her today because she has been hella busy at work for the past couple of weeks and is too bummed and burned-out to pay attention to this poor neglected blog.  Plus, she’s trippin’ about porker flu.  She’s sure she’s got it, even though she has no symptoms at all except a headache.  I keep telling her that if she mellows out, the headache will go away.  I’m a totally marley dude, so she should listen to me, don’t you think?

Anyway, chartroose has decided to let ME choose the prize this time.  This is totally sicko dece of her, and if she weren’t acting like such a total freakdudette right now, I’d give her a big hug ( =

Ahem, um, where was I…oh chyeah, I’m choosing the prize!  This prize is the most gnar gnar of all the prizes to date.  It’s a $25 online gift certificate from Ron Jon Surf Shop.  Ron Jon sells some of the sickest surfgear on the planet.  It also sells froufrou home decor and clothing, so you can find something you can use even if you’re just a smogbreather.

In case you’ve forgotten, the rules for this game are super easy.  Be the first person to correctly guess the TITLE and AUTHOR of the gnovel I’m about to explain and write your answer in the comments.  The first correct answer wins.

Are you ready?  Here’s the book:

Once upon a time, there was a gremmy little girl whose parents were always fighting.  Her father was a total narcissist and her mom was bummed all the time.  After the girl’s baby brother dies, her parents divorce, her mom is sent to the looney tuner and the little girl is sent to live with her grandmother.  She has no friends, because she’s kind of a loser-her, which is totally shommy because she tries so hard to be cool, but it just doesn’t work out.  So, the girl starts watching soaps and hanging out with an older neighbor dude.  This dude is totally scary; he thinks he’s a hero, but he’s really just a hodaddy and he hurts the poor loser girl in the worst way that a dude can hurt a chick, and it ruins her for a long time.  Many other things happen:  the girl eats a lot and becomes a moosette; she goes to college and is hell munched by her peers; her only friend gets her wasted and semi-forces her to engage in girl-on-girl sex (of the non-hot kind) and she tries to drown herself in the ocean and ends up in a looney tuner just like her mom.  When she gets out, she pursues a creepy philanderer dude and marries him.  Eventually, she divorces the creepy dude and marries a nice dude and the gnovel ends on an optimistic note. 

Whew, that was killer to explain!  What is it?  Type the title and author in the comments section.  Hurry up and be the first!