Wow, that was fast!

Guess what came in the mail today....


My Coraline prize pack! I got:

* a t-shirt
* the Coraline movie tie-in video game for Wii (which I'll be playing this weekend, AFTER I finish all my grading)
* a pack of the 26 alphabet cards
* a set of 4 buttons (the kind you wear, not the kind you sew on your eyes)
* a copy of the Coraline: The Movie Collector's Edition (my 3rd version of the book)
* a bookmark featuring Coraline and the Other Mother
* a pen featuring the ghost girls
and my personal favorite...


* a key! No, seriously, after I started reading about these keys being found in big cities like Chicago, NYC, and San Fransisco, I became obsessed with finding one myself. Unfortunately, they never showed up in Atlanta. I know. I checked. A lot. And now I have my own!

Thanks to Back Seat Producers for this amazing giveaway!

Coraline goodies

I just received an e-mail informing me that I won a Coraline prize pack from Back Seat Producers! I entered approximately eleventy-billion of these giveaways, so this v. v. exciting. Hooray! :)

The Sunday Salon - 22 February 2009: Playing catch-up

Good morning, fellow Saloners! Things I've done over the past two weeks that have kept me from blogging regularly:

* Finished a shawl I was crocheting for my mom's birthday next month.

* Finished reading Rock Bottom, read The Tenth Circle, and started reading Matrimony.

* Received two books in the mail: Cassandra and Jane (thanks to J. Kaye for the giveaway!) and I Put a Spell on You (by my high school friend and amazing YA writer Adam Selzer). I can't wait to read these two.

* Taught my students about poetry. Some of them enjoyed it, some didn't. I had arranged for a rapper to come talk to them about rhythm, assonance, consonance, etc, but we had a few tornadoes coming through the area the night before and he couldn't make it.

* Remember that Austenland giveaway I had several weeks back? Well, I only had two people enter, so I decided to give both of them a book. Congrats to Chayenne and liane66!

* I also had an opportunity to watch the amazing Pierre Bensusan perform Friday night. He was voted the world's greatest guitarist last year, and after watching him, I can understand why:



Now I'm off to do some more reading and writing. Have a great Sunday, everyone!

Sunday Salon 01 February 2009: Mini-Review and a giveaway

Happy February, Sunday Saloners! Hope everyone has had a great week. I'm just excited because the reviews I set to auto-post while I was at school actually worked! I really liked being able to post that way, because it saves me time during the week. I also liked the doing the mini-reviews rather than full ones. I think I'll start doing mini-reviews for all the books I read, and save full reviews for challenge reviews. Maybe.

Here's a mini-review I didn't get to this week: Austenland, by Shannon Hale
I'm not familiar with Hale's other books (The Princess Academy series and other YA fiction); I picked this up because I lurve Jane Austen and I had read some good reviews of it. Austenland is about a young woman named Jane who is obsessed with Pride and Prejudice, and with Mr. Darcy specifically. An older relative (great-grandmother, great-aunt, something like that) finds out about this obsession and bequeaths her a trip to a P&P-style amusement park, with costumes, balls, and accents instead of roller coasters.

I think I liked the idea of this book more than the actual execution of it. Who wouldn't want to completely immerse themselves in Austen's world, even for just a few days? It'd be like living in the 1900 House. But, you know, a century earlier. Anyway, I had a few minor quibbles with this book. First of all, why does a woman in her 30s treat her copy of the BBC P&P DVD like porn? There's no need to hide it in a plant - plenty of people read (and watch) Austen and they don't feel ashamed of it. And secondly, I don't think Jane is actually obsessed with Austen. She's obsessed with Darcy, and that's a big difference. That being said, though, this isn't a bad book. It's short and fluffy. There's even a big twist in the end that really surprised me. Darcy fanatics will love it; Austenites will probably deem it "cute" and move along.

Here's the giveaway part. I somehow ended up with two copies. I've loaned one out to friends, and the other I'm going to give to one of you! If you'd like to be entered in the drawing, leave a comment answering the following question: If you could be magically transported into any book in the world (a la Inkheart or Thursday Next), which would it be and why? I'll have a drawing next Sunday and announce the winner then. Good luck!