Santa came to my mailbox yesterday. Fun, fun!

Yesterday when I arrived home from my last day of school until 2011, I was excited to see a package on the table for me that said Book Blogger Santa Swap on it! This is the second time I've participated in the Book Blogger Santa Swap, and it is really fun. The main reason I like it is because I get to make a connection with a new book blogger, and I love participating in the book blogging community, but the gifts I got were fabulously fun, too.

Laura, from The Calico Critic in Vero Beach, Florida, was my Santa. The beach in Florida is not exactly where I expect to find Santa, but admittedly, she's quite a good one! She gave me a package full of all different kinds of treats. There were homemade cookies with the recipe (super yummy - I broke into those right away), cocoa and a fancy chocolate bar, tea (has she heard I'm always doing the Game On Diet?), bookmarks - I may have mentioned how I'm always losing my bookmarks and now I have a whole dozen of them! - lovely handmade soap, Santa Claus kleenex(who knew they even made such a thing!), and TWO books! One of the books is by a favorite YA author of mine, Andrew Clements, and another is a non-fiction book called The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. So happy to have the next 17 days off to do a bunch o' reading!!!

Laura also gave me ten other books via a post on her blog about some free books being available for Jane Austen's birthday. I downloaded them all to my Kindle. We love that.

I will definitely be checking out her blog in a lot more detail over the break as well.

Hope your Santas are all as good to you as Laura was to me! I was the Santa for Briana over at The Book Pixie blog, by the way, and she has lots of great YA recommendations, not to mention some killer flamingo photos there, so you might want to give her blog a look as well. Thanks to the good folks over at http://holidayswap.wordpress.com/ for setting the whole thing up! I'll be back next year.

Santa stopped by WOMS today!

Prizes were awarded for the fine, fine gingerbread houses the 6th graders designed, and Santa himself came and gave out the prizes! So much fun. I also have to say, these were the best gingerbread houses I've seen in many years of judging. Voting was SO hard! Well done, everyone.

Have a wonderful vacation

Hope you have a wonderful and relaxing break filled with lots and lots of books!

Birthday bonanza!!

Wowza! Who knew there were SO many December and early January birthday here at WOMS??!! Happy, happy birthdays, everyone :-)

Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly

Wow, I just LOVE Jennifer Donnelly. She needs to write a lot more books. This book is a stunner, and it was one I could hardly put down. I read a lot, so it's not unusual to find me with a book in my hand, but I'm not often laying on my bed reading in the middle of the day or going to bed early just so I can read, and that's what was happening a LOT with this book.

The book goes back and forth between a modern day storyline of a young woman who's struggling after the death of her younger brother and the journal of a young woman who lived during the French Revolution. I found both storylines fascinating and loved, loved, loved how Donnelly wove them together. I felt like I was right there in the French Revolution and in Paris in present day, too. And I'd really like to be in Paris right about now, let me tell you.

The character development of this story was incredible, the writing beautiful, the description and dialogue realistic, the storyline compelling. It was just all around great. 100% loved it and highly recommend it. I will b buying it for the WOMS library, but in the meantime, you can find it at the Multnomah county Library.

Happy birthday!

Now doesn't this just look like the perfect book for a birthday girl? I mean who doesn't enjoy a little murder and mayhem on their birthday,right? And there is ice cream... Happy, happy day!

Lots of December birthdays

I was gone last week, so I'm way behind on birthdays! Hope everyone had a great Sagitarrian experience. Enjoy :-)

"It's a book!" a funny little video

You have to watch this. It is hilarious! Enjoy :)

Mrs. FB

We're on the Vision Tour blog!

Go check out the cool write up we got on the Vision Tour blog from Dr. Everhart! Go, go, hurry up now, what are you waiting for???

Get a $15 gift card for WOMS from Borders!!!

Give a gift to wOMS and get yourself a book, bagel or latte!

On Dec. 4 and Dec. 5, any Borders customer making an in-store purchase, whether of a book or a bagel or a latte, will receive a $15 gift card to donate to a public school of choice through DonorsChoose.org, an Internet-based charity. Anyone purchasing the book "Waiting for 'Superman': How We Can Save America's Failing Public Schools" will receive a second $15 card.

Happy birthdays!

Well, we had one birthday before Thanksgiving that didn't get posted, and then we had a whole PASSEL of them after the break! So happy birthday to all of you, and I hope those of you viewing get some great reading ideas from all these suggestions!

Cheers!

Bring a parent to book fair, get a prize!

CONFERENCES ARE CANCELLED FOR TODAY, But I think we'll be there from 12-8 tomorrow, so come on out and buy a book or fifty. See you in the gym!

Scarlett Fever - Maureen Johson

This is the sequel to Suite Scarlett and I liked it more than I liked the first one. In the first one Scarlett, daughter of parents who own an old, somewhat tired hotel. Scarlett's brother is an actor, and in book 1 she fell for his friend Eric and hard! It really got to be pretty boring because it was all Eric, all the time. Me I got kind of tired of it.

This book was much fresher. There was still a little too much obsessing about Eric, but the story went i some other directions as well. There were a couple of larger subplots including one about Scarlett's scheming younger sister, a cancer survivor, and another about Scarlett's older sister with an ex and then not at all ex boyfriend who none of the family really likes. There was also Mrs. Ambrose, an eccentric old woman who in the first book came to stay at the hotel and who took Scarlett under her wing as her assistant. Scarlett continues on as Mrs. Ambrose's assistant in this book even though she has moved out of the hotel.

There are some very funny scenes in this book, and I liked it. It's not one of my top ten of the year, but it's a good, easy read. Available at the Multnomah County Library.

Tel Me a Secret -Holly Cupala

17 year old Rand has been living with the death of her sister for the last five years. her sister who was the wild one. but now Rand herself is pregnant, and life isn't turning out like she thought it would. Not at all. Rand is determined to keep her baby, against the wishes of her parents who force her to give up her dream of art school and start working in order to support the baby if she's going to keep it. The novel is fraught with tension and anxiety, mystery and fear. It's a really intense piece of writing which I appreciated very much as a reader but cannot say I really enjoyed. One does not enjoy reading about pain, and this novel has more than its share.

Rand's life takes a lot of twists and turns and definitely has more downward spiraling than up, but towards the end Rand seems to begin to find her way and others around her find their way along with her. I'd recommend this book to high school students because I think they would appreciate it more than middle schoolers.

Available at the Multnomah County Library.

Audio Book Challenge 2010 - UPDATE

You know how I like to book challenges that I can complete, so I've chosen this fun one as one of my 2010 challenges. It's an audiobook challenge, and as an ipod junkie, I think this one is pretty do-able. Especially because I can pick my own level. I'm going for addicted, although I just might be close to obsessed...

It's being run this year by Royal Reviews, and here are the rules:

With most of us having IPods or MP3 players these days listening to audio books has become an easy activity. Personally doing housework, driving the kids to school or sitting waiting for soccer training to finish has never been more enjoyable.

Challenge Guidelines:

1. Anyone can join. You don't need a blog to participate.
--Non-Bloggers: Include your information in the comment section.

2. There are four levels:

-- Curious – Listen to 3 Audio Books.

-- Fascinated – Listen to 6 Audio Books.

-- Addicted – Listen to 12 Audio Books.

-- Obsessed – Listen to 20 Audio Books.

3. Audio books only.

4. You can list your books in advance or just put them in a wrap up post. If you list them, feel free to change them as the mood takes you.

5. Challenge begins January 1st thru December, 2010. Only books started on January 1st count towards this challenge.

6. When you sign up under Mr. Linky, put the direct link to the post about the Audio Book Reading Challenge. Include the URL so that other participants can find join in and read your reviews and post.

I'm hoping as an added bonus, this challenge will help me with my fitness goals, too, beacuse I can walk and listen, which I do a lot. Want ot join me in the Audiobook Challenge? Click on the link above to go to the Royal Reviews site and sign up!

Now I need to figure out what my first book will be...Watch for updates here!

UPDATE 9/27/10: I am up to 10 audiobooks so far, and I think it will be no problem at all to get to the 12 I wanted to listen to by the end of the year! Yeah :)

The 10 I've listened to so far are

Maisie Dobbs Among the Mad and The Map of Love and Death; Little Bee; Peace Like a River; The 19th Wife, Lucia, Lucia; The Reformed Vampire Support Group; Change Up; Marcelo in the Real World; and Little Brother.

Update 11/17/10 - I made it!!!
#11 and #12: Her Fearful Symmetry,
The last summer of the Death Warriors

Clifford is in the house!

Clifford loves a birthday, so when this group walked in on Monday to celebrate, Clifford had his photo with the whole group of them!!


Today is buy a book, get a photo with Clifford day at the book fair! Enjoy the great pics!