Sunday Salon – November 22

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.