More GIVEAWAYS - Book Blogger Appreciation Week September 14 to 20, 2009

Who doesn't know about Book Blogger Appreciation Week by now?

Book Blogger Appreciation Week is a week-long event to celebrate books, reading, and most of all blogging. 2008 was the first year, and we have, Amy from the blog My Friend Amy, to thank. In 2009 some 1,000 blogs are involved. Thanks to all the dedicated volunteers; bloggers who spent many hours making this all come together. I've discovered so many new and wonderful blogs in the process.

This week, the goal is to celebrate what book bloggers are all about. There are suggested daily blogging topics that EVERYONE can participate in. If you choose to participate then you can post links at the BBAW official website during the week, so others can easily find your posts.

In the spirit of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, be sure to connect with other book bloggers, make new blogging buddies, and discover some wonderful new blogs in the process. Must important ---have fun in the process.

Now for the Giveaway Fun

(4) giveaways - each book is new or like new!

Since I'm from New England, and we are moving into cooler weather, and Halloween, I chose (2) titles with New England Settings:

1. Snow Island; Katherine Towler (I loved this book) - From Publishers Weekly --Wartime disrupts the lives of the inhabitants of a New England islet off the coast of Rhode Island in this graceful debut novel. The men of Snow Island engage in the dangerous business of quahogging, and their families eke out a living running small businesses that depend on the wealthier summer residents for survival. Alice Daggett is 16 years old in 1941. She attends school in a one-room schoolhouse with twins Lydia and Pete Giberson, the only companions her age on the island, and has shouldered the responsibility of keeping the family store running since the death of her father five years earlier. The summer season of 1941 gets off to its usual start with the arrival of mysterious loner George Tibbits, who makes his annual pilgrimage to the houses his aunts owned when he was a boy site of a tragedy from which he has never quite recovered. While the rebellious Lydia spends her time with the summer in-crowd, Alice secretly becomes close to Ethan Cunningham, the 26-year-old lighthouse keeper with artistic ambitions. The quiet off-season life of the island changes dramatically after Pearl Harbor: a navy base opens, and Alice and Lydia now spend their free time plane spotting. After Ethan enlists soon followed by Pete and Lydia Alice is left alone to grapple with the consequences of her relationships and her growing sense of self. The story elements here may be familiar, and the inner motivations of some characters (George Tibbits, in particular) remain vague despite explication, but Towler's strength is her deft rendering of time and place. Lyrical and gentle, Alice's wartime coming-of-age and the island itself continues to resonate after the last page.
2. Spooky New England; Schlosser --From the Back Cover---Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for 30 creepy tails of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Set in New England's historic towns, charming old islands, and sparsely populated backwoods, the stories in this entertaining and compelling collection will have you looking over your shoulder again and again.Yankee folklore is kept alive in these expert retellings by master storyteller S.E. Scholosser, and in artist Paul Hoffman's evocative illustrations. You'll meet seaweed-covered phantom sailors and a ghostly black dog, hear otherwordly voices and things that go bump in the night, and feel an icy wind on the back of your neck on a warm summer evening. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night or from the backseat of the family van on the way to grandma's, this is a collection to treasure.
3. Bridge of Sighs; Richard Russo --From Booklist*Starred Review* Here is the novel Russo was born to write. Coursing with humor and humanity, the sixth novel by the bard of Main Street U.S.A. gives full expression to the themes that have always been at the heart of his work: the all-important bond between fathers and sons, the economic desperation of small-town businesses, and the lifelong feuds and friendships that are a hallmark of small-town life. Following a trio of best friends who grew up in upstate Thomaston, New York, over 50 years, the novel captures some of the essential mysteries of life, including the unanticipated moments of childhood that will forever define one's adulthood. Louis Charles ("Lucy") Lynch has spent his entire life in Thomaston, married for 40 years to his wife, Sarah, and finally living in the rich section of town, thanks to the success of his father's convenience stores. Long planning a trip to Venice, he tries in vain to communicate with the couple's best friend, Bobby Marconi, now a world-famous painter living in Venice. Meanwhile, the irascible ex-pat, now approaching 60 and suffering from night terrors, is still chasing women, engaging in fistfights, and struggling to complete his latest painting. Russo slowly and lovingly pieces together rich, multilayered portraits not only of the principals but also of their families, and, by extension, their quintessentially American town. It is a seamless interweaving of childhood memories (sometimes told from three points of view), tragic incidents (the town river, once the lifeblood of local industry, has become a toxic stew that is poisoning residents), and unforgettable dialogue that is so natural, funny, and touching that it may, perhaps, be the best of Russo's many gifts.
4. Wit's End; Karen Joy Fowler (audio cd book) --From Publishers WeeklyAt the start of this quietly funny, slightly mysterious novel of discovering one's roots from bestseller Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club), 29-year-old Rima Lanisell visits her estranged godmother, Addison Early, in Addison's house by the sea, Wit's End, in storied Santa Cruz, Calif. Addison, the wildly successful but cautiously private author of the Maxwell Lane mysteries, was once the girlfriend of Rima's recently deceased father, Bim, for whom a character in the series is named. For each novel, Addison first constructs a dollhouse diorama that depicts what will be the principal murder scene, but her upcoming novel and its dollhouse are uncharacteristically delayed. By weeding through decades-old correspondence with eccentric fans and the contemporary channels of online forums, Rima slowly discovers the truth behind Addison's novels and that Rima herself is a topic of interest among Maxwell Lane devotees. As Fowler analyzes our modern-day relationship to novels and writers' relationship to their readers, the line between fiction and reality blurs-real people become characters in another's blog as fictional characters become real to the fans that fetishize them.

• Who can enter? - ANYONE! (doesn't matter where you live)
• How to enter? - Just leave a comment with your email address, and the book or books you would be interested in, in order of preference.
• Drawing Date? - Sunday - September 21, 2009
• Good Luck Everyone!