Smugglivus 2011: An Introduction (& Week 1 Schedule)

Feel the chill in the air? That delicious tingle of anticipation? It’s not just the Holidays and promise of presents and delicious, gluttonous amounts of food.

Tomorrow, December 1st, we kick-start our month long celebrations of all things bookish and geeky. Tomorrow, dear friends, is SMUGGLIVUS.

Umm, what the heck is Smugglivus?

For newer readers and those of you that are unfamiliar with the event, Smugglivus is our month-long (ok, technically it’s a five week-long) end of the year celebration. Back in our first year of The Book Smugglers, we had the insane idea to host our own crazy holiday bonanza to celebrate our favorite books, authors, bloggers, and other memorable moments of the past year. Thus, inspired by Seinfeld’s infamous Festivus, Smugglivus was born.

Each year, Smugglivus begins on December 1 and features guest posts and giveaways from our favorite people from across the interwebs (with a healthy serving of our regular reviews, of course). The event then ends with much fanfare and sparklies on January 7, our very own bloggiversary (2012 marks our fourth birthday! Damn, we’re getting old!).

So, you may be asking yourself, what can you expect this year?

Awesome Guests:

For the duration of the event, every single day we will be featuring at least one guest blogger – from authors to our very favorite book bloggers. Our guests will talk about their favorite reads of 2011 and what they are looking forward to and/or have planned in 2012. This year, our all star author lineup includes Rachel Neumeier, N.K. Jemisin, Veronica Roth, Kenneth Oppel, Karen Healey, and Sarah Rees Brennan. Of course, we’ll also have plenty of awesome bloggers over to play, including Lurv A La Mode’s Kenda, Angieville’s Angie, Dear Author’s Janine, A Dribble of Ink’s Aidan Moher, and many, many more.

Giveaways:

We have an obscene amount of books to giveaway, some of them generously donated by some of our guests, some sponsored by publishers. 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 switching things up a little and applying the pressure: both Smugglers will have to read and provide mini reviews for 5 books each, one book from each of the following genres: middle grade, YA, fantasy/SF, graphic novel, UF/Romance.

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 one of our favorite Smugglivus rituals, in which we basically rant. Books, TV shows, movies, 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 2011:

When post our top 10 (ish) favorite books of the year, including notable mentions and favorite books published prior to 2011. We’ll also post about our favorite TV Shows, movies, etc 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) 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 as we had organizing it!

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

This Week on Smugglivus:

This year, our very first guest to kick off the festivities is the fantastic Angie of Angieville, who will give us her list of favorites, award style, for the year! Later, one of our new favorite authors Rachel Neumeier stops by with her list of 2011 favorites. Plus, what’s day one of Smugglivus without a giveaway? We’ll have a copy of YA SF title iBoy by Kevin Brooks up for grabs.

On Friday, we are thrilled to present long-time favorite author Meljean Brook and her Smugglivus picks of the year! Later in the day, Thea reviews Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts (yes, another apocalyptic YA novel).

The fun continues on Saturday, with a post from The Other Ana, blogger behind the fabulous Things Mean A Lot. We also have lovely author Jackie Kessler over to close out the week.

It’s gonna be a good one – Happy Smugglivus to one and all!

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers