Have you heard about Utah Book Month? It’s coming up in August, and we’re spending the whole month celebrating Utah authors and book bloggers.

Want to participate? Of course you do. Today is technically the last day to sign up!
Click here to read more about the event and sign-up.

Have you started making a reading list yet? I have. Here’s the stack I’m hoping to get to:

From top to bottom:
Midnight in Austenland, by Shannon Hale
Two Roads, by Chris Crowe
The Hourglass Door, by Lisa Mangum
The King’s English, by Betsy Burton
Bad Boys Do, by Victoria Dahl
Blueprints, edited by Katharine Coles
Dead Men’s Praise, by Jacqueline Osherow
Testimony, by Stephen Trimble & Terry Tempest Williams
Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams
It Sucked and Then I Cried, by Heather B. Armstrong
Things I Learned About My Dad (in Therapy), by Heather B. Armstrong
My Ridiculous, Romantic Obsessions, by Becca Wilhite

I have dozens of others on my shelf, so expect more stacks soon!

As you probably know, I live in Utah, as do many talented book bloggers and authors.  It’s a very active book community, and we have long discussed ways to celebrate it.  What we’ve come up with is Utah Book Month. It began as the brain child of Natasha from Maw Books Blog (as Utah Author Month) and is now being organized by Suey from It’s All About Books, Penelope from The Reading Fever, Emily from Emily’s Reading Room, Enna from Squeaky Books, and, of course, me!

This August will be the first annual Utah Book Month.  During the month we’ll be organizing and hosting a number of events, including a challenge to read and review books by Utah authors during the month, mini-challenges, Utah-blogger to Utah-blogger interviews, Utah-author interviews, and more. And we’d love for you to join us!

Here’s what you need to know before you sign-up:

• The deadline to sign up is 11:59 p.m. on May 21, 2012.
• We will be coordinating all of the events, so once you fill out the form, all you have to do is wait to hear from us.
• The earlier you sign up, the better your chances of getting your preferred activity.
• Utah authors, Utah book bloggers, and non-Utah book bloggers are invited to particpate.
• You only need to sign-up once. The same form appears on all of the organizers’ blogs and will go to the same place.

**UPDATE: The winner (randomly selected by random.org) of a book from The Book Depository is Melissa from The Avid Reader’s Musings. Though the prize has been awarded, please feel free to keep commenting and posting about your rereads. Happy read-a-thon-ing!

Congratulations on making it to hour 16 of the read-a-thon! Here’s a mini-challenge to give your mind a little break.

On rereading:

“Once we know the plot and its surprises, we can appreciate a book’s artistry without the usual confusion and sap flow of emotion, content to follow the action with tenderness and interest, all passion spent. Rather than surrender to the story or the characters – as a good first reader ought – we can now look at how the book works, and instead of swooning over it like a besotted lover begin to appreciate its intricacy and craftmanship. Surprisingly, such dissection doesn’t murder the experience. Just the opposite: Only then does a work of art fully live.” – Michael Dirda in Book by Book

Here’s the challenge:

1. Go back to your blog, and tell us about a book you’re rereading during the read-a-thon. Maybe post a picture of the book and describe why you love it enough to reread it.

OR

2. Go back to your blog, and give us a list of your top favorite rereads of all time. You know, those books that you can go to time and time again for comfort and escape. Again, pictures are always good but not required.

Once you’ve posted, come back here, and leave a comment with a link to your blog post. (Or, if you don’t have a blog, feel free to leave your entry in the comments.) This mini-challenge will stay open for two hours.

I’ll select one lucky reader to receive a book (up to $15) from The Book Depository, perhaps for a tome you’d like to reread. Thanks for playing!

The 2012 Pulitzers were just announced. And this year’s winner for fiction is . . .

NO AWARD!

The committee did not award a prize for fiction this year. This has happened before, in 1917, 1920, 1941, 1946, 1954, 1957, 1964, 1971, 1974, and 1977. Usually, the reason for not giving an award is unclear. A fiction jury recommends three finalists and the Pulitzer Board (made up of three people) then makes a final decision. Apparently, this year, they could not get the necessary two votes for any one of the three finalists.

Here are the three finalists:

Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson
Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell
The Pale King, by David Foster Wallace

Have you read any of these? Do you plan to? What do you think about the “no award” decision?

Drum roll please. The winners of the random book giveaway are as follows:
Jenny from Alternate Readality wins Witches of East End.
Laura Kay from A Novel Review wins The House of Velvet and Glass.

Congratulations to them, and thank you to everyone that entered.

Welcome to the Random Book Giveaway. I recently received the following two unsolicited books from publishers. Unfortunately, I just won’t be able to read them any time soon, so I thought I’d pass them along.

From the author of the highly addictive and bestselling Blue Bloods series, with almost 3 million copies sold, comes a new novel, Melissa de la Cruz’s first for adults, featuring a family of formidable and beguiling witches.

The three Beauchamp women—Joanna and her daughters Freya and Ingrid—live in North Hampton, out on the tip of Long Island. Their beautiful, mist-shrouded town seems almost stuck in time, and all three women lead seemingly quiet, uneventful existences. But they are harboring a mighty secret—they are powerful witches banned from using their magic. Joanna can resurrect people from the dead and heal the most serious of injuries. Ingrid, her bookish daughter, has the ability to predict the future and weave knots that can solve anything from infertility to infidelity. And finally, there’s Freya, the wild child, who has a charm or a potion that can cure most any heartache.

For centuries, all three women have been forced to suppress their abilities. But then Freya, who is about to get married to the wealthy and mysterious Bran Gardiner, finds that her increasingly complicated romantic life makes it more difficult than ever to hide her secret. Soon Ingrid and Joanna confront similar dilemmas, and the Beauchamp women realize they can no longer conceal their true selves. They unearth their wands from the attic, dust off their broomsticks, and begin casting spells on the townspeople. It all seems like a bit of good-natured, innocent magic, but then mysterious, violent attacks begin to plague the town. When a young girl disappears over the Fourth of July weekend, they realize it’s time to uncover who and what dark forces are working against them.

With a brand-new cast of characters, a fascinating and fresh world to discover, and a few surprise appearances from some of the Blue Blood fan favorites, this is a page-turning, deliciously fun, magical summer read fraught with love affairs, witchcraft, and an unforgettable battle between good and evil.

This is a trade paperback first edition. This is NOT an advanced reader’s copy or galley.

Katherine Howe, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, returns with an entrancing historical novel set in Boston in 1915, where a young woman stands on the cusp of a new century, torn between loss and love, driven to seek answers in the depths of a crystal ball.

Still reeling from the deaths of her mother and sister on the Titanic, Sibyl Allston is living a life of quiet desperation with her taciturn father and scandal-plagued brother in an elegant town house in Boston’s Back Bay. Trapped in a world over which she has no control, Sibyl flees for solace to the parlor of a table-turning medium.

But when her brother is suddenly kicked out of Harvard under mysterious circumstances and falls under the sway of a strange young woman, Sibyl turns for help to psychology professor Benton Derby, despite the unspoken tensions of their shared past. As Benton and Sibyl work together to solve a harrowing mystery, their long-simmering spark flares to life, and they realize that there may be something even more magical between them than a medium’s scrying glass.
From the opium dens of Boston’s Chinatown to the opulent salons of high society, from the back alleys of colonial Shanghai to the decks of the Titanic, The House of Velvet and Glass weaves together meticulous period detail, intoxicating romance, and a final shocking twist that will leave readers breathless.

This is a beautiful hardback first edition. This is NOT an advanced reader’s copy or galley.

GIVEAWAY
To enter, simply leave a comment, noting the book or books you’d like to win. The giveaway is open to U.S. addresses only. Because these books were sent to me, for free, by the publishers, book bloggers who include a link to their blog will be given two entries. Winners will be chosen on Sunday, April 15, 2012.

The winner of my Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge is Jacinda from The Reading Housewives of Indiana. To enter, she spiffed up this review of Starters, by Lissa Price. Congratulations, Jacinda!

And thank you to everyone who commented and participated in the mini-challenge. Ole!

Welcome Bloggiesta-ers! I hope you are having a productive Bloggiesta. I know I have a lot to do. Thanks to Suey and Danielle for hosting this lovely event. And now to the mini-challenge.

As book bloggers, we tend to post a lot of reviews. And, I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for ways to make my reviews stand out. So here are five simple ways to spiff up your reviews.

1. Add STARS.

If you give out star ratings in your reviews, it’s nice to have a visual representation. Here’s how to get stars into your reviews:

Blogspot/Wordpress – Unfortunately, there is not a perfect solution for non-self-hosted blogs. The simplest way to insert review stars is to use html codes for stars and star outlines in the html screen when you’re writing your post. Here are the codes:

★ = ★
☆ = ☆

So, if you’re using a five-star scale and are awarding four stars, you’d use the following code:

★★★★☆ = ★★★★☆

The disadvantage to this method is the limited typography and the lack of half-stars. Another method is to find an image you like, upload it to your gallery, and insert the appropriate number of the images into your post as needed. Some bloggers get really creative with the images they use, like Care’s slices of pie.

WordPress Self-Hosted – The best method is to use a plugin like the Star Rating for Reviews Plugin. Once the plugin is installed and activated, you can set certain parameters (like how many stars are in your scale and whether you use half-stars or not). Then, in your actual post, all you have to do is add in [rating:4] (or however many stars you are awarding to the book). It then appears like this: .

2. Include IMAGES.

Use of cover images in book reviews falls under the fair use provisions of copyright laws, which means you can use them in your reviews without attribution. I find my images through the publisher, if possible. Once you find the cover you want, right click on it, save it to your computer, then upload to your gallery and to your post.

It’s also a safe bet that, in the blogosphere, if someone is hosting an event, meme, or challenge, you can use their button freely, without attribution. However, if someone contacts you and asks you to remove their image from your site, it’s usually best to do so.

Image by shutterhacks

For images other than cover images, copyright laws apply. So you can’t go about the internet grabbing images and sticking them in your posts without permission. One good way to find images is through Flickr. Flickr’s Creative Commons search allows you to find and use images for free (for certain uses), as long as you give the creator credit. The owners usually specify how the attribution should read in their profiles. Of course, if there is an image you’re just dying to use, you can always ask for permission to use it. The worst the owner can say is no, right?

For extra bonus points, check out this tutorial on adding captions to pictures, like the one above.

3. Foster COMMUNITY.

There are a number of ways to foster community, but one of the easiest ways is to include links to other reviews of the same book. Luckily, Fyrefly has done most of the work for you. She has created the Book Blog Search Engine. Over 1,800 book blogs are included in the search engine. So, all you have to do is type in the name of the book you’re reviewing and – voila! – other reviews on the same book pop up. You can then simply link to your search results, or you can pull them off and link to them individually on your blog, like I used to do. (One of my Bloggiesta resolutions is to start doing this again.)

4. Give CREDIT.

When you’re reviewing a book for a blog tour or because the author or publisher sent you the book, make sure you give them credit. Include logos and links where you can. Plus, it’s good form to let your readers know you got the book for free.

5. Go BIG.

Or go home. Include those little extras that help your reader find out more about the book. Include links to author websites, publisher pages, even Amazon or Barnes and Noble or your favorite indie bookstore. If the book is about a particular place, include an image (with proper permission and attribution, of course). Mention if the author is coming on tour to a bookstore near you. Suggest similar books. Link to or create discussion questions. The possibilities on this one are endless. But it’s these nice extra touches that will really set your reviews apart.

GIVEAWAY

I’m giving away a copy of The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing to one lucky entrant. It’ll ship from The Book Depository, so the giveaway is open to residents of all countries to which they ship. Or, if you win, have a Kindle or Nook, and prefer the ebook, I will happily accommodate.

To enter, simply add one of the above items to one of your reviews. Then come back here and post a link to the review in the comments, pointing out the new element. I’ll announce a winner next week.

Oh, and feel free to email me or comment here with any questions you may have. I’ll do my best to help!

There is nothing quite like meeting an author. While human, of course, they take on this extra-human quality as a being that wrote a book. That you read. And liked. And then they come to your town. Squee!

This evening, Rebecca Stead visited one of my local libraries. My friend and book-hero, Suey at It’s All About Books, got me a ticket to the event! And we went, along with Suey’s daughter and the talented Jenny from Alternate Readality.

In preparation, I read A Wrinkle in Time (mentioned often in When You Reach Me), reread When You Reach Me (her second, Newbery-winning book), and read First Light (her first book). I have to say that I loved A Wrinkle in Time (though I wish I had read it as a child) and was even more impressed with When You Reach Me on the second read than I was on the first. And First Light kind of snuck up behind me and made me love it.

Anyway, back to the event. Ms. Stead spoke for about half an hour and then took questions. Along the way she shared insights into the inspiration for When You Reach Me (a New York Times article about a man with amnesia), a mistake she made in First Light (even when the sun sets in Greenland, it doesn’t necessarily get dark), and an amazing antecdote about her childhood (she bought forbidden “junk cereal” on her way home from school, scarfed it down until her mom came home, and then hurriedly tossed it out her bedroom window).

And then there was, of course, the signing. Ah. I love signings. We were in the first signing group, and we spent a few moments chatting with Ms. Stead about the books. Then she and I commiserated briefly about practicing law. And I got my books signed:

Sigh. Lovely evening. Oh wait. I left out the bit about winning an extra copy of When You Reach Me from the library. And Rebecca Stead signed it! And I’m going to give it away to one lucky reader. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post. U.S. and Canadian addresses only please. I’ll announce the winner on Friday, February 10, 2012.

*UPDATE* The winner of the signed copy of When You Reach Me is Melissa of One Librarian’s Book Reviews! Congratulations Melissa! And thanks to everyone who entered.

And the 2012 John Newbery Medal goes to:

Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos

And the 2012 Michael L. Printz Award goes to:

Where Things Come Back, by John Corey Whaley

(I’ve already updated the Printz Project with the winner and honor books. Head on over to check it out.)

And the 2012 Caldecott Medal goes to:

A Ball for Daisy, by Chris Raschka

For the rest of the winners of the ALA Youth Media Awards, check out this ALA press release. Here’s a list of all the awards given out today:

Alex Awards
Andrew Carnegie Medal
Coretta Scott King Book Awards
Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement
John Newbery Medal
Margaret A. Edwards Award
May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture
Michael L. Printz Award
Mildred L. Batchelder Award
Odyssey Award
Pura Belpré Awards
Randolph Caldecott Medal
Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal
Schneider Family Book Award
Stonewall Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award
Theodore Seuss Geisel Award
William C. Morris Award
YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults

And here’s a link to the post of last year’s winners.

Gotta go! I have to go to the bookstore (or, more likely, order them online)!