Smugglivus 2012: An Introduction (& Week 1 Schedule)

It’s nearly December (OMG is that 2013 we see in the horizon?), it’s cold and dark outside, but over here at Smugglers HQ, we’re all tingly excitement and joyful expectation. For tomorrow, December 1st, we officially kick-start our month long celebration of all things bookish and geeky: SMUGGLIVUS!

It is here (er, almost).

Smugglivus, what?

For the uninitiated, Smugglivus is our month-long (ok, technically it’s about five weeks long) end of the year celebration. Back in our first year of The Book Smugglers in 2008, we wanted to do something special at the end of the year leading up to our blog anniversary in early January. So, we came up with the idea to host our own holiday bonanza to celebrate our favorite books, authors, and bloggers of the year. Thus, inspired by Seinfeld’s infamous Festivus, Smugglivus was born.

Each year, Smugglivus begins on December 1 and features guest posts from our favorite people across the interwebs (with a healthy serving of our regular reviews and giveaways, of course). The event then ends in with a big bang on January 7, our very own bloggiversary. (It’s our fifth this year! Wowza.)

So, what can you expect from Smugglivus 2012?

Awesome Guests:

For the duration of the event, every single day we will be featuring at least one (but often more) guest – from authors whose books we loved this year to our very favorite book bloggers. Our guests will talk about different topics: their favorite reads/TV/movies of 2012, what they are looking forward to and/or have planned in 2013, or anything in the holiday spirit of sharing bookish thoughts.

This year, our all-star author lineup includes, among many others, Kate Elliott, Tom Pollock, Frances Hardinge, Rachel Neumeier, N.K. Jemisin, Karen Healey, and Juliet Marillier. Of course, we’ll also have plenty of awesome bloggers over to play, including, Angieville’s Angie, Dear Author’s Janine, A Dribble of Ink’s Aidan Moher, Smart Bitches’ Sarah, and many, many more.

Giveaways:

We have loads of books to giveaway, some of them generously donated by some of our guests, some sponsored by us. Whee!

Feats of Strength:

What is Smugglivus without a little danger and death-defying challenge? The Feats of Strength are our “dare” challenges – taken to the next level. We like to think of it as Dares on Crack. This year, we’re continuing the tradition we started last year: both Smugglers have to read and provide mini reviews for 5 books each, one book from each of the following genres: middle grade, YA, fantasy/SF, UF/Romance plus one final random choice.

What makes this feat even more difficult? Each mini review can only be 50 words long.

That’s right. You heard us.

Airing of Grievances:

The Airing of Grievances is quite possibly our favorite Smugglivus ritual, in which we basically rant. We rant about books, TV shows, movies, the Internets, reading, and maybe even each other. *GASP* (All in good nature, of course. Most of the time.)

Ana and Thea’s Most Excellent Books of 2012:

In which we post our top 10 (ish) favorite books of the year, including notable mentions and favorite books published prior to 2012. We’ll also post about our favorite TV shows and movies in our “Best of The Rest” feature.

And that is Smugglivus in a nutshell! We will of course, continue with our regular schedule with reviews (albeit less than the usual 5 titles per week) here and at Kirkus, but Radar posts will go on a break till January. Our usual Sunday stash will be mostly dedicated to the festivites as well.

We do hope you join us for the event and have as much fun reading our guest posts and reivews as we had organizing them!

We leave you now with the line up for the first few days of Smugglivus!

This Week on Smugglivus:

This year, our very first guest to kick off the festivities (for the second year in a row!) is the lovely Angie of Angieville, who will give us her list of favorites, award style, for the year! Later, one of our new favorite authors, Courtney Summers, drops by with Five Favourite Releases of 2012 and Three 2013 Releases she is looking forward to.

On Sunday, it’s The Speculative Scotsman‘s Niall’s turn to pick favorites with his sophomore contribution to Smugglivus. Then, we will have the regular Sunday Stash and the full Week One calendar.

The 2012 Poster:

Finally, Smugglivus would not be Smugglivus without an awesome Smugglivus Poster designed by The Awesome Kenda. It’s always a pleasure working with Kenda because she totally gets what we want even when we are as cryptic as “we want something Victorian about ails and medicines and also AN OCTOPUS” and then BOOM: she comes up with the most awesome Smugglivus Poster of All Time. BEHOLD:

Happy Smugglivus everybody!

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers