“Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.â€
~Groucho Marx
Today is a very special day, and not just because it is the official start date for Once Upon a Time II. No, ladies and gentlemen, today is much more than that.
“A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked, and could only have one book, what would it be? I always say ‘How to Build a Boatâ€.
~Stephen Wright
Asking an avid reader/collector of books to pick a favorite has the potential of setting off an internal debate that could nigh well last a lifetime. A favorite? Impossible! Especially when the question of favorites doesn’t have to do so much with the story a book tells but the physical object itself and what it represents. Ever the intrepid blogger, Chris was inspired to ask just that question the other day:
I just love reading about the stories behind people’s favorite books in their collections. Even if there’s not much of a story, I love just knowing what they are. So I decided to invite everyone to share just that! What’s your favorite book or books in your library? Not necessarily the title, but the book itself. I couldn’t limit it to one, so I picked 5.
Following Chris’ lead, I set out to share with you five favorite books that currently share space in my bookish abode. These are just five of many ‘favorites’. I cherish my books, each and every one. Often they are first picked up because of their aesthetic appeal thus picking favorites is even more difficult. But here goes:
“And when short February’s done…”
Wow! Is it March already? In my ongoing quest to review every book I read this year I have found myself behind. And so what you have above is the results of my efforts to catch up with all my reviews through February. And I have done so! If you click on any of the above images it will take you directly to the review for that book or film. I realize this is overload but I tried to keep the reviews more brief than normal in the hopes that you will still read and comment. Allow me to thank you right now!
If you continue on after the jump on this post, you can read my summary of February, a send off for The Sci-Fi Experience, and a hint of Once Upon a Time II which is less than three weeks away!
As promised it is my pleasure to bring to you the very fun photo entries for the Bleeding Dusk photo contest. For those of you playing at home, the contest was to promote first week book sales for the third book in Colleen Gleason’s Gardella Vampire Chronicles Series, The Bleeding Dusk. Participants were asked to purchase the book during the week of February 5th-11th, photograph themselves and their book, or just the book, as ‘proof of purchase’, and send it in to me by midnight February 12th.
The winner was to be chosen at random as creativity was not a prerequisite. However Colleen Gleason suggested that we also award a creativity prize.
And so in no particular order whatsoever, here are your entries, followed by the announcement of the winners and a special prize for everyone reading this post!
One of my favorite Science Fiction related sites to visit on a daily basis is SF Signal. JP Frantz and John DeNardo, with a small host of ‘irregulars’, host a site that includes book and film reviews as well as providing multiple daily links to science fiction related happenings around the world wide web. I should warn you, when dropping in on their site one runs the risk of getting lost for hours in the kind of minutiae that causes genre fans to get their geek on.
A fairly new feature to their website is the weekly Mind Meld, described thus:
“In this series of posts, we pose a single question to a slice of the sf/f community and, depending on the question, other folks as well. The idea is similar to the Brain Parade posts that used to appear on the long-defunct Meme Therapy blog. What we hope to get is an interesting cross-section of views and opinions that open a particular topic up for discussion. We’d love to hear what you think!”
What has resulted is a weekly topic in which a variety of science fiction authors, editors, etc. post their two cents worth regarding a science fiction related topic. The results have been fascinating every week and it is one of the features I most look forward to.
Each week they also include a member or members of the blogging community in the discussion.