Welcome to another Sunday edition of our Smugglers’ Stash & News.

We shall start with some excellent news:

The Mysterious Benedict Society covers to be “Adjusted”:

The School Library Journal reported on the 26th that Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will be adjusting the covers of The Mysterious Benedict Society following complaints that the character Sticky Washington, which is described as having brown skin appear as white in the covers:

“We are adjusting the covers of all three titles immediately as they reprint in order to offer a more faithful rendering as soon as possible,” Melanie Chang, Little, Brown’s executive director of publicity and communications, told School Library Journal.

We couldn’t be more delighted with the news and as we said last week, proud to be a part of this awesome, vocal, dedicated group. However, let’s not forget that this has been going on for a long time and as awesomely urged by The Rejectionist in their post last week: No Retreat, Baby, No Surrender!

In Other News:

From the series: Things That Mystify and Baffle Us.

The Guardian reported that

Dictionaries have been removed from classrooms in southern California schools after a parent complained about a child reading the definition for “oral sex”.

Yeah, you heard us right. The Webster Dictionary was pulled from shelves because a parent thought it was not age appropriate for her child. The Dictionary. What comes next? A ban on the alphabet?

Because who knows what those perverted little minds can spell? We are seriously considering creating a special tag for archiving surreal news such as these, like “Aliens” or “Snow in Rio de Janeiro”. Perhaps “X-files”. Anyways, the ban was (somewhat) overruled and the parents can now opt out whether their child can or can not have access to the Dictionary.

In other more, uplifting news:

The Nebula Awards are the annual awards by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to celebrate excellence in science fiction and fantasy writing. The 2009 Awards will be held May 14-16 at Cape Canaveral, Florida and nominations will start soon and be open till February 15th. Tor.com has a list of interesting titles for consideration.

In similar news, The British Science Fiction Association Award shortlist has been announced this week. We are ecstatic to see in the Best Novel category Ark by Stephen Baxter which was one of Thea’s top 10 books of 2009. Also, included are The City and the City by China Mieville and Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin, both books in our TBR piles – we must really get to read them soon!

The “Don’t Let Your Dream Fade” Contest:

Lisa McMann, author of the Wake trilogy and Simon & Schuster are running a really cool contest. Offering $1000 to a teen to further his or her dreams, whether it be for college, something arty, or even just not having to work a second job to have more time to focus on high school: they’ve asked teens to do a video blog (2 min or less) comparing their dreams to Janie’s, the main character in the Wake trilogy. You can read more about the contest here or check an example of one of vlogs already created for the competition on youtube.

A Teaser:

And finally, coming from Harper Teen this February:

28 Days of Winter Escapes

28 Fabulous Books. 28 Fabulous Authors. 28 Fabulous Blogs.

For 28 days this February, Harper Teen is offering up a book-a-day giveaway on its Winter Escapes website. For every day of the event, a different book will be featured and up for grabs on the official site – but also, the author of that particular book will be at a different partner blog to talk about their book. We are thrilled to announce that we Smugglers are part of the event, and will be having author Delia Ephron here on February 17th to talk about her featured book, The Girl With the Mermaid Hair.

It all starts tomorrow, with The Amanda Project: Book 1: Invisible I. Make sure to stop by the Winter Escapes website for a chance to win autographed copies of the books, and also be entered for a chance to win an iTouch.

Giveaway Winners:

We had two giveaways that ended yesterday!

Molly Harper Giveaway:

The two winners of an autographed set (each) of all three Jane Jameson books by Molly Harper are:

Wish Giveaway:

The winner of an autographed copy of Wish by Alexandra Bullen is:

Congratulations! You know the drill. Please send your snail mail address to contact (at) thebooksmugglers (dot) com and we will get the books to you ASAP.

This Week On The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, Thea finally gets a chance to read and review, post apocalyptic novel Veracity by Laura Bynum, a book she has been eyeing for some time.

On Tuesday, Ana reviews highly anticipated Fantasy novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin.

Wednesday sees Thea reviewing the sci-fi thriller Impact by Douglas Preston.

And then on Thursday Ana finally resumes her Historical Romance reading with a review of The Bride and The Buccaneer by Darlene Marshall.

Finally on Friday, we post a joint review of a book we both have been wanting to read for a long time and which comes highly recommend from several sources. The YA/Fantasy novel, Blackbringer by Laini Taylor.*

And that’s it from us today.

Have a nice Sunday, folks!

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

* EDITED above from Silksinger. We are reviewing the FIRST book in the series, titled Blackbringer.

Welcome to another Sunday edition of our Smugglers’ Stash & News.

First up, we’ve got some fan-freakin-tastic news.

Bloomsbury Retracts Cover:

On Thursday afternoon, Bloomsbury officially announced that they will no longer be printing the offending cover of Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore.

Bloomsbury is ceasing to supply copies of the US edition of Magic Under Glass. The jacket design has caused offense and we apologize for our mistake. Copies of the book with a new jacket design will be available shortly.

As with Liar, Bloomsbury is retracting the cover and will issue a new one.

Author Jaclyn Dolamore has posted on her blog that the new cover is underway, and it will be featuring a model of color:

You may have seen my vision of Nimira in my book trailer. I hadn’t shared this image with Bloomsbury at the time the cover was originally conceived (the trailer wasn’t created until November, after the book was done) but we’ll now be looking at models who look more closely like her, which I’m very excited about!

To everyone that posted about Bloomsbury’s racist cover practices, to everyone that tweeted about it, to everyone that called or wrote the publisher demanding change, thank you. You have all done it. As a community, we were able to make our voices heard, and together we were able to cause change. We are so incredibly happy and proud to be a part of this awesome, vocal, dedicated group.

But, as Ari of Reading In Color and the folks over at Bookshelves of Doom remind us, this one cover at Bloomsbury is not an isolated incident. Whitewashing of book covers is a practice that pervades the publishing industry. With that in mind, and because this is something important to us, we’ve decided to add a new feature to The Book Smugglers called “Cover Matters.” Starting on Monday, we plan to post at about cover issues at least once a month. We hope to be able to even have guests over for interview – bloggers, authors, maybe even a publisher (hey, it’s worth a try) – to go with the posts.

In Other News:

Lots of news today! First, if you haven’t heard, there is going to be an honest to goodness Book Blogger Convention this year! This will be a one day event, uniting book bloggers from around the world in New York City. The con will take place on Friday, May 28, 2010 at the NYC Seminar and Conference Center in New York City – which is pretty cool for folks that might be in town anyways for Book Expo America (May 25-27). Some of the topics to be covered include: Professionalism/Ethics, Marketing, Author/Blogger Relationships, Building Community, Writing/Building Content. While Ana won’t be able to make it, Thea has already registered for BEA and plans on making it to BBC as well! So, any other book blogger types that are in the area or planning on flying out, let us know! Bonus, the good folks running the convention have an awesome giveaway right now – book bloggers can enter for a chance to have their registration fee waived! Only one will win, but it’s worth entering, especially if you’re watching your budget. Registration for the con is currently open and available for a discounted rate of $90 (until February 14). So, hop to!

In other slightly belated news, the ALA has announced literary award winners for 2010 last week! Here are the big winners:

John Newbery Medal (for most outstanding contribution to children’s literature): When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Newberry Honor Books: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin, and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick

Randolph Caldecott Medal (for most distinguished American picture book for children):
The Lion & the Mouse illustrated and written by Jerry Pinkney.
Caldecott Honor Books: All the World illustrated by Marla Frazee, written by Liz Garton Scanlon; Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, written by Joyce Sidman

Michael L. Printz Award (for excellence in literature written for young adults):
Going Bovine written by Libba Bray
Printz Honor Books: Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman, The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey, Punkzilla by Adam Rapp, and Tales of the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 by John Barnes

Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award (recognizing an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults): Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal written by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson.
King Author Honor Book: Mare’s War by tanita s. davis

We are thrilled to see that the Printz went to Libba Bray’s AWESOME Going Bovine, which we reviewed last year. Also, Thea’s ecstatic that Rick Yancey’s truly excellent novel The Monstrumologist was honored as well.

Also, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest-growing division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced its 2010 Top 10 List of Best Books for Young Adults. And the titles are:

Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan (Reviewed HERE and HERE)
The Orange Houses by Paul Griffin
The Great Wide Sea by M.H. Herlong
The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks
Alligator Bayou by Donna Jo Napoli
Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor
Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker

We’re thrilled to see Sarah Rees Brennan, Catherine Jinks and Laini Taylor honored on the list – and we’ve got a few books that we desperately need to read nowNowNOW.

This next item on the list is just really freaking awesome. Neil Gaiman (aka Ana and Thea’s writing GOD) has teamed up with comic book artist Jim Lee, letterer Todd Klein (who did the lettering for Neil Gaiman’s epic Sandman series) and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and have put together a limited print run of an illustrated poem, “100 Words.” (Click to enlarge)

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? You can purchase a copy online via Neverwear.

Finally, one last bit of news. Last week, Thea finally got off her slacker-butt, and set up a Facebook Fan Page for The Book Smugglers. You can find us by clicking the handy button above (which is also in our left hand sidebar). Our posts automatically update there, and we’ll also pop in to make other bookish announcements. The reason for the page? Well, we received a few comments in our recent survey asking us to syndicate our feed over at Facebook, and…voila! Hope you all enjoy it.

This Week on The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, Alexandra Bullen, debut author of young adult fantasy novel Wish stops by on her blog tour, talking about what inspires her and you will have a chance to win a copy of her copy. Later, we will have our very first post in our new feature “Cover Matters,” in which we will take a look at whitewashing on the covers of books.

Tuesday, Thea reviews one of her most highly anticipated books of the new year, Robert Jackson Bennett’s apocalyptic-style/historical fiction/horror novel, Mr. Shivers. Also, Harry of Temple Library Reviews will be here, giving us a guest review of Circle of Fire by Keri Arthur (the first book in the Damask Circle Trilogy)

On Wednesday, we give you a double shot of Carrie Jones! First, we give a joint review of Need, and then later in the day Thea reviews the second book in the young adult fantasy series, Captivate.

On Thursday, Ana reviews Dia Reeves’ dark young adult debut novel Bleeding Violet. Her post will be followed by our first Guest Dare of 2010: Renee of Renee’s Book Addiction caves to the pressure (ours and her husband’s) and reads the first book in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring.

Finally, on Friday we close out the week with a joint review of – squeee! – Archangel’s Kiss by Nalini Singh.

Phew. It’s a big week. Again. I’ll leave you with this awesome picture that I think encapsulates Ana and myself at times perfectly. Until next week…

Happy Sunday, all! Hope you’ve had a great weekend, etc, etc, etc. Now, down to business…

Giveaway Winners:

First up, is our giveaway of Meljean Brook’s latest Guardians novel, Demon Forged. The lucky winner is:

Also, the winner of an autographed hardcover copy of Fire, Krsitin Cashore’s latest novel is:

Congratulations! You know the drill. Send us an email (contact AT the book smugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we’ll get your prize out to you as soon as possible. Thanks to everyone who entered both contests!

Around the Internets:

It’s Steampunk Month at Tor.com! For the month of October, the good folks at Tor.com, including authors like Cherie Priest and Lev Grossman and assorted bloggers will be posting articles of interest, giveaways, new short fiction, interviews, and much more – all centered around the increasingly popular steampunk motif. The month has already started and is going strong! Check out the post about George Mann’s new steampunk novel The Affinity Bridge – and there’s a giveaway too. Cherie Priest also has a great post about her new release, Boneshaker.

We’ll definitely be checking in all month. Keepin’ it brassy.

In other big book news, nominations for the 2009 Cybils are open! The Cybils Awards are Children’s and Young Adult Literary Awards, bestowed by book bloggers. The purpose of the awards is two-fold:

• Reward the children’s and young adult authors (and illustrators – let’s not forget them) whose books combine the highest literary merit and “kid appeal.” What’s that mean? If some la-di-dah awards can be compared to brussel sprouts, and other, more populist ones to gummy bears, we’re thinking more like organic chicken nuggets. We’re yummy and nutritious.
• Foster a sense of community among bloggers who write about children’s and YA literature, highlight our best reviewers (and shamelessly promote their blogs) and provide a forum for the similarly obsessed.

From now until October 15th at 11:59 PM, you can nominate your favorite young adult novels for an award. You can only nominate ONE book per category, so make sure it is a book you are passionate about!

With that said, you can make your nominations with the online form HERE. For more information about the Cybils, make sure to check out the award website HERE.

This Week on The Book Smugglers:

On Monday, Ana reviews Malinda Lo’s retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale, Ash.

Tuesday, Thea reviews another highly anticipated read of 2009, the long awaited book 2 in Patrick Ness’ Chaos Walking series, The Ask and the Answer.

On Wednesday we double up, as Ana reviews Pastworld by Ian Beck, and Thea reviews Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

On Thursday, Thea reviews Ilona Andrews’ first book in a new Urban Fantasy series, On the Edge.

And on Friday, we close out the week with a joint review of Brandon Sanderson’s Well of Ascension (Mistborn book 2).

Phew. It’s another crazy week, and we hope you enjoy!

Until tomorrow…

The Book Smugglers have been bestowed with not one but TWO (!?!?!?!) awards for Book Blogger Appreciation Week:

When we found out the news, both of us were ecstatic. Rapturous. Freaking delirious! And, at the risk of sounding incredibly cheesy, we really owe it all to you folks that read our tiny little corner of the vastness that is the internet. We’re thrilled that our Graphic Novel reviews have gone over so well (and we vow to review more of them in the future – just wait, next week we’ll have a review coming your way), and we cannot think of a better award to win than one for Best Collaborative Blog!

So folks, this one is all for you. Thank you, thank you, thank you! A million times over, thank you for reading our site, and for motivating us to continue to write reviews, compile lists, run contests, ramble on ponderings, etc. Y’all rock. And a huge thanks once again to Amy and the crew for their tireless work in putting together BBAW. If you haven’t been over to the website, you should hop on over and grab a badge to show your appreciation:

It’s been a great week.

Yesterday the shortlists for the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards were released and we made the final ballot for three categories!! (Woohoo! Yay! Oba!) They are (if you click on each of them you will be able to see examples of posts for each category) :

Best Graphic Novel Review Blog
Best Collaborative Blog
Most Humorous/Funniest

How cool is that? We love the categories we have been shortlisted for and it is a great honor to be nominated amongst these blogs. You can check all of the other categories here – and then show your appreciation for your favourites! Voting closes Saturday September 12 at 11:59 PM EST.

So, we are here to celebrate our inclusion on the final ballot, but mostly we would like to give our own two cents about the Awards and about BBAW and why we are 100% behind the whole thing.

On The Awards

We are sure a lot of people are wondering about the awards, especially about the fairness of the nominations and the final shortlists (especially given the numerous online brouhahas). We can certainly understand some of the misgivings – there should have been more information about the process available on the official website (for example, what are the criteria for nominations and exactly how the blogs are being judged to the public). There were also some concern about the way some of the nominees were contacted as though it was assumed that the entire Internets knew what the BBAW were – which is an unreasonable assumption of course, given how the Internets is like, IMMENSE.

But you know what? BBAW is in its infancy and as such it’s still going through a trial period and a lot of things need to be tweaked. We believe that to completely dismiss it as “only another one of those meaningless awards” is to use an inaccurate description – because it’s not. This is not a Premio Dardos award or a Kreativ Blog award – these awards are really nice and everything, but are memes based mostly on an individual’s choice (and usually along the lines of, “Well, [so and so blogger] has not gotten this meme/award yet, so I’ll give it to him/her”). BBAW Awards, on the other hand, are honest to goodness awards with open nominations and a judging panel of impartial volunteers who go through an extensive process to rank each nominee.

We Book Smugglers are in no way connected with the official organization of the BBAW Awards, but we were involved with the shortlisting process. Both Thea and Ana were invited to be judging panelists (and no, we were not judging categories that we were nominated for!) – Ana was on the panel for Best Mystery Blog and Thea was on the panel for Best Cultural Review Blog. When we accepted we had no idea at how much work was involved. Seriously, people, you have NO IDEA how strenuous the process is. We know there were other 4 judges on the panel with us (it’s 5 per category), but we have NO IDEA who they were. Rest assured, we did not trade secret emails, currying favorites amongst the nominees.

We each received an Excel spreadsheet with all the blogs nominated – and this means EVERY. SINGLE. NOMINEE. Many of which were inappropriate for the category, we might add! – and the 5 links they submitted for evaluation. Ana’s spreadsheet had more than 40 blogs and Thea’s more than 50. Then each blog had to be evaluated according to 16 different criteria ranging from ’spelling/grammar,’ ‘original content’ and ‘fresh perspective’ to ‘ease of navigation’ and ‘audience engagement.’ It was a lot of work, and we think it was a pretty fair process given the anonymity of the panelists, not to mention the fact we were judging book blogs that are outside of our normal range of reads (so we were not tempted to play favorites with bloggers we already knew). We’d assign each blog a numerical score for each criterion, and the sum totals of all the judges’ scorecards determined the who made the shortlist nominations.

We are sure someone somewhere is thinking: “But who makes these decisions? Who chose the judging criteria?” Which is fair enough, and these questions should be asked if we aim for an honest award that means something. The judging criteria were compiled by Amy and the wonderful crew of tireless BBAW runners, and ultimately the shortlists are a numbers game – the blogs with the highest scores make it on to the final ballot. Is this a completely fail-proof process? NO. Are there flaws? YES.

But, the thing is, the Awards? They are only a part, a SMALL part, of what Book Blogger Appreciation Week is all about. And to concentrate on them is really to lose sight of what really matters here.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

The title says it all. Book Blogger Appreciation Week is a week-long event to celebrate books, reading, and most of all blogging. Simple as that. It started last year in 2008 and it was run by the [wonderful!stupendous!herculean!] Amy from the blog My Friend Amy, and it has expanded in such a way that this year (the mere second year of its existence, BBAW v2.0) has over 1000 blogs taking part. That’s a lot of blogs. Did we mention that those participating are all volunteers, doing this out of a genuine love for reading, writing and blogging? That’s a lot of work!

Over the course of the week, the aim is to celebrate what we book bloggers are all about. There are suggested daily blogging topics that EVERYONE can participate in by way of adding your post links at the BBAW official website every day.

For example, on Monday, you can talk about your favorite blogs that did not make the final award ballots. On Tuesday, there will be blogger interview swaps, and so on and so forth. For the entire list of suggestions, check out the official list HERE.

We will be posting every day following the daily topics and we encourage all of you to participate! You do not have to vote for the awards, or be nominated for an award, or have anything to do with the awards to be a part of BBAW! In fact, you can pretty much ignore the awards and make it all about connecting with other like-minded people, if you want. The awards are the icing on the cake, the last leg of BBAW – as with, say, the RWA Nationals each year, the awards are part of the closing ceremony at the end of the convention. They’re a great way to celebrate, but the real fun is in the convention itself.

The spirit of Book Blogger Appreciation Week is to connect, make new blogging buddies, and discover new, wonderful blogs in this vast ocean that is the Internets. It is about celebrating our community and communicating with people you wouldn’t otherwise know, and sharing our experiences and ideas – it is an extrapolation or rather, a concentration of everything NICE and AWESOME that blogging is supposed to be in ONE SINGLE WEEK.

In short, it is about having FUN. Isn’t that why we are all here anyways?

(Now, please go vote for us! Pretty Please?)

Hello, good morning and welcome!

Another week ahead of us and plenty of cool things to come but first….

A Couple of HUGE Announcements:

We have just received some AMAZING news! Joel Sutherland, speculative fiction author extraordinaire, has made the final ballot for the 2009 Stoker Awards. His psychological horror novel, Frozen Blood is up for Superior Achievement in a First Novel (along with David Oppegaard’s Suicide Collectors, another author we’ve read and interviewed here). We’ve read and loved Joel’s short story work, in Fried! Fast Food, Slow Deaths and The Beast Within, and were blown away by his fantastic debut novel effort with Frozen Blood. And so, we offer our sincere heartfelt congratulations to this new author, and have our fingers, toes, and any other appendages crossed for Joel!

For those interested in giving Joel’s hopefully soon-to-be-award-winning horror novel, it is now available online at Amazon.

In other spectacular news, debut author Carrie Ryan has announced that the movie rights to her zombie young adult novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth have been purchased!!!! Here’s the Publisher’s Weekly tidbit:

Alan Nevins of Renaissance Literary & Talent has just closed film rights on Carrie Ryan’s YA novel, The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Nevins, who brokered the deal on behalf of Jim McCarthy at Dystel Literary, sold the book, which Delacorte Books for Young Readers published in March, to Seven Star Pictures (K-11, forthcoming). Nevins said the book, a zombie thriller set in colonial times about a girl who lives in a religious community in the woods and is equally worried about a zombie invasion and her planned marriage, is in line to “do for zombies what Twilight did for vampires.” Supposedly Seven Star is developing the project for an-as-yet-unnamed A-list starlet, and fast-tracking the project with a first draft of the screenplay already in the works.

Hell. YES.

As The Forest of Hands and Teeth is already one of Thea’s favorite reads of 2009, we couldn’t be more excited for Carrie and for the film. If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Carrie’s evocative, haunting, soon-to-be-a-hit-movie debut, go forth and do so. Immediately.

Contest Winner

The winner of our recent contest: Keeper of Light and Dust by Natasha Mostert is

Jo, congratulations! Please send your snail mail address to contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com.

This week on The Book Smugglers

On Monday, Ana will be rambling about her reviewing process in another piece for our series Smugglers Ponderings.

On Tuesday, Ana reviews Always a Scoundrel by Suzanne Enoch

On Wednesday, Thea reviews Diamond Star by Catherine Asaro

On Thursday we will review Strange Angels,the new YA book by Lili St.Crow

And finally on Friday, we will do a joint review of Pride, Prejudice and Zombies:

And finally, a piece of advice:

GO WATCH STAR TREK – WE BEG OF YOU, FOR EVERYTHING THAT IS SACRED AND HOLY.

We can’t even begin to tell you how much we loved the movie and how it is made of awesome. We loved the storyline, the science made sense, the surprises (!!!!!!!) and above all, the acting. Every single one of them was spot on: Spock and Kirk more than anyone else. There is this one scene….no, we shall not tell, but know this: it kicks ass. Plus, Young!Kirk? HOT!!!

That’s it for today folks: we leave you with this message:

“Humans…the other white meat. Unless you’re black, then it’s dark meat. Or if you’re Asian, then it’s yellow meat. Or if you’re Native American, it’s red meat. (Well…you get the idea.)”

~ Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Who cares…when the world is about to end in a flurry of homicidal hens and reanimated roosters?!

Buck-buck-braaaaaaaaaaaaaains!!!!

It has come to our attention that we have been designated as recipients of the Zombie Chicken award. No, not those zombie chickens (the ones that are euthanized, placed in a compost heap and rise from the dead – no joke, this happens to 1 or 2 in 40,000 chickens). We received this fantastic honor from Marg of Reading Adventures, Christine of The Happily Ever After, and Angie of Angieville. Here’s the rundown:

The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the zombie chicken – excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the zombie chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all…

Rather than incur the wrath of the deadly zombie chicken, we hereby nominate the following bloggers:

1. Graeme of Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review – A fellow zombie aficionado and a blogger we highly admire, we think Graeme would be a pretty strong ally in holding off the zombie chicken hordes.
2. Jeff of Conditional Axe and Sarah of Great Hera! (Both of AlertNerd) – We’ve only recently discovered Jeff and Sarah’s blogs thanks to AlertNerd’s awesome “What’s Your Scott and Jean?” bonanza, and have subsequently added their blogs to our feed readers. We figure they’d come up with some crafty zombo-cluck decapitation techniques.
3. Jessica of Racy Romance Reviews – It’s no secret that we are in awe of Jessica’s consistently thought-provoking, discussion-inducing essays and book reviews. With her smarts, the forsaken fowl stand no chance.
4. Kristen of Fantasy Cafe – Kristen’s succinct yet informative reviews make for wonderful book recommendations. And with her tastes in dark fantasy, repelling pestilential poultry shouldn’t be a problem.
5. Karen Mahoney, Aspiring Author and Book Pimp – What’s the apocalypse without Karen? Honorary Book Smuggler and Book Pimp extraordinaire, Karen’s responsible for the Blob-like TBR piles that are gradually taking over our homes. At least the book piles will help reinforce our barricaded doors…

Well folks, you know the drill. Pass it on to five other bloggers, or suffer a fate most fowl…

(Well, we’re actually jumping the gun a bit)

The 2009 RITA and Golden Heart Finalists have just been announced! AND, we Smugglers are very proud that two of our favorite authors have been nominated for these prestigious awards.

We offer a whole-hearted cheer of congratulations to:

Nalini Singh for Mine to Possess as a RITA Finalist for Paranormal Romance. We are both Nalini Singh fans (in fact, Ana is a self-professed Nalini-Singh-aholic) — just check out our Nalini Singh Extravaganza, our interview with Nalini, our Angels’ Blood special (including an interview with the heroine of the novel, Elena Deveraux), or Nalini’s Smugglivus Post!

You can check out Ana’s review of the RITA nominated Mine to Possess HERE .

AND congratulations to…

The fabulous Meljean Brook, a 2009 RITA Finalist in the Romance Novella category for “Thicker Than Blood”!!!!!!

Both of us are, again, major Meljean fangirls. We love her Guardians Series (just check out all our reviews and Meljean love), and have had the great pleasure of having Meljean over for interviews, talking about her inspirations, and for Smugglivus too. (Not to mention, Meljean is just one of the coolest people on teh internets. Just check out her fabulous blog!)

You can check out our review of the now RITA nominated novella “Thicker Than Blood” HERE.

CONGRATULATIONS TO NALINI AND MELJEAN!!! We have our fingers and toes crossed for you!

And, of course, congrats to all the other RITA and Golden Heart finalists as well.

Mamma Mia! We got a Your Blog is Fabulous award from 4 awesome blogs: Books Lists Life, Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review, Dark Wolf and Grasping from the Wind!

Thea and Ana – 20 years from now. The new Edina and Patsy?

THANK YOU all for the award and we think you are totally fabulous too!

Now, we have to list 5 things we are obsessed with and can’t live without and then give the award to 5 blogs. Here it goes:
5 things we are obsessed with:

1) Books! duh. Just to make our point, in case it isn’t very clear by now: we read all the time, and everywhere. Ana reads in the treadmill at the gym and Thea reads while walking home from work. We are pretty good at it too.

2) Lost! This is how Ana and Thea met a few years ago and the obsession continues through the highs and lows of the show. We both adore Sawyer and we are both fangirls who love to theorise – we are very proud of our Desmond Theory.

3) Movies! What can we say? From very little we have both been avid cinema goers. Thea loves horror, Ana loves old Hollywood movies. They both love superheroes and stupid comedies. And Clint Eastwood.

4) Blogging! When we first started the Book Smugglers we thought we would be able to post one review per week and that’s all. <<<< Insert Hysterical Laughter Here. Cue to one year later and most of our free time is spent blogging and we love it!

5) Travel! We both love to travel. Most of all we love to ORGANISE the trips. At our houses, we are the ones in charge of planning everything from where to go, to where to stay, how to get to places (we study maps!) to what to do every single day. Needless to say, everything is ready and set to go six months prior to the date of travel.

OK, so now for the award. Obviously, we think LOADS of blogs are fabulous and it’s pretty hard to come up with only five. But here they are, YOUR BLOG IS FABULOUS:

Walkabout – Orannia is a frequent reader of our blog and her blog is pretty cool. She recently decided to try her hand at reviewing Melusine by Sarah Monette and we thought it was pretty good. So here’s hoping she will write more reviews.

Kris ‘n’ good Books – Kris is pretty obsessed with books (hello friend!) and her blogging voice is very distinctive and oh so funny. We are fans.

What Kate’s Reading –Kate writes in-depth reviews and has a very eclectic taste that range from Kafka to romance novels. She has a feature called “Unbuttoned Yet Tucked In” that is really fun. She is also the brains behind the Anna Karenina 2009. (We are reading it, are you?)

The Discriminating Fangirl – Listen, this is her logo: pop culture + geekery = happiness. She is like, the lost Smuggler. Need we say more?

Realms of Speculative Fiction – Run by a Tetrarchy that review genre fiction helped by a mascot called Evil Fruitcake. We love their reviews which are both detailed and fun- always a good combination in our books.

Cheerio,

~ Ana and Thea, your friendly neighbourhood The Book Smugglers.