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R.I.P. to R.I.P. IV

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November 1st, All Saints Day

What happened?!?!?!

Autumn winds subtly announce the change of seasons, reading whims shift to the mysterious and the gothic…and then it is all over! At least that is the way it feels to your grateful host. The R.I.P. Challenge starts and it feels as if there is all the time in the world to imbibe scary stories. Suddenly All Hallow’s Eve is upon us, pumpkins are carved and neighborhood candy-loving munchkins are satiated, and taps are sounded on the fourth annual R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge.

This year’s challenge broke all kinds of records. We had somewhere in the neighborhood of 275 to 300 people sign up for the challenge. That is unfathomable to me! It is simply amazing and is a testament to the wonderful book blogging community and the passion that we all have for reading. Although I say this during and after every challenge, it is no less true now than the first time I said it: it truly is an honor to be your challenge host.

Almost 700 books/short story weekend recaps were linked to on the R.I.P. IV Review Site. That too is a record. It is safe to say that many, many more books were read that were not linked to reviews. I myself read more books than I had time to review and I know of many of you who enjoyed the reading but did not have a chance to review your books. That just amazes me.

Thank you all so very, very much for your participation. Although the official date has ended, there are still some loose ends that need to be tied up before putting that last nail into the coffin of R.I.P. IV.


(Her Fearful Symmetry by Jennifer Gordon)

Giveaway #1:

As you may recall, a commenter from part two of Jennifer Gordon’s interview was to receive their choice of print from Jennifer Gordon’s Etsy Store. The winner of that drawing is:

Jenn from Funny, That

Congrats Jenn!!!
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Giveaway #2:

Participants in the R.I.P. IV Challenge had until October 25th to let me know of any purchases from Jennifer Gordon’s store to be entered into a random drawing for cool prizes. Jennifer was very generous with giveaway material and so 2 winners were randomly chosen:

Mee

and no, that is not a thinly veiled attempt to give the prize to myself! 😉

AND

Peta, from The Bookling

Congrats Peta and Mee!!!

Each of you will receive a Jennifer Gordon original and print and some other goodies from the items sent to me for giveaway by Jennifer Gordon and Lisa Snellings. Since I want you to be surprised when your package arrives, you’ll each just have to wait until you get it to see what the originals and prints are!!! 🙂
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Giveaway #3:

The super-fantastic and talented Debi, one of my very dearest blog friends, sweetly donated one of each of these creations that I couldn’t resist having for myself the second I saw her post them on her blog. The first is little Cthulu, based on the H.P. Lovecraft creation, and the second is, of course, a lil’ pumpkin! Aren’t they adorable?!?! They were all the rage at my Halloween party, especially the Cthulu. They will be a welcome part of my yearly Halloween decor and I hope the lucky winner enjoys theirs as much as I do mine.

I decided to draw for the winner of this prize out of the list of people who posted links to reviews on the R.I.P. IV Review Site. It takes a little extra effort to do that and I wanted to show some appreciation for that. In addition to these beauties will be a signed card/Halloween ornament, Poppet-themed, of course, by the wonderful Lisa Snellings.

And that winner is….

Lahni!!!

Congrats Lahni!!!
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Giveaway #4:

I truly appreciate each and every one of you for your enthusiastic participation in this year’s R.I.P. IV Challenge. Over the course of the last year or two there have been multiple times that work and other issues have pulled me away from my blog for extended periods of time. I don’t say this to complain, life just gets busy sometimes. In deciding on this last giveaway I just kind of opened my heart and let it guide me, and I was reminded that these two people went out of their way several times to ‘check in’ on me, just to make sure all was well and to encourage me just by being their generous, wonderful selves. Both of these individuals are extremely special to me, both were gung-ho participants in this year’s challenge, and again, this is honestly where I feel my heart leading me with these final ‘thank you’ gifts. While I am truly thankful to you all and so many of you are close, long-time, dear internet friends, on this one occasion I especially want to thank:

Debi and Deslily.

Each of you will be receiving a Lisa Snellings goodie pack from me (and yes, there is a poppet in there!!!). I love you both very much.

As always, winners please send me your snail mail address to poegeek (at) gmail (dot) com. Even if you think I already have your address, please send it along anyway. I’m trying to create a new folder with addresses on gmail and this would be very helpful to me.
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I want to send out a special THANK YOU to both of my sponsors, Lisa Snellings and Jennifer Gordon (If you click on each of the pictures above, you will be linked directly to their Etsy sites). Both artists are women who I admire as much for their artistic talents as for who they are. I consider them each very special friends and I’ve enjoyed the blog and email conversations that we have had over the years. I appreciate their generosity to you, the dear participants of this year’s R.I.P. Challenge and I appreciate all of you who give them your patronage. Supporting people who use their hands to create from their hearts is very important to me and I love having the opportunity to promote these artists. Thank you both so very much, you’ve made this the most wonderful R.I.P. Challenge yet!
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I hope that each and every one of you had a great time with this year’s challenge. Whether you read one book or many, I hope that just for awhile you were transported into the creepy, eerie, gothic places that inspire this challenge. I’ve met so many great new bloggers through this year’s event and I hope you all don’t become strangers. Stick around, and let me know what you are up to as well. All of you amazing book bloggers are the reason I keep hosting these challenges, you are the reason I keep blogging, and you are a constant source of inspiration and encouragement and joy to me.

To those of you who are new, I host a non-challenge of sorts, The Sci Fi Experience, each year from January 1st through February 28th. Jan 1, 2010 will see the third iteration of that “experience”. And on March 21st, 2010 the 4th annual Once Upon a Time Challenge will get fired up, in which all manner of fantasy, fairy tale, mythology and folklore are explored. I hope you will join us for those as well, they are always a really good time.

For tonight I’ll bask in that bittersweet melancholy of one of my favorite times of year being past, and I will look wistfully towards next autumn when R.I.P. V takes off. Hard as this may be to believe, it will be here before we know it!

Thank you all!


(And So She Waits, by Jennifer Gordon)

If you’ve posted a R.I.P. IV wrap-up, please link to it below so that we can all enjoy it:

45 thoughts on “R.I.P. to R.I.P. IV”

  1. Thank you! for hosting once again my friend! I loved discovering new tales such as Uncle Montague and spending time with old friends such Edgar Allen Poe, Hellboy and The Walking Dead. The highlight for me this year was our time visiting Zombieland. An instant classic. 🙂

  2. I was worried that you would miss the end of your own challenge! Glad to see it was not so. 🙂 I love your challenges, Carl, and I look forward to more in the future. I haven’t missed one yet! I was one of those that read a lot of books, but didn’t really review all that many yet. That’s just me, though. I am fine with the reading, but terrible at the reviewing!

    I will still review our buddy read together.

    We need to start brainstorming for our Advent Calendar post! (Or are you bowing out this year? I’d tell you that you can’t, but that would be rude! lol)

    Congrats to all the winners!

  4. It did seem to just speed by! I had a stack lined up and managed to get to 3 of them. They were Pretty Dead by Francesca Lia Block, Vampire Kisses by Ellen Schreiber and Tombstone Tea by Joanne Dahme.
    I really enjoyed it and seeing what everyone else picked. Thanks for hosting it again!

  5. Thank you so very much for this challenge. It was my first time participating, and I had a wonderful time with it. I loved the books I read, and I absolutely love Jennifer Gordon’s work (I finally bought some prints of my own, but it was one day after your giveaway period, ah well). I’ll look forward to this challenge next year.

    Congrats to all the winners, and thanks again!

  6. Thank you for hosting this challenge, Carl! As always, I had a great time reading and exchanging opinions with fellow bookbloggers! 🙂

  7. Carl, thank you for hosting this fabulous challenge. I loved the books I read, visiting everyone and reading their posts. R.I.P is already on my calendar for next year!

  8. I had a fantastic time with this challenge this year and certainly could have used another month or two to make a more noticeable dent in my perilous TBR list. Thank you so much for hosting again, Carl!

  9. Thanks again Carl for making the Autumn season that much more special! This truly has become an annual tradition for me and it just wouldn’t be the same without it! As always, I enjoyed the Grave Times 🙂 Congrats to all of the winners! Hope all is well with you my friend!

  12. Thank you, Carl. It was great fun and I can honestly say that I am looking forward to next year’s challenge already!

  13. Oooh can’t believe I won something! A surprise package on top of that! How exciting! Thanks so much Carl! Sending you my address.

  14. This was my 3rd RIP ..when I began I didn’t think I could find something to read that I would enjoy since vampires and such are not my thing (they still arent).. but each year I have come away with a gem of a read that totally surprised me because I enjoyed it. One year it was Gils All Fright Diner (not your typical Vampire) Then it was The Thirteenth Tale and the Historian! this year it was more then one yet again in Drood, Shadow of the Wind & Angels Game and the Forgotten Garden! (actually all the new ones I read I was totally happy with!) I am now a confirmed Gothic Mystery person along with Fantasy Fiction thanks to you and RIP !!! Thank you Carl for everything. And for a prize too!! oh my a poppet!!! I do love them poppets!

  15. This has been an amazing challenge especially in a genre I love. And you’ve been such a brilliant host. I’m going to be joining you again for the SF and fantasy challenges. See you then!

  16. You made me cry, you know that! And you know what else, there is never any need to thank me–I feel blessed beyond words that I get to call you “friend”! But you know that. And you know that I love you!

    And as for the “talented” thing, honestly, I’m not…I just know how to crochet from a pattern. And I’d really love to mention the two truly talented folks who designed the little critters:
    cthulhucrochet.blogspot.com (designer of that adorable little Cthulhu) and
    http://www.planetjune.com (designer of the sweet little pumpkin)

    *sigh* I can’t believe that RIP is over already! I think it went even faster than in years past. 🙁 And I know Annie, Rich, and I all have reviews we haven’t written yet for it. Hectic. Hectic. Hectic. Anyway, thank you once again for hosting this fantabulous challenge, Carl!!! I honestly think it’s a favorite of so many…I know it is for me! 😀

    Btw, Rich is trying desperately to finish up the book he’s reading so he can dive into LOTR! I’m just sooooo excited for him!

  17. Oh, and I meant to tell you that your little guy will hopefully be on the way later this week…almost finished him yesterday…he just needs arms and wings now. 😀

  18. Thank you for hosting, Carl! As always you are one of the most creative and inspirational of hosts.
    I read both Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House this RIP season and they were definite highlights for the year! Enjoy your winter :).

  22. While I did read all the books necessary for completing this challenge I didn’t get around to the reviews, which seems to happen on a regular basis with my work on challenges. *hah* It was fun and I can’t wait for the next challenges.

    I am also strangely determinant to host a themed reading month or months as well, though I will totally suck at organizing prizes.

  24. Wow, congrats on all the participants. And to all the participants as well 🙂 I didn’t manage to join in this year, unfortunately, but I fully intend to be part of it next year, and I’m already looking forward to the Once Upon a Time challenge 🙂

  25. Congrats to all the very lucky winners!

    Carl, thanks for hosting this very eerie, spooky ooky, chilling challenge! 🙂

  27. Carl, I enjoyed my first-time participation in the RIP Challenge! I only did three books, but still fun nonetheless.

    Congrats to all the winners — your featured artists do such lovely work!

  28. Thanks so much Carl for creating such a wonderful challenge which is about so much more than than reading – as brilliant as that is. I have been inspired to think about autumn in a whole new way 0:)

  31. Just because it’s officially over doesn’t mean I’m going to stop reading spooky books! Oh no. I’m on a Stephen King kick at the moment: The Stand, The Green Mile, and now I’m on It…yikes!

    Although I didn’t get to read as much as I had planned, due to one book (The Witching Hour) being exceptionally long and dense, I had a great time. Love this challenge!

  32. i had a great time! thanks for hosting this challenge. i look forward to to next year’s incarnation. 🙂

  33. Thank you for hosting this! I am game for next RIP too!
    It was fun and I completed it too! YAY for me 😉 🙂 and the others who did complete this challenge and all others who participated!
    Thank You once again Carl!

  34. Thanks again for hosting this always enjoyable challenge. I am absolutely thrilled to have won a prize and am looking forward to seeing what’s in it!

  36. Thank you for another great challenge, Carl! Unfortunately, I wasn’t as active this year as I wanted to be, but I still had a ton of fun and discovered a great new artist. 🙂

  37. Thanks so much for hosting this. It’s always so much fun, and I always discover so many new books and authors (and bloggers). Looking forward to next year’s number five.

  38. Hi Carl, I’m really sorry I wasn’t able to post my review of The Historian in time for the challenge. I really wanted to get into it as I’ve already finished the book but unfortunately my laptop’s been at the repair shop for weeks now. I know that with those great reviews entered for the challenge, mine would hardly be missed, but I’ll still post my review as soon as I get my computer back.

    Congratulations to all the winner and participants! And congratulations to you Carl, for hosting such a successful challenge 🙂

  39. Hey Carl!! I feel terrible. I have been so busy with life that I didn’t get much of a chance to participate this year. I did finish 5 novels, one book of short stories and a pretty damn cool graphic novel. I didn’t get much posting time, I didn’t get much blog hopping time, and I didn’t get to finish even half of the books I wanted.

    So, I guess RIP season is going to go through Christmas for me!! I still have about 8 books I want to finish! Thanks again for all that you do.

  40. Thank you Carl, for hosting this challenge again. Even if I didn’t get to read as much as last year, I really enjoyed the books I did read, and had so much fun giving a Canadian ghost story every time I posted!! I love this challenge, and really hope that I’m in a better frame of mind and health next year to read the many books I have lined up! I’m glad you kept Debi’s knit buddies, they are so cute!

  41. Thanks, Carl – It was a blast, as always. I love how the blogging world has become a part of marking out the signal posts for me as the year passes. Fall wouldn’t be the same without the R.I.P. Challenge! 😀

  42. I’m a bit late in saying it, but thank you for another wonderful challenge!

  43. Congrats, Carl, on another successful Challenge! What a great time you give all of us, from the seriously involved to the casual onlooker. THANK YOU!

  45. Pingback: End of Year Book Meme « Dolce Bellezza

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