A good Sunday to you all! Hey, have you started your Christmas shopping yet? I am MOST excited because I think I found the Ultimate Christmas Gift for Thea but shhhhhh don’t tell her!

Anyways, here is our weekly stash:

Giveaway winners:

We’ve got two separate giveaway winners to announce!
The winner of Blood Promise by Richelle Mead is:

Crystal (comment #14)

The two winners of Wild Heart by Lori Brighton are:

Marie (comment # 17)
Lisa Garrett (comment # 15)

Congratulations to all the winners! You know the drill. Send us an email (contact AT thebooksmugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we’ll get your goodies out to you as soon as possible. Thanks again to everyone that entered, and if you didn’t win this time, don’t worry – we have plenty more where these giveaways came from!

Assorted News:

Have your heard of NA? Well, apparently there is a new genre booming and it’s called New Adult, with the age range between 20-26. St Martin’s Press is running a contest and you can read more about the genre here. Although we find the idea interesting we can’t help but to think: is this really needed? What do you think?

Kristi, The Story Siren has a very interesting post about ARCs where she posts the Q&A after she emailed publishers and authors about the cost of producing and distributing, how to request them etc. The post has a lot of information, especially for new bloggers.

Last week, Ana wrote a post, called I, Reader, where she pondered about genre exhaustion and about the sameness that afflicts Romance’s Covers and titles. Well, as it turns out this is a cross-genre malady. Bookshelves of Doom posted a link to a gallery of reused (over and over again) covers for Historical novels; and Aidan from A Dribble of Ink posted the cover art for the new Brent Weeks novel which is very similar to the author’s previous covers in a different series.

Old series:

x

New series:

The post sparked an interesting conversation which had both the author and the creative director chiming in.Be sure to check it out here. (And we really need get around to read the first series by this author. It is in our TBR for AGES) .

Also via A Dribble of Ink: we learnt that there might be a new book in the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Thea may or may not have hyperventilated when she heard the news.

The Vault of Horror, one of Thea’s favorite horror blogs , is holding a competition, Ms Horror Blogosphere,

the first-ever “bloody pageant” of horror blogstresses. The contestants have been lined up here.

Movie news:

This week we saw the first trailer of Clash of Titans, the remake of one of our favorite movies. The trailer looks ok:

We really want to see this although we ain’t holding our breaths. We might actually me more excited about the Ray Harryhausen special we have lined up for when the movie comes out! Just for fun check out the original movie’s trailer:

But this: THIS LOOKS AWESOME! Kick-Ass, the Movie:

Kick-ass is a superhero movie, an adaptation of Mark Millar and John Romita Jr about a New York teen who becomes a vigilante called Kick-ass. Yes, we SO WANT TO SEE THIS. And here is the teaser:

This Week on the Book Smugglers:

On Monday we have our guest dare of November: Rhiannon Hart reviews The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold.

On Tuesday, we do a joint review of The Road Home by Ellen Emerson White, a YA book we have been dared to read by Angie of Angieville

On Wednesday, Ana reviews the Last Will of Moira Leahy by Therese Walsh

On Thursday, Thea reviews (and gives away) Darker Angels, the second book of The Black Sun Daugther’s series by M L Hanover

And finally, on Friday, it is our monthly installment of What She Said : Ana reviews Resenting the Hero by Moira J. Moore, the first book in one of Thea’s favorite Fantasy series and Thea reviews Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson, one of the Ana’s top picks of Fantasy this year.

And that’s it from us today! Have a great week!

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

I am supposed to be writing a Stash post right now but you see, Thea is NOT here.

What is it that they say again? “When the cat’s away the mice will play”? I really feel like rambling about assorted things instead of writing a cohesive post about upcoming stuff. I don’t feel cohesive at all. And I blame it on Thea.

She LEFT. For 3 WEEKS. To visit family in a land far, far away and 8 hours ahead of me, which makes her pretty unavailable to talk to me and since we usually exchange thousands of emails every day talking about important stuff like books, and blogging, now I have all of this free time and I don’t know what to do with it!

“Why don’t you read any of the gazillion books that you have”, you may ask me? I DON’T KNOW. There is something wrong with me. I haven’t read a single page this week. That is unusual. I usually read at least 3 books per week. Plus I have tons of books that I HAVE to read and I can’t open a single one of them. I have been carrying around this one:

in my bag for days and I didn’t read a single line yet. To be fair, I don’t know if this is Thea’s fault or Julie James’ for writing such a good book that now everything I read afterwards pales in comparison. I think I am going with Thea’s fault since this seems to be theme of the post. HOW exactly this is her fault, I have no clue. But I am sure it is.

So instead of reading and emailing, I have been occupying my time with other stuff like wandering from room to room like a lost soul in an old manor house. Or watching weird yet addictive TV Shows like Important Things With Demetri Martin

I have yet to ascertain if the show is crap or brilliant. I will keep you posted. Or glued to the TV to know what happens next in the Jon Stewart- Jim Cramer War of Words. I don’t even live in America but hell if I don’t think Jon is awesome.

I also twitted a lot this week. Something that I don’t usually do, because let’s face it: addictive much? I found out we are close to having 500 followers! WOW. That’s a lot isn’t it? I also found that Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman twit and immediately started following them! Another thing I found out, we got 4 “Your Blog is Fabulous” Awards from some pretty fabulous blogs out there for which I am so thankful and honoured– and although I had to squee all by myself, I am sure Thea will be super happy when she hears of this. I will soon pass the award ahead.

We also won a Premio Dardo award from Tracy. I felt super great about this, because Premio Dardo is a pretty cool award for bloggers and one that has been around everywhere. Plus, Tracy is a sweetheart!!

The award “Dardos” appreciates the merits – culturally, literary and individually- of every blogger who expresses him/herself on his/her blog

But the thing took a direction no one could have predicted. CJ from the Thrillionth Page was awarded the same prize from Tracy and she wrote a funny post about it, investigating the origins of the prize, wondering about its name etc. I always wondered about it myself you see. Because Premio and Dardo are Portuguese (my mother tongue) words (they can also be Spanish though) and they mean Prize and Dart respectively. I told CJ this, and decided to do a bit of investigating myself. I googled Premio Dardos (in Portuguese) and found this Yahoo Post column by Alexandre Inagaki who is editor of a big blog in Brazil (he won an International prize called The Bobs promoted by the German site Deutsche Welle em 2007) who wrote a piece about “Blog Prizes” back in February.

In his piece, he talks about prizes and how bloggers love to get and to give them away and how they sometimes resemble those pyramids schemes. One such prize is the Premio Dardo. According to him the fact that you need to give the prize to not less than 15 bloggers makes the prize sort of meaningless and the thing has been translated to English, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and German. Also according to him the creator of the prize is Spanish Writer Alberto Zambade who owns the blog Leyendas de el pequeno Dardo – Dardo being his nickname. In Feb 15 2008, he published the “I Entrega de Premios Dardo 2008 Best Blog Darts thinker” …. That is an awesome bit of investigating if I may say so myself…but to know more about it , you need to go to CJ’s blog and read her second entry about our CSI: Premio Dardo.

I also found out that there are some books that I most positively need to have or DIE.

Like this one for example:

“Soulless” by Gail Carriger. US Release Date: October 2009. Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she is being rudely attacked by a vampire to whom she has not been properly introduced!

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire, and the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible.

Can she figure out what is actually happening to London’s high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? And who is the real enemy . . . and do they have treacle tart?

“Soulless” is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking…
Found on Fantasy Book Critic’s Blog.

Or this one:

Which every single Fantasy blog seems to be reviewing these days. Aidan loves it. John does too. And DarkWolf and of course, Graeme. . Needless to say: I WANT it. Now, you want to know how long Amazon.UK wants me to wait for it? 1-2 months. *gasps*

And then you have Angie obsessing about these three books and making me literally dream about them. The Thief, The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia.

So, this is what happens in a week when I am left to my own devices: I tend to wander, ramble, exaggerate, not to talk about the things I am supposed to (like the review of Smooth Talking Strange by Lisa Kleypas I will post this week, or the review of Forest of Hands of Teeth by Carrie Ryan that Thea will post on Thursday) and to plot about the things that I will be doing for the next two weeks.

One thing is for certain: this place is so not the same without Thea.

Happy Sunday!!!

So, not a lot of news today, just a couple of announcements, some pimpage and something about the Batman comics brought to our attention by Katiebabs.

Pimpage:

Our good friend and powerpuff girl comrade is starting her own blog! Is is called Babbling About Books, And More! She is preparing loads of cool stuff in this first week so go forth and say hello!

Also this week My Friend Amy’s celebration of everything Blog-ish –The Book Blogger Appreciation Week starts tomorrow with heaps of prizes and giveaways!

This Week:

On Thursday, Ana reviews Mr Cavendish, I Presume (release date: Sep. 30th) by Julia Quinn. The first book in the two-book series, The Lost Duke of Wyndham is on her Top 10 reads of 2008 – will the second book make it as well?

On Friday, another Powerpuff Girls review with Katiebabs at her new casa. We will be reviewing King of Sword and Sky by C.L. Wilson – another one of Ana’s favourite series – will this one ALSO make her top 10? And how many spots are there on her top 10 , exactly? It surely seems more than…..10. What is happening inside this girl’s head? And why is she speaking in third person?

And finally, the coolest–craziest news ever. Well, ok, that is a gross exaggeration, but I need to make this stash sound a little bit more interesting, don’t I? So here you go: It seems that someone at DC didn’t do her/his job right – apparently the most recent issue of All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder went to print full of swear words like f**k, s**t and worse! Holy crap, Batman! DC seems to be trying to pull the issues from circulation but some copies made to the distributors. Thea went all over town trying to find one, but alas to no avail. You can read the article here.

That’s it for today, folks. Hasta mañana!

Avast ye, mateys! A couple of announcements and some cool happenings around blogsphere….

This week:

Friday we kick off another weekend with an author: this time it’s Susan Holloway Scott. We will be reviewing her new book, The King’s Favorite – A Novel of Nell Gwyn and King Charles II, on Friday and on Saturday she will be joining us for another “Chat with an Author” . And we have two copies of The King’s Favorite to giveaway, so stay tuned.

And later today we will be posting another one of our infamous Dare reviews where we dare other bloggers to read something outside their comfort zone and review it here. This time we dared Christine at The Happily Ever After and the book chosen was Across the Nightingale Floor.

Next week:

And since Thea is still away, I will be taking over The Book Smugglers next week! On Monday, I will be doing another Powerpuff Girls review with the wonderful Katie(babs) from Ramblings on Romance. We will be posting an early review of Razor Girl by Marianne Mancusi set to be released on the 26th.

And from Tuesday onwards: a Nalini Singh stravaganza! With reviews of Caressed by Ice, Mine to Possess and the upcoming release, Hostage to Pleasure , wrapping it up with an exclusive interview with the author (who will be around to answer your questions too. No, she will not answer to “Who is Hawke’s Mate”. Believe me, I tried) and a giveaway of Hostage to Pleasure!

Around blogsphere:

The blog My Friend Amy is hosting a Book Blogger Appreciation Week:

Book Blogger Appreciation Week: Acknowledging the hard work of book bloggers and their growing impact on book marketing and their essential contribution to book buzz in general, I am excited to announce the first Book Blogger Appreciation Week. Think of it as a retreat for book bloggers and a chance for us to totally nerd out over books together. And of course, shower each other with love and appreciation.

Register: In order to experience the maximum impact of the week, I invite you to register your participation (just like a retreat)!
To register, just send an email to bookbloggerappreciationweekATgmailDOTcom with your blog url and what you consider your niche…i.e, general book blog, classics blog, personal blog with a healthy dose of books, YA books blog, etc. Then, add one of the two buttons at the bottom of this post to your sidebar. If you are a reader (no blog) just send an email announcing your plans to follow along.
Why bother? If you register, you will be added to a book blog directory which will exist long after this week is over. Additionally, you will receive one raffle entry into the daily giveaways during BBAW here at My Friend Amy.

Awards: Oh yes, there will be awards. The Oscars of Book Blogging. Nominations start next week.

- The Book Binge girls are having a Shomi Spotlight with reviews and book giveaways galore.

- Carolyn Jean from The Thrillionth Page is hosting a Nancy Drew week with reviews, commentary from other bloggers and interviews. It is super cool – but I have a question: am I the only person to have never read a Nancy Drew book? I must rectify this ASAP.

- And check out this new blog I found: Racy Romance Reviews. I followed Jessica from a comment she posted over at Dear Author and found her blog, which has an interesting review format and other cool posts. Yesterday she talked about the 9 most romantic love scenes in Romance. Go forth, say hi and help her choose number 10! I voted for Sebastian St Vincent and Evie’s first love scene in Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas.

…..aaaaaaaaaand Ana has left the building. (Thea should really come back soon, I am out of control).

I was working on my calendar and preparing my schedule for the next few weeks (I am NOT a control freak ok?) when I realized how many highly expected books are coming out between now and September 30th. This is going to be a crazy period. Just check it out:

August 26th

Wanderlust, the sequel to highly acclaimed Grimspace by Ann Aguirre. Kmont has already done an early review of it. Sounds good!

September 2nd

Nalini Singhs’ 5th installment in her Psy/Changeling series, Hostage to Pleasure. I have read it and let me say it: it is AWESOME. Stay tuned because we are preparing one of our specials, this time a whole week including an exclusive interview with Nalini and a giveaway! Meanwhile, you can check Kmont’s awesome review of Hostage to Pleasure here. (the woman is on a roll) . She is giving away a copy of the book and you have till midnight Wednesday, eastern standard time (U.S. residents only) to enter and the winner will be chosen and announced on Thursday.

September 30th – the one date to rule them all:

Mr Cavendish, I Presume by Julia Quinn. One word: INCREDIBLE. Books such as this are the reason why I read romance novels. Mr Cavendish is quite simply, one of the best romance novels I have ever read. A highly emotional journey that brought tears of pure joy to my eyes. It is the second book in the Two Dukes of Wyndham series with both books taking place at the same time. You can check my review of book 1, The Lost Duke of Wyndham here.

King of Sword and Sky – the much awaited 3rd installment in CL Wilson Tairen Soul series. I think this is my favorite series at the moment, can’t wait to read it!

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – We both love Neil Gaiman and we can’t wait to get our greedy little fingers on this one – the book is a homage to the Jungle Book about a boy whose parents die and he is then adopted by the inhabitants of a cemetery. Can we say “classic” right here, right now? No? Too soon? Ok.

Seduce me at Sunrise – Lisa Kleypas’ second installment in her Hathaway sisters series. Merripen and Win’s tale started in Mine till Midnight and the glimpse into their relationship in that book was enough to have fans waiting anxiously for their story.

And let’s not forget LAST week’s releases of Breaking Dawn, Shades of Dark (a MUST read for Sci-FI fans, the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost by Linnea Sinclair) and The Rake’s Guide to Pleasure (which I highly recommend).

What about you? Which books are you looking forward to in August and September?