• My very first book review was on May 7, 2005 when I reviewed Dreamer by Sand Pilarski. But it wasn’t until the end of 2006 that I converted my blog to what it now is…a book blog.
• The 2006 Winter Classics Challenge was my first venture into the wonderful world of reading challenges (I completed the challenge on February 11, 2007); followed very quickly by the 2007 TBR Challenge.
• Here is my best books of 2006 list … I only reviewed one of them!
• My first review of 2007 was Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• My first hosted reading challenge was the 2007 New York Times (NYT) Most Notable Challenge…which continues today in an expanded form: The Notable Books Challenge.
• I started participating in The Sunday Salon (the first real weekly “meme” or event that has become a habit on my blog) in early December 2007.
• In March of 2008, I moved my blog to the current site – it was a big step for me and allowed me to grow my blog the way I wanted it to grow.
• I participated in my first 24 Hour Read-A-Thon in June of 2008…an amazing experience that I returned to again in October 2008 and 2009.
• I was thrilled to win Best Literary Fiction blog during the first Book Blogger Appreciation Week in 2008 thanks to my loyal readers (YOU!).
• I went to my first book expo in San Jose in October 2008…and finally put some warm bodies and smiling faces to the names I had found online (Trish and Jill!)
• By the numbers: 222,954 visitors (since February 2007 when I first started tracking visitors to my blog), 10,261 comments, 1,098 posts, 47 pages, 38 categories and 51 tags.

I have enjoyed the journey:

• Along the way, you have celebrated with me when my family expanded to include two cats (Gizmo and Maia)…and of course, Raven. And you grieved with me when I  had to say good-bye to Caribou and Argus.

• I’ve met hundreds of like-minded people from all walks of life and from all over the world. I’ve discovered the world is not as big as one might think – and I have grieved at the loss of other bloggers…first Nattie, then Dewey.

• I have lost track of how many books I’ve given away…and how many I’ve won over the years. My stacks have grown larger; the books I read have become more numerous. I have met some wonderful publishers, publicists and authors … and discovered so many new books and authors by reading other blogs (now over 300 on my Google Reader).

The world of book blogging has changed in five years…Twitter did not exist in 2005 and ARCs were not coming to bloggers in the volume we see them today. This spring, the first Book Blogger Convention will occur in the same venue (and affiliated with) the largest book publishing event in North America – the BEA. And many book bloggers will finally meet face to face.

I am grateful that I found my way to book blogging five years ago. I am grateful to have connected with so many readers. My life is richer, more interesting, and much busier thanks to my blog.

THANK YOU to all of you who have taken this journey with me. And to make that thank you just a bit more tangible, I’m giving away a couple of books (because, really, what would an anniversary be without presents?!?!?).

Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor – soft cover, brand new (read my review)

The Glimmer Palace by Beatrice Colin – Advance Readers Edition, never been read

This giveaway is open to EVERYONE (no geographic restrictions). I will choose TWO winners (one for each book).

To Enter:

Simply leave me a comment by February 21st, 2010 by midnight PST. I’ll announce the winners on February 22nd.

Good Luck!!!

Teresa W. who wrote: “This would be a new author for me, sounds good!“

Teresa, I’ll be sending you an email – please respond within 7 days to that email with your snail mail and then I can send your information to the author so he can send you the book!

Is anyone else out there getting this many spammers? It seems to be rather recent for me in terms of this volume.

I have been deleting spam comments over the last two days, and hoped that my spam filter would “learn” how to identify them…but this morning I had to delete about 20 comments. I’d rather moderate comments than allow any spam to get posted to my blog (even if it is only for a day). The other option I had was to close old posts to comments – which I decided against because every now and then I get a really wonderful comment on an old post.

Thanks for your patience!

I hope you’ll visit The Piker Press for all of their great short stories, photos, and articles!

The Laws of Harmony by Judith Ryan Hendricks
Harper Paperbacks; 1 edition – February 10, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0061687365
496 pages

I recently read The Laws of Harmony – the latest novel by Judi Ryan Hendricks – and loved it (read my review). Hendricks has a way of drawing her reader into the story, of making them feel like they know the characters. I asked Hendricks if she would write a guest post for Caribousmom and she readily agreed. When I read this post it resonated with me as a writer and as a reader…I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Of Bread and Books

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

Bread, as any baker will testify, is a process—slow, arduous, messy, unpredictable.  The French, of course, have a saying about it:  To be a boulanger, they say, you must be big, strong and dumb—big to carry sacks of flour, strong to knead the dough, and dumb to work so hard.

As with most French sayings, there’s a germ of truth at its heart.  You don’t make bread because you want to get rich.  You don’t make bread for prestige or fame or even respect—although those things may come collaterally.  But the real and only reason you make bread is because you have to.  You make bread because you can’t not make it.

By changing a few words here and there, you can say the same about writing.  Writers don’t have to be big or strong, I suppose, although it helps if you can carry a six-pound manuscript in one hand and heft your computer bag into the overhead bins on airplanes with the other.

But you could definitely make a case for being dumb.  Why else would you sit alone in a small office all day, everyday for four years—missing dentist appointments, letting your mother leave messages on voice mail, forgetting to eat lunch, ignoring the dog while she nibbles the Tibetan rug?  Why else would you subject your book to the slings and arrows of hostile reviewers, drag yourself around the country to signings where you sometimes find yourself reading to the bookstore staff and a couple of transients who just came for the refreshments?

Why?  See above.  The only reason you write is because you have to.  You write because you can’t not write.

My career as a novelist began in a bakery.  Appropriately so, I’ve decided, because the longer I go at both baking and writing, the more similarities I see between them.

Bread is basically the fusion of four of the earth’s most elemental ingredients—flour, water, yeast, salt.  In the kneading there’s an exchange of energy between baker and bread—and you learn to know by touch the exact moment when the dough comes alive.

A book also has some pretty basic ingredients—character, setting, plot.  You manipulate them, work them together until they fuse and the story takes on a life of its own.  And you know when that happens, too.

To bake bread is to understand that yeast is a living entity, and it may or may not always do what you expect or want it to do.  If you persist at the craft long enough, you learn to let go of your expectations, forget about the outcome and let the bread direct you.

Likewise, there comes a time in the writing process—usually just when you think you know exactly where the story should go next—that you find yourself writing something—and suddenly the character seems to be glaring at you off the page.  You can almost hear a voice saying, That’s ridiculous.  I’d never do that.

You learn very quickly that the process works best if you let your characters take you by the hand and lead you into the story.  This is where the messy part comes in, and sometimes you end up in a game of dominoes.  Changing one thing, and finding that it alters everything down the line.  Or having to backtrack to rearrange all the events leading up to it.

Creation—whether of bread, or of a book—is an imperfect, spontaneous, organic and on-going process.  We aren’t the originators and we don’t have ultimate control, but sometimes we’re lucky enough to be present.  We’re able to tap into the process, to assist at the birth.

And that’s enough.

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To read more about Judi Hendricks and her work, visit the author’s website.

Read Judi Hendricks’ blog: The Kitchen Table

Visit other blogs touring this book and read their reviews.

]]> http://www.caribousmom.com/2009/05/29/author-judith-ryan-hendricks-tlc-book-tour/feed/ 9 http://www.caribousmom.com/2009/05/28/mr-linky-not-feeling-well/ http://www.caribousmom.com/2009/05/28/mr-linky-not-feeling-well/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 15:07:10 +0000 Caribousmom http://www.caribousmom.com/?p=3953

Mr. Linky is having growing pains – he has been “down” more than “up” this last month. To read more, visit the Mr. Linky Blog.

Until he is feeling better, please leave links to reviews and wrap ups for my sponsored challenges in the COMMENTS section of each post. I will upload your links when Mr. Linky is back up and running.

Thanks for your patience!

Contest open May 19 – 26, 2009

Thanks to Michelle Richmond and Random House for providing a brand new, signed trade paperback of No One You Know (on sale today in bookstores) for giveaway on my blog! Last year I read Michelle’s novel The Year of Fog and loved it (read my review), so I am excited to offer my reader’s a chance to win her latest book.

About No One You Know (from the Publisher’s website):

All her life Ellie Enderlin had been known as Lila’s sister—until the day Lila, a top math student at Stanford, was murdered, and the shape of their family changed forever. Twenty years later, Ellie is a professional coffee buyer who has never put down roots. When, in a chance meeting, she comes into possession of the notebook that Lila carried everywhere, Ellie returns home to finally discover the truth about her sister’s death—a search that will lead her to Lila’s secret lover, to the motives and fate of a man who profited from their family’s grief, and ultimately to the deepest secrets even sisters keep from each other.

Read the First Chapter of No One You Know

Consider this book for a book group read

About Michelle Richmond (from the Publisher’s website):

Michelle Richmond is the author of The Year of Fog, Dream of the Blue Room, and the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Michelle lives with her husband and son in San Francisco, where she is at work on her next novel.

Check out the Author’s website

How to Win A SIGNED copy of No One You Know:

• Contest restricted to U.S. and Canada mailing addresses.
• Leave a comment on this post telling me why you want to read this book. Enter no later than 5:00pm PST on May 26th.
• One entry per person.
• A winner will be chosen on the evening of May 26th using Random.org – and I will post the winner to my blog, as well as email them directly (so please provide a valid email in the comment form – no need to leave your email address in the body of the comment if you have provided it in the form itself). The winner must respond to my email within FIVE days providing me with their snail mail address.
• The publisher will mail your signed book directly to you.

GOOD LUCK!

]]> http://www.caribousmom.com/2009/05/19/book-giveaway-no-one-you-know-by-michelle-richmond/feed/ 57 http://www.caribousmom.com/2009/05/04/southern-reading-challenge-2009/ http://www.caribousmom.com/2009/05/04/southern-reading-challenge-2009/#comments Mon, 04 May 2009 20:11:17 +0000 Caribousmom http://www.caribousmom.com/?p=3720

May 15 – August 15, 2009

Maggie from Maggie Reads is once again hosting her very popular Southern Reading Challenge for 2009. She writes:

It’s that time of year!

The time when you pour a glass of lemonade or sweet tea and take your official summer spot on the porch. Lean back in that chase lounge surrounded by geraniums and ferns, and begin the summer long journey into Southern culture.

Participants may choose to read any style of Southern book such as Appalachian tales, Civil War sagas, Gothic myths, Grit lit, etc… The goal is THREE BOOKS in three months. As she did last year, Maggie will be holding weekly drawings and contests.

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I couldn’t resist this one because I have some terrific looking Southern novels on my shelf. I’ll read three from this list (subject to change):

Crazy Ladies by Michael Lee West

Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Eat, Drink, and Be From Mississippi by Nanci Kincaid

The Lost Hours by Karen White

Beach Trip by Cathy Holton (COMPLETED June 5, 2009; rated 4/5; read my review)