World peace be damned!

With the highly anticipated release of the third book in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy less than six months away we must once again get our debate on about a very very serious issue that has arisen out of the ashes of The Districts. Over on Scholastic’s blog On Our Minds the awesomeness that is Beth Fish Reads and I are debating highly charged and life altering issues.  You guessed it — Team Peeta (woot woot!) versus Team Gale (boo, hiss).

I suppose you already know which side I’m on but in case you’re interested (which I know you aren’t) Beth Fish makes some mighty fine points for the Gale lovers out there.

Please go and check it out then weigh in on where you stand even if it is the wrong side. For now I leave you with my less than surprising declaration of which team I’m on!

Happy Sunday my friends, I hope this post is finding you well!

As most who follow me on Twitter know I’ve been extremely busy at work and was tremendously pleased to have this weekend off to do as I wanted.  I’ve run errands, done laundry, took my niece out to lunch and was even lazy enough to luxuriate with a nap.  Now today will be another day filled with laundry, a bit of cleaning, paying bills and recording the two giant piles of books I have sitting in a chair in my TBR spreadsheet.  Oh and writing blog posts!  I must write some blog posts!

Wanting to catch you up on a couple of things before I dive into the duties of my day.

Made From Awesome Mega Chat

I’m super jazzed about this awesome two-night author event sponsored by YALitChat.  Some of YA’s finest will be brought together on April 14 and 15 to discuss their work, publishing and just about all things YA.  I’m not going to list all of the participating authors here but I will say it’s a pretty powerful line-up.  A veritable who’s who of young adult literature.  So go read the Made From Awesome Mega Chat post on the YALitChat blog, grab the button and please participate.

Tell all your friends about it and encourage them to tell all their friends as well!  It’s going to be, well made from awesome!

Nerds Heart YA Nominations

I’m equally excited about the progress of the Nerds Heart YA tournament.  Jodie, Amy, Trish and I are busily putting together the judging bracket and are hoping to get that announced in the next couple of weeks.   But, we don’t want progress to come to a halt in the meantime, so get your patoots out there and nominate some eligible titles for the tournament!  We’re looking for books that have been authored by or include a character in the following categories:

• Person(s) of Color (POC)
• GLBT
• Disability/Mental Ilness
• Religious Lifestyle
• Lower Socioeconomic Status

Hop on over to the Nerds Heart YA nomination form to submit as many titles as you’d like up until the form closes on March 31, 2010.

Book Blogger Convention

Organizing and registration is still going strong for the First Annual Book Blogger Convention to be held May 28th in NYC.  We’ve recently started collecting contributions for our charity raffle, swag bags and have announced a Thursday evening author reception.  Everyone is welcome to contribute, if you have an item you’d like to include please don’t hesitate to contact us at bookbloggercon[at]gmail[dot]com we’d love to hear from you.

Also, if you’re planning to go to BEA and want to hang out with a bunch of cool bloggers that Friday register!  $115 will get you Thursday author reception, Friday conference with breakfast and lunch, and an awesome opportunity to network with all sorts of awesome bloggers, authors and publishing industry types.

So that’s about the size of things here this Sunday.  I hope today finds you productive, lazy, or whatever you want to be!

I encountered a situation this past weekend that I wanted to share and explore with you dear readers. One that I have to admit made me none-to-pleased with a certain publisher.

So it goes something like this:

1. Michelle purchases e-book.
2. Michelle begins to read e-book and notices it is fraught with grammatical, spelling and formatting errors.
3. Michelle gets bitter because she realizes she likely just paid money for an e-GALLEY as compared to an e-BOOK.

Am I sure that this is the case?  No, I can’t be 100% sure that this was an e-galley but if it’s not then shame on this publisher for letting an e-book of such horrendous (and this is me being generous because there wasn’t a single paragraph that didn’t have an error of some sort) quality.  If it was the e-galley again shame on them for trying to deceive their readers.  I know a good portion of the e-reading community isn’t likely aware of e-galleys and the like but seriously guys, this was just W-R-O-N-G!

I mean, I know there is a certain push to have e-books available at the time of release along with other formats, but a publisher shouldn’t sacrifice quality for speed.  You know what I’m sayin’?  Or maybe it’s all a big game to get the reader to pay top dollar for the print version.  I have a hard time believing that a publisher would be so subversive and sneaky for what likely amounts to only a couple of dollars, but it all adds up right?

So my question to you, fine readers, is have you encountered this same scenario?  Have you purchased an e-book only to feel like you’d been had into purchasing an e-galley instead?  If so did you decide not to purchase e-books from the publisher again?  Because that’s pretty much where I’m at right now.

Happy Singles Awareness Day everyone!

Today I’ll be professing my love not to a significant other, but to my most favoritest inanimate object of all times. Read Forth….

Hearts & Flowers

Big New on the Interwebs y’all.  The biggest of the big (at least for this fangirl!):

Scholastic announced the name and gave us a sneaky peeky of the last (SOBS!) book in The Hunger Games trilogy.

*drum roll*

May I introduce to you….

Mockingjay

**pets**

Isn’t it pretty?

There’s been some Twitter-sation about how well it fits in with the other two books but I really like it. In particular the lighter tone gives a feeling of optimism.  I also like that the Mockingjay is ascending kinda like a hint that The Districts will rise up from the oppression of The Capitol.  Of course this could all be a false sense of security.  Suzanne Collins is a masterful author with some serious balls so I won’t be surprised to see everyone get killed in the end!

Of course, then my fangirl dreams could kinda sorta live on with the thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d leave Prim alone and we’d get another set of books out of her plot to avenge.

**sigh** happy place.

Anywhoooo, now all I need to do is find out who I need to bribe to get me a copy of an ARC (which I know they aren’t doing but I’m still gonna hope somewhere somehow it’s gonna happen for a few people in the world).

Cybil’s Award Challenge

The first guest post on The Cybils Award Challenge blog was posted this week.  It’s an awesomely entertaining and humorous behind the scenes look by Elissa Brent Weissman on how her book Standing For Socks was crafted.  Please go over and show Elissa’s post some love!

You’ll also notice on my blog (if you click through from your reader) that I’ve now added a link to the challenge blog’s posts in my right sidebar.  I’d really love it if you all subscribed too because it’s gonna continue to have excellent content throughout the year.

Lastly, if you’re a Cybils nominated author who’d like to guest post feel free to contact me I’d love to host you.

Book Blogger Convention

Today is the last day you can register for the Book Blogger Convention and take advantage of the $90 early bird pricing.  Remember you must also pay your fee by today so if you want to get in on the discount run thee to the registration form.

We’re accepting registration through at least April 30th so you don’t have to worry about not being able to attend.  Just keep in mind that after today the registration fee will increase to $115.

Nerds Heart YA

There’s only one day left to put your hat in the ring to be a judge for the second annual Nerds Heart YA tournament.  As of February 15th we’ll close down the Call for Judges and start picking who will be participating.  If you’re interested please head on over and sign up for consideration.

—-

Alrighty folks, that’s about all I’ve got for this Sunday.  I’m slowly working through my feed reader this weekend so you’ll see me poking around the blogosphere I imagine.

Have a great week ahead!

Welcome the The Sunday Salon, Let It Snow Version 1.0!

Any of you who may follow me on Twitter heard my plight this weekend as I endured not only the accumulation of 30 inches of snow in the DC area but also the accumulation of 30 hours without power.  How is that for a really heinous 1:1 ratio!?!  Seriously….I’d have been happy to deal with an extra foot of snow if it meant 12 less hours without power.  At any rate, this is pretty much how it all went down:

• Snow starts, I have power.
• Snow rages over night, I have power.
• Snow continues into next day, I lose power.
• Power comes on for 5 minutes then back out regardless, power company informs me neighborhood is powered up and we’re all set.
• 1st call to emergency maintenance people at complex about power outage in building while surrounding neighborhood is comfy and cozy.
• Snow stops, I’m still without power.
• 2nd call to emergency maintenance people when 1st call goes unanswered for hours on end.
• Houses 100 yards away (seen from my balcony) twinkle and taunt with the gloriousness of heat and internet connectivity.
• Prowl the halls and get small bits and pieces of who has what power in the building (a lady with her fire alarm beeping and one light, a guy with his microwave, someone with full fledged all appliances power!)
• Bitter and rabid call of anger and frustration to regional property manager of complex about non-response from maintenance (dude, it’s freezing cold and I only have so much patience for the shenanigans of waiting).
• First call back. Maintenance man telling me that the power company is “working on it”.
• Another hour without power.
• Second call back. Property manager telling me that the power company is “working on it”.
• I momentarily revel in the fact that my regional property management rantings bear results.
• I freeze my ass off overnight to wake up without power still.
• Spend a couple hours down in lobby (which has some plugs working and glorious internet) until every part of the building loses power entirely.
• HARK!  1pm rolls around and power is restored!

Anyway it goes without saying that my weekend of reviewing, blog post writing, and general bloggishness did not happen.  I did get a couple of books read which was nice and I did discover that my book light has a dual purpose as a really kick ass flashlight, but my plan to write about Nerds Heart YA, the Book Blogger Convention and other great things related to blogging has been seriously derailed.  My motivation is nothing and sadly I can’t concentrate enough to coherently put thoughts together.  All I am is left feeling even further behind than I was when I started this weekend with the optimism of getting caught up.

**sigh**

How was your weekend?