Angieville

This just in. Patricia Briggs has posted the cover for her upcoming fifth Mercy Thompson book-- Silver Borne . I love the title and I love the cobwebby books on either side of Mercy. So what do you think? And do you have a favorite Mercy cover so far? As I've mentioned before I'm extremely partial to the cover of Blood Bound , but I do love the way she's peering over her shoulder and her awesome Mercy's Garage shirt on the cover of Iron Kissed .

And the winners are RachaelfromNJ, Sharon K, and Ju ! Please contact me with your mailing addresses and we'll get your copies of Rampant on their way. It was awesome and hilarious to hear all of your experiences (or lack thereof) with unicorns in your literature. Also the stories of how you loved them as kids (or found them unutterably terrifying!) and the family and/or close friends who still love all things unicorn. Seriously, I should have asked for pictures because some of that sounds too good to be true. I want to thank several of you for the Yasmine Galenorn Sisters of the Moon series recommendations as I'd never heard of her before and they look like much fun! And for those of you who asked--Harry Potter totally counts. In pretty much any scenario--Harry Potter counts. And one last time thank you so much to Diana for the words and to Harper Teen for the giveaway!

I have a thing for Robin Hood. Specifically Robin Hood retellings. I love Robin, Marian, Little John, Will Scarlet, Much the Miller, Alan-a-Dale, and the whole merry crew. I read Ivanhoe cover to cover just for Robin Hood's periodic appearances. And when I went on study abroad to England, I dragged my best friend all the way to Nottingham and Sherwood Forest as well so I could walk around in the woods and soak it all up. It's still one of the happiest, most golden days I can recall, that one. My first encounter with the tale itself was no doubt the Disney animated version (which I still love watching with my son), but I'm pretty sure the first actual novelization I read was Robin McKinley 's The Outlaws of Sherwood . And it remains my very favorite to this day. Admittedly, I seem to possess the McKinley gene. I love her writing. I love the unexpected, twisty paths she takes, the obstinate characters, and the wry humor. True to form, her Robin is not the typical Robin o...

And to top off your Catching Fire fix, here is a hilarious comic detailing the lengths people would be willing to go to for an ARC of this book. by poesygalore | Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com (Thanks to Janssen over at Everyday Reading for the link !)

Well, it's only a few days away now. You can practically taste it, can't you? You know, I really hadn't planned on waiting this long to review Catching Fire . Honestly, I don't know what was wrong with me. I started it over a month ago and was totally into it. I got to the halfway point and started to feel more and more anxious. Like twitchy anxious. And since gone are the days of sitting around all day doing nothing but reading a single book, I found myself moving through my regular day thinking about it constantly, worrying about the characters I care about so much that at night when I went to pick it up I COULDN'T BRING MYSELF TO DO IT. The steady building up of tension and pain that Suzanne Collins does so fiendishly well was too much and my mind skittered away from it in favor of less treacherous waters. I'm not proud of it. But there it is. On to the spoiler-free review. Katniss and Peeta are home once more. Heralded as heroes they reluctantly take up res...

When I'm opening up a new Meg Rosoff novel I literally never know what to expect. In a good way. She never tells the same story twice. She does generally center her stories around a character who feels ambivalent, anxious, or sometimes downright disenchanted with his or her world. She explores themes both serious and disturbing and her resolutions are bittersweet at best. And yet I love her writing. She's an auto-buy for me and has been ever since I first read How I Live Now and thought I would come apart at the beauty of that book. Readers who love one of her books and long for more of the same with her other books will most likely be disappointed as they are all wildly different tales, the lovely writing being one of the only things they share. But how rare and fine a thing it is to have an author you can always count on but can never quite pin down. Early on the morning of her wedding day, Pell Ridley sneaks out of the home she's lived in all her life, swipes her dowry...

So Ana and Thea of The Book Smugglers fame tapped me for their August Guest Dare . This is an awesome monthly feature in which they dare another book blogger to read a book in a genre they don't usually read and then review it on their site. Since Ana is a big romance reader, and I'd never read a romance before, they dared me to read Mr. Impossible by Loretta Chase ! Despite a certain amount of trepidation, I rose to the challenge and today I am guest blogging over there with my review of Mr. Impossible . If you get a chance, please drop in to see what I thought of my very first romance novel!

Ever since I fell in love with Diana Peterfreund 's Secret Society Girl series last year, I've been hoping I'd get the chance to interview her here. Tomorrow marks the release of her new novel, Rampant , and let me tell you that you have not read a book like this before. You can read my review here , but all you really need to know is that it's a story about killer unicorns and the young women who hunt them. You want to read it now, don't you? Oh, yeah, and it's YA and the first in a series! To celebrate the release, Diana graciously answered a few of my most burning questions. As she is always a delight, I know you'll enjoy them as much as I did. First things first: When did the idea for Rampant first hit you and what (if anything) did you know right off the bat? In early 2005, just after selling Secret Society Girl , I had this dream of being chased by a very dangerous unicorn. I woke up and went to go look it up to see if I could figure out the meanin...

When I was a kid and my father was out of town for work, my mom and I got to have sleepovers in the big bed. We would curl up with our pillows stacked behind our backs and read books and eat ice cream and fall asleep whenever we wanted to. I loved it. And, unsurprisingly, the tradition continued on until I left home. One particular time I remember it was a Friday night and I was fourteen and my mom and I went to the base library to see what we could find. I wandered down the aisles and stopped when my eye caught on a pink and purple spine in the fantasy/scifi section. It seemed a bit...girly...for me and when I saw the pretty much opalescent horse on the cover I almost put it back on the shelf. But I liked the title. And the girl on the horse looked pale and sad and interesting with her short hair and her threadbare scarf. So I checked it out and that night curled up with my mom and a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream and fell in love. Talia is an orphan. Raised in a very claustrop...

Rowena over at The Book Binge had a charming post up on her first kiss and what it was like and how she remembers it like it was yesterday. She goes on to talk about her favorite between-the-pages first kisses and why she loves them. I thought it was a lovely post and it made me realize that, though I'm rather a big fan of a good first kiss on the page, I haven't really spent much time thinking about which ones are my favorites. Now that I have, I have to laugh at what seems to be a trend. I am apparently particularly fond of a first kiss that takes one (or both) people by surprise. Lol. I honestly had no idea I felt that way, but the evidence appears to be incontrovertible. I've removed the names to protect the innocent and prevent spoilers but there is really no way to talk about these kisses (even as briefly as I do) without risking some SPOILERS. So if you see a title you're planning on reading and don't want to know anything, please skip these short descripti...

So I've been traveling today (just a quick getaway) but I was able to check my email sporadically and was totally chuffed to receive email notification informing me I'd been nominated for four Book Blogger Appreciation Week awards ! The four different categories are: Best YA Review Blog Best General Book Review Blog Best Series or Feature--for Retro Fridays Most Chatty ! That last one really made me smile as the category description reads, This blogger has a very "chatty" style. You feel like you could be sitting together, sipping wine, and chatting about life. What a compliment! Since that is exactly the feeling I hope to create on the blog, it makes me so pleased to know some of you feel that way. Honestly, you are the ones who really make it with your wonderfully insightful and funny comments. I don't know which of you nominated me for these but I want to thank you here and now and let you know you made my day. Edited to add: Make that eight total categories!...

There she goes again. With her fantabulous, freaking book trailers. And I'm not even a fan of the format myself. I generally find them the height of cheese, though I realize I'm not likely the target audience. Still. If I'd never read her books or heard her name, I would want to read both Shiver and Ballad based on these awesomely beautiful trailers Maggie Stiefvater made herself. Wouldn't you? For a behind-the-scenes peek into the making of the Shiver trailer, go here . Amazing. Maggie also has contests going on to win both books. So be sure to check those out here .

I picked up Jennifer Echols ' Going Too Far on the recommendation of the Ana-half of The Book Smugglers . Ana is good peeps and pretty much never steers me wrong. She said she stayed up into the wee hours of the night reading this one and what do ya know? I did, too! It's just that it was my birthday eve and I was feeling like being incredibly cozy and wanted something sweet and absorbing. This book is both. I read it in one sitting and pretty much had to know what happened before I could sleep. The funny thing was my dreams had an interesting musical score behind them that night. Full of songs about love and loss. Particularly "Re: Stacks" by Bon Iver . Over and over again in my head, this one seemed to fit Meg and John so well. Re: Stacks - Bon Iver Stuck in Nowhere, Alabama, Meg MacPherson is counting down the hours until she can move away to college. And it doesn't even matter that she's only going just a few miles down the road to Birmingham. She'll ...

Lloyd Alexander is one of a handful of authors who had a hand in forming who I am today. At the beginning of sixth grade my teacher pulled out The Book of Three , the first in Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain , and began reading. He did all the voices, from opinionated Eilonwy to noble Gwydion to humble Gurgi with his poor, tender head. We sat there enchanted as he read the entire five-book series aloud to the class. We were living overseas at the time and, unfortunately, we had limited access to books. When we moved back to the states, we stopped in at the local library and I immediately went to the A section to see if they had any other Alexander books. I was in luck. I picked up Westmark first because of the cover (left below) and because I read the first line and was completely sold. Theo, by occupation, was a devil. When the librarian informed me it was the first in a trilogy, I quickly grabbed the other two and made for the door. They were utterly different from the Chroni...