I’m very excited to announce that I’m kicking off a new challenge for 2010 (plus one month in 2009).  The  Cybils Award Challenge is where participants are encouraged to read from The Cybils Award nominees for the given year.

Please note that this challenge is in no way endorsed by or affiliated with the actual Cybils Awards or it’s organizers. This concept was born of a personal challenge I made for myself that others expressed interest in participating in as well.

Below I’ve outlined how the challenge will work but I’ve also created a separate challenge blog (that I encourage you to subscribe to) where there will be updates and fun features throughout the course of the challenge. So let me get to the particulars:

How Will It Work?

• Challenge will run from December 1, 2009 through December 31, 2010
• Anyone can join, you don’t have to blog to play along
• Challengers can choose to participate in as many of the categories listed below as they want
• Challengers may not mix books from across multiple categories
• Challengers do not need to construct a reading list just decide as you go however the mood strikes you
• Challengers may participate at any of the levels indicated below
• All books used as part of the challenge must be from the 2009 reading lists linked below
• Books read can overlap with other challenges you are participating in
• Challengers can read in any format (ie: audio, e-book, print)

Categories

• Fiction: Easy Readers & Short Chapter Books
• Fiction: Fantasy & Science Fiction (MG)
• Fiction: Fantasy & Science Fiction (YA)
• Fiction: Picture Books
• Fiction: Middle Grade
• Fiction: Young Adult
• Non-Fiction: Picture Books
• Non-Fiction: Middle Grade/Young Adult
• Graphic Novels: Middle Grade
• Graphic Novels: Young Adult
• Poetry

Levels of Participation

• Categorically Speaking – choose to read all books in a category
• Halfway There – choose to read 50% of books in a category
• Rule of Fours – choose to read 1/4 or 3/4 of books in a category
• Pick A Number – choose to read a specific number of books in a category
• Shorties Rule – choose to read books in a specific short list (finalists will be publicized Jan 1, 2010)

Fun Stuff

As part of the fun there will be author interviews, guest posts, giveaways and a grand prize drawing for a $100 gift card to Borders Books.

To qualify for entry in the drawing a challenger must choose the “Categorically Speaking” level of participation, must complete all books within that category and must post a review of each either on a blog, a social networking site or bookstore site (ie: Amazon, B&N, Borders or some other store you may affiliate with). Ultimately you must provide to me some sort of tangible review in order for it to count towards completion of your entry to the giveaway drawing.

Sign up

Interested in participating? Hop on over to the Sign Up page and add your name to the Mr. Linky. Challengers can join in at any time during the year there is no deadline for participation.

This evening marks the start of the Literary League: Read ’til YA Drop book club’s second discussion. Through the remainder of December we’ll be talking about Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble. Blending history, folklore and supernatural romance this book has a plethora of interesting characters and plot twits to keep the conversation lively and interactive.

The schedule is as follows:

• Group discussion on Facebook – Nov 30-December 12
• Skype Chat – December 13 @4pm

Please join us the conversation is just beginning.

Welcome to the Sunday Salon – Real Life Edition

Not that blogging and reading and books aren’t real life, but what I’ll gab about here today just seems more, er….realer.

I don’t tend to talk about much of my life outside of books here but a few of you know bits and pieces about me so I thought I would share some good news!  Anyway, since I moved up to DC from Florida a couple of years ago I’ve been living with my sister in her home.  It’s been a totally sweet deal where I get the whole “in-law” apartment  in the basement and we share the kitchen.  She’s been completely generous in allowing me to live here paying only utilities and I’m extremely grateful.  But over the past six months or so it’s been increasingly tense.  We live our lives in two very distinct ways and it’s been difficult for me to manage some of those differences as it’s been difficult for her to respect some of my choices.

Living here was originally intended to be a temporary gig until I got a job and it’s gone on much longer (by a year and a half) than we’d agreed upon.  At any rate, it’s become increasingly clear that it’s time for us to go our separate ways, living space wise anyway.

So this weekend I went out and got me a new place to live!  I’m very excited (and admittedly a bit nervous) about striking out on my own again.  I took possession of my new apartment (which is only a couple miles from where I am currently so I’m still close to brother/neice and sister) yesterday and will slowly move things over the next few weeks until I only have furniture left to go. Then I’ll hire big burly men (who are hopefully cute too!) to do all the heavy lifting.

What does this ultimately mean for my blog? Only one kinda sad thing (well sad more for me than you) I’ll have to curb my book buying habits.  It won’t be likely that I’ll be able to buy books every weekend — I’ll have to go down to every other week and minimize my impulse buys.  Kinda a drag, I know but really I could read all the books currently sitting in my TBR and still have enough to get past a year.  That and the quality of life situation is much more important at this point!

I might try and do a small little moving journal here over the next few weeks as me and my books relocate I haven’t decided.

Wish me luck!

Title: Listen
Author: Nancy Coffelt
Genre: Young Adult
Publisher: WestSide Books
Source: Review Copy Provided by Author
Parental Warning: child abuse, mental illness, criminal activity

Summary:
Carrie, Kurt, and Will each carry with them a uniquely tragic history.  All victims of either physical and mental abuse or mental illness the threesome find themselves tangled in each other’s lives in ways that showcase the struggle to accept and rebuild.

Kurt is a surly young man victimized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend while she did little to help and protect him.  He is intelligent and longs for acceptance and love, primarily from his long lost father.  Hopeful to be reunited with one and the same he takes on a job rescuing abused animals.  Or so he thinks.

Employing Kurt is Carrie, a middle aged woman who lives with a bevy of strange animals.  She’s suffering from a serious mental illness that has her hearing these same animals speak.  As an extension of that ability she pays Kurt to save more animals she perceives to be abused and bring them to live in her dilapidated house. Unfortunately she takes this mission to save the unfortunate a bit too far when it starts to creep it’s way into the human realm.

Will has been on his own since the death of his mother and the incarceration of his addict prone brother.  Though he is tied to Kurt via his job as a school tutor he’s most focused on trying to forge a relationship with Claire.  Soft spoken and timid by nature he is happy when that romantic entanglement begins to form.  Trying to be all things to all people his relationship with her is destroyed when he is the one to discover that Kurt has gotten more than he bargained for in his job with Carrie.

As their three lives continue to weave together revelations and discoveries are made that change not only their lives but the lives of friends, family and the community around them.

Opinion:
I’m going to start off saying that I really wanted to find something positive to say about this book but honestly I can’t.  What didn’t I like about this story?  Though I’ve never been a fan of child abuse and/or mental illness stories it wasn’t the fact that Listen was darker than the average young adult novel I’ve read.  It was the fact that there was so much going on that it actually felt manic.  There was the aforementioned child abuse and mental illness but I’ll also add in animal abuse, abandonment, drug & alcohol abuse and multiple instances of criminal activity for good measure.  I mean I know that generally speaking, in real life, most times all of the above go hand in hand but man oh man it was a lot to read in a short book of just over two hundred pages.

Now maybe that was the point, maybe the reader was supposed to feel that nervous high strung feeling the characters were but really I didn’t like it.  I would have much rather have seen an in depth story about one of the characters compared to skimming the surface of three. Again, it was just way too much.

At times, I struggled with the need for Will in this story.  The relationship between Carrie and Kurt made sense, but Will, he was clearly there more for progression of their story than anything else.  Making him a victim of abuse didn’t add to the story at all in fact it just made it one more thing on top of all the rest.  In fact, I honestly found myself confusing Kurt and Will’s stories at times because they were so similar.

As it relates to the above, I believe part of the reason I struggled with confusion of these two characters is that for a good portion of the book all three stories were jumping back and forth. We’d get several pages of Will then several of Kurt then Carrie.  It was very disjointed and many times the transitions were so abrupt I was left wondering why we stopped the one story to go to the other.  Admittedly it seemed that once the story got to a crescendo and the three characters were interacting in real time in the same scenes I was able to better transition and follow what was going on.

Finally, one last obstacle I struggled to navigate was the fact that the story was extremely depressing.  There were no light hearted moments at all, which makes sense given the subject matter I suppose, but honestly for me I need that break here and there.  I need something to keep me hopeful that in the end it will all be alright.  The small attempt at doing so (Will’s desire to be Claire’s boyfriend) fell flat for me and was honestly more of an attempt to tie Will in with Carrie’s story.  It did so effectively I guess but still, I would have enjoyed something uplifting and remotely happy somewhere.

In the end, I imagine the author was trying to paint a realistic picture of how mental illness and abuse affects not only the lives of those who carry it with them but also those around them.  In that regard I do think the story was in a way successful.  I certainly felt anxiety and stress and discomfort I imagine that family and friends of sufferers must endure on a daily basis.

Good Afternoon!

It’s Sunday Salon time so I wanted to take the opportunity to quickly catch up with everyone and give a few shout outs about what’s going on around these parts.

Can You Unplug?

Beth Fish Reads and Devourer of Books are starting an awesome initiative called Blogger Unplugged in which they are challenging all of us to disconnect the wires that bind us to technology and spend some time away.  Now, you all know me….I’m big into the technology and social networking so stepping away from Twitter in particular will be very very hard to do.  BUT, I’m going to step outside of that comfort zone and dedicate myself to doing just that.  I’m going to do my best to try and take a couple of hours each night to walk away from my gadgets and just read. What about you?  Do you think you can do it too?

SeriesPalooza

In case you missed it, earlier this week I announced that I’m going to be holding SeriesPalooza the week of December 14th.  It’s a totally chill affair where I’m challenging participants to focus solely on reading books in a series they’ve either started or are interested in starting.  You don’t have to write loads of posts about it (though if you want to that’s great too) or follow copious amounts of rules (only one — books gotta be in a series) you just have to have fun reading what you’ve been wanting to catch up on. If you’re interested in playing along please feel free to grab the button and sign on the dotted line by clicking the link above to add yourself to Mr. Linky.

More Great Events

The month of December has me participating in scads of awesome events. I’ll be doing my part to unplug (as referenced above) during the Thankfully Reading Weekend, I’m going to be sharing some childhood memories via the Virtual Advent Tour and Book Blather’s Blogaversary, I’ll be hosting readers on my leg of the Progressive Dinner Party, and I’ve already Bought Books for the Holidays for my Holiday Swap recipient.  If you want to get involved and have some fun with fellow book bloggers I strongly encourage you to see if you can’t hop on board any of these initiatives they’re gearing up to be a fun and festive batch. Oh, and if you know of more events/festivities let me know in the comments I’d love to hear more about them.

Challenging Myself

It’s about that time of year when the blogosphere starts buzzing about reading challenges.  I’ve seen a lot of chatter about it on Twitter and people are already starting to post what they are going to participate in.  In the spirit of that I too am going to stake my claim to challenges for the coming year.  Because I didn’t start my blog until 1/2 through this year I missed out on joining a great many challenges because I was behind the eight ball time wise.  Well good news is that now that I can start at the jump on some of them I’m totally going to get it together and get on board! I’m already involved in some that will continue on past January 1st, namely The Sookie Stackhouse Reading Challenge and Everything Austen; but I’m also going to do a dystopian challenge (if one is being held), The 2010 Young Adult Reading Challenge (I’ll be undertaking the Super Size Me version = 75 books), The 100+ Reading Challenge, The 2010 Challenge, and the 1010 Challenge. Lastly, I’ll also be hosting a Cybils Challenge here on Galleysmith.  I’m thinking t will start December 1, 2009 (but January 1, 2010 the latest) and will last until December 31, 2010. I’m working on the details but keep an eye out if your interested in YA/MG/Kidlit something will be posted soon.

Literary League: Read ’til YA Drop

November 30th is the official start to discussion of our second Literary League book pick Dreaming Anastasia by Joy Preble.  Join our The Literary League Facebook group to find out more details and to chat about the book.  It’s going to be great fun!

Well my friends, that is about the size of things here.  I’m trying to schedule some posts for next week as I’ll be away for the holiday but given time constraints don’t know how successful I’ll be with that.  If I don’t get a change to say it later, I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday.  I am truly thankful that you’ve all embraced me and this blog as part of your lives.