Teaser Tuesday - October 27, 2009

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"I don't remember the details, but after a couple of weeks of the study, the classical music rats were peacefully climbing the corporate ladder and wearing Birkenstocks and the rock music rats had gone cannibal and torn each other to bits. Without knowing what band the rock rats had to listen to, I'm not sure what the study was supposed to prove. All I know is, if I had to listen to Pearl Jam for two weeks solid, I'd eat my roommate too." Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater (pg 5)

Growing up listening to Pearl Jam, I literally laughed out loud when I first read this line! Too funny.

In My Mailbox - October 25, 2009

In My Mailbox is a meme hosted by The Story Siren

My goodies this week:

The world is ending. Again.
Years of covering the antics of End Times cults for The Banner, a religious news magazine, have left Christine Temetri not only jaded but seriously questioning her career choice.

That is, until she meets Mercury, an anti-establishment angel who’s frittering his time away whipping up batches of Rice Krispy Treats and perfecting his ping-pong backhand instead of doing his job: helping to orchestrate Armageddon. With the end near and angels and demons debating the finer political points of the Apocalypse, Christine and Mercury accidentally foil an attempt to assassinate one Karl Grissom, a thirty-seven-year-old film school dropout about to make his big break as the Antichrist.

Now, to save the world, she must negotiate the byzantine bureaucracies of Heaven and Hell and convince the apathetic Mercury to take a stand, all the while putting up with the obnoxious mouth-breathing Antichrist.

http://mercuryfalls.net/

I'm hoping this one keeps me laughing as much as Christopher Moore's Lamb did!




You can't run

Detective Alex Cross is pulled out of a family celebration and given the awful news that a beloved relative has been found brutally murdered. Alex vows to hunt down the killer, and soon learns that she was mixed up in one of Washington's wildest scenes. And she was not this killer's only victim.

You can't hide

The hunt for her murderer leads Alex and his girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, to a place where every fantasy is possible, if you have the credentials to get in. Alex and Bree are soon facing down some very important, very protected, very dangerous people in levels of society where only one thing is certain--they will do anything to keep their secrets safe.

Alex Cross is your only hope to stay alive

As Alex closes in on the killer, he discovers evidence that points to the unimaginable--a revelation that could rock the entire world. With the unstoppable action, unforeseeable twists, and edge-of-your-seat suspense that only a James Patterson thriller delivers, I, Alex Cross is the master of suspense at his sharpest and best.

It's been a couple of months since I read a thriller, I'm super excited to finally read this!

...and the winners are....

Winners of my The Lovely Bones giveaway:

* Jonita

* Krtista

* stacybuckeye

* JoRdAn

* ann marie

Winners of my Must Love Hellhounds giveaway:

*M.

* Jackie

Congratulations, I'll send an email later today to get all your dets :)

Thanks to everyone else for playing!

Review & Giveaway: What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

Recommended for: business & non-fiction readers

My rating: 3/5

My thoughts:

Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996 and What the Dog Saw is a collection of 19 articles that he considers his favorites. The book is broken down into 3 sections:

• Obessives, Pioneers & Other Varieties of Minor Genius


• Theories, Predictions & Diagnoses


• Personality, Character & Intelligence (overall I found this was my favorite)

The articles I enjoyed the most were:

The Ketchup Conundrum - NOW I know why kids think ketchup goes with everything!

Cesar Millan & the Movements of Mastery - I am in awe at The Dog Whisperer, it was fun to read about his background & why what he does works!

The Picture Problem - This is a perfect example of what I love about Galdwell's writing: his ability to tie together things that aren't normally consider to be related at all. Here he uses mammography, air force raids & the Iraq war. Do we depend on pictures too much? The problem is that pictures require interpretation.

I have loved Malcolm Gladwell's previous works: Tipping Point, Blink & more recently Outliers. That being said, I have not read any of his The New Yorker pieces before. Sadly, I didn't get the same WOW factor after reading this book and in the end, there were a few that I just skimmed.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to the generous people at Hachette Book Group, I have ONE copy to giveaway!

Contest end date: November 3rd, 2009

Contest rules:

you MUST BE A FOLLOWER to join. It's super easy, just click on the follow box on the right hand side if you don't follow already!

open to Canadian & US addresses only (no P.O. Boxes)

leave a comment letting me know if you've heard of Malcolm Gladwell (I'm just being nosey, this doesn't affect your chances of winning) with your email address as I will contact the winner by email. Should you win, you have 48 hrs to respond, otherwise I will pick another winner.

Additional entries:
+1 for promoting the contest on your blog
+1 for tweeting the giveaway(include me in the tweet: @hefollowedme)
+1 for referring a friend (just get them to mention your name & blog)

Good luck everyone!!

"Waiting on" Wednesday - October 21, 2009

This weekly event is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

I can't wait to get my hands on this! Shadow Hills by Anastasia Hopcus


Release date: summer 2010
Publisher: Egmont USA

From author's website:

Since her sister’s mysterious death, Persephone “Phe” Archer has been plagued by a series of disturbing dreams. Determined to find out what happened to her sister, Phe enrolls at Devenish Prep in Shadow Hills, Massachusetts—the subject of her sister’s final diary entry.

After stepping on campus, Phe immediately realizes that there’s something different about this place—an unexplained epidemic that decimated the town in the 1700s, an ancient and creepy cemetery, and gorgeous boy Zach—and somehow she’s connected to it all.

But the more questions she asks and the deeper she digs, the more entangled Phe becomes in the haunting past of Shadow Hills.

Finding what links her to this town…might cost her her life.