So Many Precious Books, So Little Time

Friday, September 24, 2010

Giveaway: THE BODY SHOP By Paul Solotaroff

Thanks toAnna Balasi of Hachette Books, I am giving away up to three copies of this book.

Book Description:

As a scrawny college freshman in the mid-1970s, just before Arnold Schwarzenegger became a hero to boys everywhere and Pumping Iron became a cult hit, Paul Solotaroff discovered weights and steroids. In a matter of months, he grew from a dorky beanpole into a hulking behemoth, showing off his rock hard muscles first on the streets of New York City and then alongside his colorful gym-rat friends in strip clubs and in the homes of the gotham elite. It was a swinging time, when "Would you like to dance?" turned into "Your place or mine?" and the guys with the muscles had all the ladies--until their bodies, like Solotaroff''s, completely shut down.

But this isn't the gloom-and-doom addiction one might expect--Solotaroff looks back at even his lowest points with a wicked sense of humor, and he sends up the disco era and its excess with all the kaleidoscopic detail of Boogie Nights or Saturday Night Fever.

Written with candor and sarcasm, THE BODY SHOP is a memoir with all the elements of great fiction and dazzlingly displays Paul Solotaroff's celebrated writing talent.

The number of entrants to this giveaway will determine how many copies of this book I will giveaway:

1-10 entrants= 1

11-20 entrants= 2

21 or more entrants= 3

Here are the rules:

1. For one entry, leave a comment. Please be sure to include your email address (if it isn't available in your profile), so that I can contact you if you win. If I can't find your email either in the comments or your profile, you will be disqualified!

2 .Bonus Entries:

+2 Post about this giveaway on your blog and leave link to your blog post in the comments. You will also get an referral entry for each person who tells me that they learned about this giveaway from you.

+3 Become a Follower of my blog or subscribe to my blog through Google Reader or other subscription service. If you are already a subscriber or follower you still get the five extra entries! Please do not comment that you are a follower three times! I will give you the extra entries myself. I will delete any extra entries that you make as it will just confuse me when I go to pick the winners.

+3 Become a follower on Twitter. I'm teddyrose1
+3 Become a friend of Teddy Rose on Facebook
+2 comment on my book reviews (+2 for each you comment on)

That's up to 14+entries!
Sorry, the giveaway is only open US and Canadian residents only.
The winner’s mailing address: NO P.O. Boxes.
Only one entry per household/IP address

Winners will be subject to the one copy per household rule, which means that if you win the same title in two or more contests, you will receive only one copy of the book.

This giveaway will end on Friday, October 8th,11:59 P.M. E.S.T. The winners will be notified by email, so remember to include your email address in the comments, if it isn't available in your profile! Winners must respond within TWO days or will be disqualified.

Posted by Teddy Rose at 12:01 AM 7 comments

Labels: My Past Giveaways

Giveaway: EATING ANIMALS By Jonathan Safran Foer

Thanks toAnna Balasi of Hachette Books, I am giving away three copies of this book.

This isn't just any regular giveaway, this one is very close to my heart! As most of my regular readers know, I take my animal loving very seriously and am a vegan because of it. I don't preach about it but I would love to give this book away to anybody who is interested. Therefore, no matter how many entries there are, there will be 3 winners, unless there are less than 3 entries. LOL!

Book Description:

Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood-facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's behalf-his casual questioning took on an urgency His quest for answers ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits-from folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth-and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting. Marked by Foer's profound moral ferocity and unvarying generosity, as well as the vibrant style and creativity that made his previous books, Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, widely loved, Eating Animals is a celebration and a reckoning, a story about the stories we've told-and the stories we now need to tell.

Here are the rules:

1. For one entry, leave a comment. Please be sure to include your email address (if it isn't available in your profile), so that I can contact you if you win. If I can't find your email either in the comments or your profile, you will be disqualified!

2 .Bonus Entries:

+3 Go to The Animal Rescue Site and click to give away free food (there's no cost to you.)

+2 Post about this giveaway on your blog and leave link to your blog post in the comments. You will also get an referral entry for each person who tells me that they learned about this giveaway from you.

+3 Become a Follower of my blog or subscribe to my blog through Google Reader or other subscription service. If you are already a subscriber or follower you still get the five extra entries! Please do not comment that you are a follower three times! I will give you the extra entries myself. I will delete any extra entries that you make as it will just confuse me when I go to pick the winners.

+3 Become a follower on Twitter. I'm teddyrose1
+3 Become a friend of Teddy Rose on Facebook
+2 comment on my book reviews (+2 for each you comment on)

That's up to 17+entries!
Sorry, the giveaway is only open US and Canadian residents only.
The winner’s mailing address: NO P.O. Boxes.
Only one entry per household/IP address

Winners will be subject to the one copy per household rule, which means that if you win the same title in two or more contests, you will receive only one copy of the book.

Posted by Teddy Rose at 12:00 AM 18 comments

Labels: My Past Giveaways

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass

After Rick Bass spoke with Maxine Brown of the chart topping Browns of the 50's and early 60's, he decided to write a novel about the Browns.

The novel centers on Maxine, the oldest sister of the Browns but also includes her sister Bonnie and Brother, Jim Ed. The Browns grew up in the swamps of Arkansas during the Great Depression. Their father had a saw mill that they helped with when there was enough money to keep it going and when their father was sober enough.

The secret to his lumber's quality lay in his children's ability to discern pitch. At the end of almost every lunch break, the Brown children would be summoned to the saw-sharpening table, where the newly honed blade would be placed on an axle with a motor and then spun rapidly, as if being made ready for a cut. The sound they listened for - the perfect blade - held an eerie resonance, the faint sirenlike echo of a high harmonic that was little different from the tempered harmony the Browns were already learning to achieve with their voices.

Maxine sneaks a recording of Jim Ed singing to a radio station, where it aired and the rest was history. Not a real glamorous history mind you. After one of their shows, Fabor Robinson presents them with a contract to make the famous. He did that to a point, but kept almost all of the money they generated. There was nothing they could do about it.

Eventually they got out of the shady contract and teamed up with Chet Atkins, who became their producer and they became quite famous. Their entire family was friends with Elvis Presley and Bonnie and Elvis dated for a time.

If my review sounds a little flat, that is because I found the book to me flat. It had a repetitive edge to it that is hard to explain. It read more like a biography then a novel as there was no dialogue to speak of. With only 250 pages, there were times I felt like giving up on the book completely. This could have been a real true tribute to the Browns.

I have heard so many good things about Rick Bass and there were some pearls in his writing, just not enough to hold this reader's interest.

2.5/5

Thanks to Lissa Renner of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for this book.

Have you reviewed this book? Please leave a link to your review in the comments.

Posted by Teddy Rose at 10:35 PM 9 comments

Labels: Books Read in 2010, Music, Nashville

September 25−October 2, 2010

Posted by Teddy Rose at 8:41 PM 0 comments

Monday, September 20, 2010

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia of The Printed Page and is now on tour. Kathy of Bermudaonion's Weblog is hosting for the month of September.

I received another animal book this week and my favorite magazine:

Thanks to Anna Balasi of Hachette Books!

Thanks again to my dear BIL, Joe for the gift subscription to this fab book review magazine!

Posted by Teddy Rose at 8:55 PM 5 comments

Labels: Mail Box Mondays

Sunday, September 19, 2010

The Plate by Roddy Doyle

I have known about Roddy Doyle but never read anything by him. Not too long ago, I had the perfect opportunity to read his short story, "The Plate." A book blogger, Carol reviewed it and linked to the story.

The first line of the story set the pace, "I love you but I think I’m dying."

Jim is walking around in the back yard holding his stomach. At first his wife Maeve thinks he was stabbed but he wasn't. She says she is going to bring him to the hospital but then there is a flash back to an argument they had the night before which, involved a plate.

What they were arguing about wasn't important, in fact it didn't seem like they knew exactly what they were arguing about. I think it was just setting the tone of their relationship. They seemed to love each other but bickered a lot, like many couples do.

After the flash back they get in the car and rush off to the hospital but there is a surprise ending that you wouldn't be able to guess. You'll just have to go read the story, here, if you want to know. I really enjoyed this story but I felt like I was left hanging at the end. It certainly wasnt tied up with a neat little bow. I

definitely want to read more by Doyle, now that I got a tast of his writing. You can read the story here.

Also reviewed by:

Carol's Notebook

If you would like to participate in Short Story Mondays, go to John of The Book Mine Set. He has a short story review every Monday and a place for you to link your short story review. Come join in the fun!

Posted by Teddy Rose at 10:20 PM 2 comments

September Reviews for the ARC Reading Challenge 2010

The Standings so far:

Working Toward Bronze Level:
Diane: 11 ARCs
Kool-aid Mom: 4 ARCs
Michelle: 9 ARCs
Tina: 10 ARCs
Wanda: 2 ARCs

Bronze Level Acheived (12 ARCs):

Working Towards Silver Level:

Alyce: 22 ARCs

Caribousmom: 18 ARCs

Heather: 20 ARCs

Silver Level Achieved (24 ARCs):

Gold Level Acheived (25 or more ARCs):
Andrea: 83 ARCs
Beth: 28ARCs
Caitlin: 26ARCs

Kristen (BookNAround): 55 ARCs

Nicola: 148 ARCs

Teddy: 25 ARCs

Please post all your links in Mr. Linky for your review of books that you read in May, 2010 for this challenge. I hope everyone is enjoying their ARC's this month! *Note: if you missed posting your links last month, please always post "late" links in the current month's Mr. Linky. For example, if you forgot to post a link in February, please post it on this Mr. Linky in this post.

Please enter your name and the name of the book in this format: Name: (Your Name, Book Title and Author's Name) for example: (Teddy, Obsessive Reading by Helen Reader).

Posted by Teddy Rose at 10:10 PM 2 comments

Labels: 2010 Challenges Progress

September Reviews for the Books Won Challenge

Here are the standings, so far:

Honorable Mentions: Read 1-3 books won:

Becky-3

Jo-Jo-3

J.T. Oldfield-1

Julie-2

Ninefly-2

Bronzes': Read 4-6 books won:

Melydia-6
Tina-4
Wanda-6

Silver: Read 7-9 books won:

Kathy-7

Please post all your links in Mr. Linky for your review of books that you read in September, 2010 for this challenge. *Note: if you missed posting your links last month, please always post "late" links in the current month's Mr. Linky. For example, if you forgot to post a link in February, please post it on this Mr. Linky in this post.

I hope everyone is enjoying their reading this month!

Please enter your name and the name of the book in this format: Name: (Your Name, Book Title and Author's Name) for example: (Teddy, Obsessive Reading by Helen Reader).