BBAW - How Do You Do Community?

The world of book blogging has grown enormously and sometimes it can be hard to find a place. Share your tips for finding and keeping community in book blogging despite the hectic demands made on your time and the overwhelming number of blogs out there. If you’re struggling with finding a community, share your concerns and explain what you’re looking for–this is the week to connect!

 

When I first started book blogging (2007) the community was small enough that visiting and being familiar with most of them was easy.  Over the last four years the community has grown by leaps and bounds and it is impossible to be familiar with, much less visit with the entire community. 

I can understand that starting out today would be overwhelming, and patience would be needed as you find a place where you feel comfortable.  Participating in the bigger events such as, Read-A Thon, Bloggiesta, BBAW, Armchair Bea are all ways to get an idea of all the wonderful blogs that are out there.  Weekly memes are another way to get involved.

Commenting is a MUST.  If you visit, you will  get visitors.

I do not use other social media and do feel like I am missing out on all that is available to me, but it is just too time consuming for me.  If you are a social media user, I would recommend getting involved at that level as well.

I have a question for you regarding social media.  Which do you use most for these sites, your phone or your computer?

Enter my giveaway HERE.

BBAW - Community

Today is day one of BBAW (Book Blogger Appreciation Week). This is the fourth year this celebration has taken place. Each day there will be a topic and today's is Community.

While the awards are a fun part of BBAW, they can never accurately represent the depth and breadth of diversity in the book blogging community. Today you are encouraged to highlight a couple of bloggers that have made book blogging a unique experience for you. They can be your mentors, a blogger that encouraged you to try a different kind of book, opened your eyes to a new issue, made you laugh when you needed it, or left the first comment you ever got on your blog. Stay positive and give back to the people who make the community work for you!

This is always a hard thing to do as there are so many bloggers out there to recognize!  I've thought about this prompt for a couple of days and have decided to give a shout out to those bloggers that encouraged me to read a book this year that has found it's way on my favorite reads list.  I read quite a few books because bloggers have recommended them, but these have been exceptional!!

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley
   Life in the Thumb

Skipping A Beat by Sarah Pekkanen
  Book Journey
  Rundppine

Chaos Walking Series by Patrick Ness
  (The Knife of Never Letting Go, Ask and Answer, Monsters of Men) Can't believe I waited so long to pick up this series!
 At Home With Books
There's A Book
Capricious Reader

Please enter my giveaway for audio and print books HERE.

BBAW - Giveaways

Very often my daily walk will take me by one of the largest independent audiobook publishers in the US...Brilliance Audio.

I often wonder what magic they are creating inside, but have never had the nerve to stop in and say hello.  I would not want to scare anyone as I am in work-out clothes and am all sweaty!  One of these days I may be brave enough to stop in. 

Brilliance Audio is very active in our community events and they give audiobooks away at many of them. 

With that said, this week is Book Blogger Appreciation Week and I am giving away Young Adult audiobook titles that are new, even though they are not shrink wrapped. 

Choose From:
Steel Trapp by Ridley Pearson read by William Dufris
Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford read by Nick Pohehl
Peace, Love & Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle read by Julia Whelan
Don't Judge A Girl By Her Cover by Ally Carter read by Renee Raudman
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson read by Jennie Stith
Paper Towns by John Green read by Dan John Miller

If you are not an audiobook listener and prefer print books, I have two books to choose from:
Restless in Carolina by Tamara Leigh
Prophecy by S.J. Parris

To Enter fill out this FORM AND leave a comment telling me where is your favorite place to listen to audiobooks or favorite place to read? 

This giveaway is open to USA and Canadian residents only.  A random winner for the audiobooks and print books will be drawn on Sunday, September 18th. 

Check out all the other giveaways here.

Unexpected Treasure

We invite you to share with us a book or genre you tried due to the influence of another blogger. What made you cave in to try something new and what was the experience like?

Science Fiction and Fantasy are two genres that book bloggers have influenced me to try over the last two years.  Their enthusiasm and passion for these books caught my attention and gave me courage to try them.

By stepping out of my comfort zone  in the science fiction and fantasy genres, I have not missed some wonderful reads:

(YAs) The Gemma Doyle Series by Libba Bray, The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins, The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld and Skinned Trilogy by Robin Wasserman.

(AF) The Circle Trilogy by Ted Dekker, The Host by Stephanie Meyer, The Passage by Justin Cronin.

Young Adult fiction is another area in which I've ventured into and have experienced some treasures.

Monday's Treasure

Book Blogger Appreciation runs all this week in celebration of book bloggers everywhere.

Let’s talk about that first treasure today:

For those of you who participated in BBAW last year, what’s a great new book blog you’ve discovered since last year’s BBAW?  For those you new to BBAW, what was the first book blog you discovered?

Tell us all about this blog and why you love it…why do you keep going back for more?

The blog I am highlighting today is a resource blog rather than a personal blog.  It is a place to find audiobooks!  This last year I have been listening to more wonderful audiobooks and have found a treasure chest of recommendations at Audiobook Jukebox hosted by Beth Fish Reads and Audiobook DJ.

This is a place for you to leave your audiobook review links, to check out a title's audio review, and find out what other books have been read by a narrator that you've enjoyed immensely. 

Thank you to these two wonderful ladies who have combined their time and talents on this great resource.

BBAW - Giveaway #4

Today's giveaway is Sweetwater Run by Jan Watson

Darcy Whitt and her sister-in-law, Cara Whitt stand at a crossroads. Living in the Troublsome Creek area in the mountains of easten Kentucky is not an easy place for any young woman in 1893. These two good friends, mentored by Copper Brown, could be no more different from each other than an oak tree is from a willow.

Cara Whitt finds herself newly married and living in a rickety cabin on the backside of nowhere. That first summer, she and her husband Dimmert, cleared a two-mile long trail between their cabin and Ace and Dance Skelton's home, but Dance isn't always in her right mind and frequently needs Cara's help in caring for the growing Skelton brood. When Dimmert is arrested and hauled off to prison for stealing his own mule, Cara is left alone, afraid and in charge of their little farm.

Darcy Mae Whitt can take a dress-length of gingham and stitch into a beautiful creation that most town ladies would vie to own. But her dreams extend beyond Troublesome Creek. When Henry Thomas, the local attorney sets his cap for Darcy..and the Whitt family land, starry-eyed and determined Darcy has no idea what kind of trouble lies ahead.

This is a new, soft-cover christian fiction book.

To Enter:

•If you could go back in time where/when would you go?

•Leave a comment. If your email is not easily found on your blog(or you don't have a blog), please leave it along with your comment.

•The giveaway will close Friday night and the winner selected with the help of random.org. Winners must contact me within three days with their mailing address.

•Open Worldwide

Check out all the giveaways here.

BBAW - Giveaway #3

Today's giveaway is The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

On a hot summer afternoon in 1972, three teenagers drove into an unfamiliar neighborhood and six lives were altered forever.
Thirty five years later, one survivor of that day reaches out to another, opening a door that could lead to salvation. But another survivor is now out of prison, looking for reparation in any form he can find it.

THE TURNAROUND takes us on a journey from the rock-and-soul streets of the '70s to the changing neighborhoods of D.C. today, from the diners and auto garages of the city to the inside of Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital, where wounded men and women have returned to the world in a time of war. A novel of fathers and sons, wives and husbands, loss, victory and violent redemption, THE TURNAROUND is another compelling, highly charged novel from George Pelecanos, "the best crime novelist in America." -Oregonian.

This is a new, soft-cover book.

To Enter: Comments are now closed

•If you were around, what is one favorite thing from the 70s?

•Leave a comment. If your email is not easily found on your blog(or you don't have a blog), please leave it along with your comment.

•The giveaway will close Friday night and the winner selected with the help of random.org. Winners must contact me within three days with their mailing address.

•Open Worldwide

Check out all the giveaways here.

BBAW - Giveaway #2

Today's giveaway is an AUDIOBOOK ON MP3-CD entitled Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night by James Patterson (editor) that is produced right here in my hometown by Brillance Audio.

THRILLER: Featuring North America’s foremost thriller authors, Thriller is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty-two of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.

New Unabridged - 2 MP3-CD / 17 hours. Requires an MP3 capable CD Player.

To Enter: Comments are now closed

•Do you have a favorite thriller/suspense author?

•Leave a comment. If your email is not easily found on your blog(or you don't have a blog), please leave it along with your comment.

•The giveaway will close Friday night and the winner selected with the help of random.org. Winners must contact me within three days with their mailing address.

•Open Worldwide

Check out all the giveaways here.

BBAW - Giveaway #1

Book Blogger Appreciate Week (BBAW) kicks off today and in celebration I will be hosting book giveaways every day this week!

Today's book is Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch.

Sarah Walters is a less-than-perfect debutante. She tries hard to follow the time-honored customs of the Charleston Camellia Society, as her mother and grandmother did, standing up straight in cotillion class and attending lectures about all the things that Camelliasdon't do. (Like ride with boys in pickup trucks.)

But Sarah can't quite ignore the barbarism just beneath all that propriety, and as soon as she can she decamps South Carolina for a life in New York City. There, she and her fellow displaced Southern friends try to make sense of city sophistication, to understand how much of their training applies to real life, and how much to the strange and rarefied world they've left behind.

When life's complications become overwhelming, Sarah returns home to confront with matured eyes the motto "Once a Camellia, always a Camellia"- and to see how much fuller life can be, for good and for ill, among those who know you best.

This is a new, never read soft-cover book.

To Enter: Comments are now closed.

•In the book, Sarah needs to return to her hometown. Where's your hometown?

•Leave a comment. If your email is not easily found on your blog(or you don't have a blog), please leave it along with your comment.

•The giveaway will close Friday night and the winner selected with the help of random.org. Winners must contact me within three days with their mailing address.

•Open Worldwide

Check out all the giveaways here.

BBAW

Books On The Nightstand is hosting this BBAW giveaway.



The books are stacked by due date! I try to read them in order, but sometimes I just can't stand it and pull one! If that happens, I have two books going at the same time so as not to accrue too much in late fees!!

BBAW Begins Today

My Friend Amy is hosting Book Blogger Appreciation Week. Many are participating! Head over to check out all the fun (especially the giveaway list).