March Merriment Giveaway - WINNERS!

Hello, dear readers.

So guess how many people entered for the giveaway?


zero.

Yep, exactly zero people entered to win two of my favorite books ever. To say I was surprised would be putting it extremely lightly.

So I've decided to make what could be a crushing disappointment (does no one care enough to enter? Do I have a bad taste in books?) into a great opportunity.  I am donating both of these books to the library. You can click here to read my post about how great libraries are, and so now I'm going to do my part to help out and give them these two books.

So the big winner of the March Merriment double-giveaway is: The Los Angeles Public Library! I'll get the books over there as soon as I can and I'm sure they'll be on the shelves in no time. (Who knows, maybe I'll be the one to shelve them!)

Until tomorrow, with some BIG NEWS!!

March Merriment Giveaway

I finished The Maze Runner, so that means I read 1 extra book this month. And so I'm giving away 1 book. There are two options:

1. Tales From the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird, by Vivian Vande Velde

see my review here

2. The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner

see my review here

I love both of these books, and I'm sure whoever wins them will enjoy them too. If you win, I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions, and if you want, I'll post them on this blog.

For the giveaway I have a few rules:

• US only
• Must comment on this post, including your email address (unless I already know your email address)
• At least 10 people must enter, so tell your friends!
• (+1) In your comment, mention your favorite YA Fantasy book (or two. Or three).
• (+1) Mention why you like it.
• (+3) Be a follower of my blog.
• You may enter until midnight on Saturday, April 9.

If you get bonus points (see above), you will be entered extra times when I am picking a random winner.  I will email the winner on Sunday, April 10. You will have 24 hours to respond with which book you would prefer and your address so I can mail it to you. 

Good Luck,

[UPDATE (10:30pm, March 31): I just finished The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick. This means there will be TWO winners. Yay! However, I'll only give away the second book if 15 people enter. So if you spread the word, you will have a higher chance of winning a book. Good luck.]


[UPDATE AGAIN (April 1): I made this into a form instead. Please enter your information there instead of in the comments section. Thanks.]

Done With March Merriment

Books completed as of 30 March 2011

Yay! I made it! 20 books in 30 days! I still have one day left, and I'm about 50 pages into The Maze Runner. I'm giving myself as much time as I want tonight and tomorrow night to finish it. After that I'm going to stop sprinting through books and go more slowly. ("More slowly" is, of course, relative.) I'm still on break right now, so I'll be able to read more without having tons of homework every night, which is very nice. Tomorrow I'll post about the giveaway and next week I'm going to post a few reviews from these books. Instead of the regular GGR post, I'll do a group review of these books on Monday.

Until tomorrow,

Checking In

I wanted to check in since I haven't really posted this week, so here goes:

March Merriment is going well - 6 days left and 5 books to go, but by the time I go to sleep tonight it'll be 4 books to go, and by tomorrow afternoon it'll be 3 books to go. Right now I'm reading 100 Cupboards and One of Our Thursdays is Missing. I like how they balance each other out, because they're so different. They're both good, but neither is exceptional.

I'm making progress on the Giant Group Review (part 1), but it's taking a lot longer than I expected it to.  When I think I'm going to have to do 20 of these.... never mind, I'm not thinking about it. Still, it's a challenge and it's fun to go through all these books that I haven't read for years. I'm sure you've noticed at this point, I love challenging myself to do more and go further. The Giant Group Reviews are my challenge for when I finish March Merriment.

Speaking of finishing March Merriment, I have some things planned for April:

• Giant Group Reviews (wow, big surprise)
• Giveaway of extra books from March Merriment
• PBM Revisions
• More Book Reviews, gosh darn it!

Yes, book reviews. I haven't been posting nearly as many as I'd like to. I know I've been saying this for months, but I really do want to write more reviews. This whole blog started as a book review blog, and I want to keep reviews as a large part of the blog. I'm currently working on (procrastinating on) a review for Airman, by Eoin Colfer. I want to get that finished and posted this week. The thing is, with reviews, I feel like they have to be better in some way than regular old posts. They need to be more polished somehow. That's one of the reasons I like group reviews, because I can just write a few comments without the pressure of a full review. Anyway, I will do more reviews in the coming weeks. I am determined. And I will have time for said reviews because...

Spring Break! Yay! More time for sleeping, more time for reading, more time for blogging. I think everyone needs a break right about now. I certainly do. So go ahead, have a break Give yourself a couple minutes. Have some tea. Put your feet up. Perhaps bake some cookies.
Cookies actually sound really good right now. I think I'm going to go bake some cookies.

10 More Days of March Merriment

Completed Books as of March 21

I will let that picture speak for itself. 5 books to go, 10 more days. I suspect we are going to have some giveaway books coming up.  

March Merriment Update

I haven't really posted about March Merriment since it started, but I thought I'd take a post to talk about how it's going. It simultaneously is going really well and not very well at all.

This first picture is of everything I've read and/or am currently reading in March.

*Not pictured: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It's in my backpack.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (1 of 20 - Unfinished)
I've already made clear what I think of this book, but it is a book that I'm reading in March, so it counts.

Unexpected Magic, by Diana Wynne Jones (2 of 20 - Unfinished)
I technically started this at the very end of February, but I only read a few pages before March, so I'm saying it counts.

Airman, by Eoin Colfer (3 of 20 - Finished)
It's still great the 2nd time around. I'm in the middle of a larger review for this.

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones (4 of 20 - Unfinished)

Copper, by Kazu Kibuishi (5 of 20 - Finished)

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare (6 of 20 - Unfinished)

Flight (Volume Two), by Kazu Kibuishi (7 of 20 - Unfinished)
I am planning on finishing this tonight.

Fablehaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary, by Brandon Mull (8 of 20 - Finished)

Sapphique, by Catherine Fisher (9 of 20 - Unfinished)
I am planning on finishing this by tonight.

So you can see, 9 books in 12 days is not bad. But 3 finished books in 12 days isn't quite as good. Luckily by tonight it will be 5 finished books. And I'm not too worried... yet.

Below are the books I have on my shelf which I have not yet begun. I'm very excited. There are a lot, so I'm not going to list them. You can see most of the titles, and if not, I'll be posting about them soon.

I decided that most likely no one really cares about PBM anymore, so I stopped writing that post. If you do care, leave a comment or just wait for me to post it some day when I have nothing better to write about.

Happy Reading,

A Change of Plan

I've decided to keep the poll open until the end of March, and start the heavy revising in April. That will give me time to concentrate on March Merriment and give all you lurkers time to cave and decide to vote. (I know you're there! I'm not just posting into empty cyberspace... am I?) Coming up will be a post that includes everything I've done so far on all 26 books. It'll be a looong post, but several people mentioned to me that this might be a good idea. So. That's the plan.

And now I must start writing my overly long post about all the stuff I've been reading recently. But yay for finally getting back to reviewing! I'm obviously not going to be able to review every book I read during March Merriness, but I'm going to try to keep up as best I can. And I'm planning on doing another group review at the end of March for all the books I didn't get to.

Until later,

March Merriment!

So PBM is over, February is done, and everything is back to how it was in January. Except that after the craziness of February, March seems a bit empty. So I am instituting a challenge for myself for March. I am going to read 20 books in 30 days. Having read that last statement, you're probably thinking, she's finally gone crazy! Picture Book Marathon was enough work, but now she's gone too far! Well, don't you fret. I'm planning on reading a lot of graphic novels and shorter books because for English I'm going to be reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which is going to be... erm.... R rated. (I don't really like R rated books. Bad things happen.) So I'm going to read a lot of light and fluffy stuff. In addition, at the end of March, I'm going to do a giveaway of however many extra books I read (past 20). So if I end up reading 40 books, I'm going to give away 20. Except I won't end up reading 40 books, because I'm unlikely to read more than a book a night. My normal speed is a book every 2 or 3 days, so I'm going to be sprinting a bit. Yay for challenges! This is going to be fun. So much fun.

P.S. I spent way too much time trying to think of a name for this event. Just saying.