GIVEAWAY: Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making & tote bag

Posted by Anastasia on November 22, 2011 No Responses »

Nov 222011

I’ve been slowly making my way through Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making for the past month or so, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t finish reading it right now. The problem with biographies and “behind the scenes” sort of things is that you inevitably run into a lot of spoilers. Murder in the Making has spoilers for basically EVERY Agatha Christie book, play and short story, and since I haven’t read very many of them yet this is slightly annoying. It also means I’m skimming a lot, because if you haven’t read a book then reading behind-the-scenes stuff for that book is kinda useless, you know?

However, the bits I HAVE read were really interesting. Murder in the Making investigates Agatha Christie’s notebooks, wherein she wrote all her notes for books and stories. It’s not exactly a “here’s how she wrote this mystery” sort of thing, but seeing the lists and outlines and whatever behind a mystery is pretty cool.

So! Now for the giveaway. I have one ARC of Murder in the Making and one Agatha Christie tote bag (provided for by the publisher) to give to some lucky person in the US. The tote bag looks like this (too lazy to take my own photos? Yes.). Fancy!

Rules
1. One (1) winner will win one (1) paperback ARC of Agatha Christie: Murder in the Making and one (1) Agatha Christie tote bag (which is really neat, by the way).
2. US only, as I’m shipping these things out myself.
3. The giveaway will run from now, November 22nd, to midnight EST on November 29th. In other words: TODAY to NEXT TUESDAY. One week!
5. I’ll email the winner. Winner will have 48 hours to respond to claim their prize; if they don’t, another winner will be chosen.
4. The winner will be chosen using Random.org. The winner will also be announced here at the blog December 4th, unless I forget.
5. You can get two extra entries by 1) being a subscriber and 2) sharing the contest link somewhere. Yay!

Fill out the form below to enter. Your info will be deleted once the giveaway is over.
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GIVEAWAY: Win a copy of The Postmortal by Drew Magary

Posted by Anastasia on August 30, 2011 2 Responses »

Aug 302011

I wasn’t all that satisfied when I finished reading The Postmortal, but I also didn’t want to throw it against the wall. It didn’t make me happy, and in fact it pissed me off a few times, but neither did it make me miserable. By that I’m assuming that literary sci-fi just isn’t my thing, but that if it’s your thing you might like The Postmortal more than I did. [From my review earlier today.]

I have the feeling that more than a few of my readers might be fond of cynical pre-apocalyptic literary sci-fi novels, which is why I’ve decided to go ahead and give away one copy of The Postmortal to someone from the US/Canada. Or, really, it’s the publisher giving away a copy; thank you, publisher!

Rules
1. One (1) winner will win one (1) paperback copy of The Postmortal by Drew Magary.
2. US/Canada only.
3. The giveaway will run from now, August 30th, to midnight EST on September 6th. In other words: TODAY to NEXT TUESDAY.
4. The winner will be chosen using Random.org. The winner will be announced here at the blog on September 11th, unless I forget.
5. You can get two extra entries by 1) being a subscriber and 2) sharing the contest link somewhere. Yay!

THE GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. CONGRATS TO THE WINNER!

Info will be deleted after the contest ends. I’m not a creep!

GIVEAWAY: Win a copy of Lev Grossman’s The Magician King

Posted by Anastasia on August 15, 2011 1 Response »

Aug 152011

Overall, though, The Magician King is a much better book. By “better” I mean less depressing, but also it feels better-written. In the first book, there’s a few clunky sections. The pacing is slow, the transition from the first part of the book to the second goes down like a lead balloon, the characters are nearly all unlikable. In The Magician King everything flows much more smoothly; it feels like one coherent book instead of two or three stuck together. The characters are also less annoying, which is helpful. [From my review on Friday]

If you want to try your hand at winning a copy of Lev Grossman’s The Magician King and (I think?) some swag, the publisher has graciously allowed me to give away a copy to a resident of the US/Canada! So:

Rules
1. One (1) winner will win one (1) hardcover copy of The Magician King by Lev Grossman (plus swag, I think).
2. US/Canada only.
3. The giveaway will run from now, August 15th, to midnight EST on August 19th. In other words: TODAY to FRIDAY.
4. The winner will be chosen using Random.org. The winner will be announced here at the blog on August 20th, unless I forget.
5. You can get an extra entry by sharing the contest link somewhere. Yay!

GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED. Thanks to everyone who entered!

REVIEW & Giveaway: Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves

Posted by Anastasia on June 30, 2011 14 Responses »

Jun 302011

57. Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents by Elisabeth Eaves
Publication: Seal Press (May 24, 2011), ebook, 304pp / ISBN 1580053114
Genre: Travel Memoir

Read: June 6-20, 2011
Source: TLC Book Tours

Summary from Amazon:

Spanning fifteen years of travel, beginning when she is a sophomore in college, Wanderlust documents Elisabeth Eaves’s insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures. Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance. In the jungles of Papua New Guinea, she loses herself—literally—to an Australian tour guide; in Cairo, she reconnects with her high school sweetheart, only to discover the beginning of a pattern that will characterize her life over the long-term: while long-distance relationships work well for her, traditional relationships do not.

Wanderlust, however, is more than a chronological conquest of men and countries: at its core, it’s a journey of self-discovery. In the course of her travels, Eaves finds herself and the sense of home she’s been lacking since childhood—and she sheds light on a growing culture of young women who have the freedom and inclination to define their own, increasingly global, lifestyles, unfettered by traditional roles and conventions of past generations of women.

Review

Seal Press is one of my favorite publishers, though I haven’t read nearly enough of their catalog. Nevertheless, the books I have read have been interesting in that a) they’re all written by women about women, and b) those women aren’t afraid to talk about things that are considered more…I don’t know. Hidden? Un-womanly? Unusual?

With male travel writers, a lot of the times their memoirs are about who they slept with and what extreme thing they did in a foreign country. With female travel writers, their memoirs tend to be more about the spiritual/internal changes travel brings to them and the friends they made. Romance is secondary to everything else, basically. Elisabeth Eaves’ book is unusual in that she doesn’t shy away from writing about any of it: the sex, the men, her extreme adventures, AND the emotional stuff.

To be honest, it did throw me off at first. EE is very blunt about her sex life with the various men she meets, and I’m kind of prudish about real people’s sex lives. It also threw me off because, like I said in the previous paragraph, I lumped “(near-)graphic sex” with male travel writers– and my thoughts about EE, a woman, writing about her travel-sex life, were almost “omg should she be writing that?” Almost like she was breaking some rule or something stupid like that. Luckily I had an epiphany, of a sorts (why shouldn’t she write about that?), and the rest of the book was smooth sailing.

By about 20% in I really grew to love Wanderlust. In the beginning of the book, which is EE’s teen-early twenties, there isn’t much introspection. It was constantly “and then I ran away from [whatever]” and I was wondering if she even knew she was doing it. She knew. She just took a while to tell me that she knew; once the introspection and analysis of WHY EE kept running away from “real life” started, the book because a lot more interesting to me.

I really liked that EE tied in the idea that wanderlust is not just a love of travel. It’s also a compulsion, an addiction, and it doesn’t just apply to flying to a new country. EE’s wanderlust is sunk deep within her veins, so that she can’t help wandering even in her love life, and the conflict between what EE really wants and what she thinks she should want is really sad.

There are some other good things in Wanderlust besides EE’s internal conflict about staying and going, but I think I should let you find them out for yourself. If you like travel memoirs but don’t want the same old thing, you’ll probably like Wanderlust.

Rating

Recommended for all travel memoir fans.

Buy

Get your own copy @ Amazon or BookDepository.com and support Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog through the power of affiliate earnings!

Giveaway!

If you want to try your hand at winning a copy of Wanderlust, the publisher/TLC Book Tours has graciously allowed me to give away a copy to a resident of the US/Canada! So:

Rules
1. One (1) winner will win one (1) copy of Wanderlust by Elisabeth Eaves.
2. US/Canada only.
3. The giveaway will run from now, June 30th, ending at midnight EST on July 14th.
4. The winner will be chosen using Random.org; you have 48 hours to get back to me after I email you or someone else will be chosen. The winner will be announced here at the blog on July 16th, assuming everything goes well.
5. You can get an extra entry by sharing the contest link somewhere. Yay!

Fill out the form below to enter the contest!
THE CONTEST HAS ENDED. The winner will be announced soon!

Winners of The Mental Floss History of the United States!

Posted by Anastasia on October 4, 2010 No Responses »

Oct 042010

I have the results of the Mental Floss History of the United States giveaway! Using random.org, I got two numbers: 15 and 22.

#15 is: Natasha of 1330v! Yay!

#22 is: Stephanie of (I think) Open Mind, Insert Book! Yay!

I have emailed the publisher your addresses already, so you should hopefully be getting your books soon. Huzzah!

Thanks to everyone who entered! And if you didn’t win, don’t worry. I’m hoping to host a few more contests in the upcoming months, so you can try again if you want.

Giveaway! The Mental Floss History of the United States

Posted by Anastasia on September 29, 2010 No Responses »

Sep 292010

Okay, so I haven’t read this book yet but I am reasonably sure it will be awesome. If any of you aren’t familiar with mental_floss magazine, it’s a really funny, really clever, really entertaining magazine that talks about science, history, pop culture, and other interesting topics in a way that everyone can enjoy. I love it so much I even got the trivia game. And since the book is written by the dudes that started mental_floss– yeah, it’ll be awesome.

Smarter than a history teacher, funnier than the Founding Fathers, and more American than Alaska, an almost (but not entirely) comprehensive primer on American history (or at least, the good stuff)

In trademark smart aleck style, this is history according to mental_floss, an insightfully accurate and incisively humorous exploration of little-known truths and widely believed falsehoods, which simultaneously exposes some of America’s oddest moments, strangest citizens, most egregious frauds, and much, much more.

Ten meaty chapters, peppered with fun trivia, entertainingly cover the essential timeline of the social, political, and cultural happenings of American history and mythbust all the lies teachers told us along the way. Was Abraham Lincoln really a heroic defender of liberty and freedom? Were the Sixties actually a groovy time of peace and love? Has the U.S. always been dependent on foreign oil? mental_floss sets the record straight and shares the fascinating stories behind politics, literature, fashion, televangelism, serial killers, genetic engineering, Yuppies, SPAM, the original Swine Flu, potato chips, rollerskating, mobsters, rum, communists, beaver wars, the rise and fall of irony, and everything else made in the U.S.A.

This book will be released on October 5!

The contest

I have TWO copies available so TWO people will win! Yay!
It will run from today, Wednesday (September 29), ’til Sunday (October 3). So get in there quick!
Open to US residents only, since the publisher is covering shipping costs (thanks, publisher!).
To enter please fill out this form.

Winners will be chosen Monday morning. Good luck!

Winner of A Desirable Residence!

Posted by Anastasia on August 22, 2010 No Responses »

Aug 222010

The winner of A Desirable Residence is #20: Ruthie B.! Congratulations! Her favorite book she read this summer (a question I forced entrants to answer) was A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, which I haven’t read but of course is very popular.