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ArmchairBEA: Giveaway Day!

ArmchairBEA: Giveaway Day!

June 5, 2012 by · 34 Comments
armchairbea2012

Design credit: Nina of Nina Reads

 

Welcome to the second day of ArmchairBEA! Today we’re hosting a giveaway for the participants of ABEA! If you aren’t a participant you can still join in but there are extra points if you are. :)

So what are we giving away here at My Shelf Confessions? Since the topic for today is “Best of 2012″ we’re giving away a choice of our favs for the year so far!

Pabkin’s and I have put our heads together and come up with our Best of 2012 (so far) list:

Pabkin’s Favs 

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig Cinder by Marissa Meyer

April’s Favs

The Vanishing Game by Kate Kae Myers White Horse by Alex Adams Strange Flesh by Michael Olsen Croak by Gina Damico Heft by Liz Moore

So those are our favs (and really not even all of my favs, I have quite a few this year, it’s been a good year for books so far! But that’s what the winner can choose from!

This IS an international giveaway, as long as the Book Depository ships to your country! If BD does not ship to you, then you will receive a $15 Amazon Gift Card.

Winner will have 48 hours after being notified via email to reply back with their address and what book they’d like , etc. If there is no reply back within 48 hours a new winner WILL be selected.

Since this is mainly for people participating in ABEA there is extra points for participating in this event! Just follow the Rafflecopter directions for the extra points and you’re all set. :D

Giveaway runs from June 5-8th

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Follow Friday (17) & Top Spot (3)

Follow Friday (17) & Top Spot (3)

October 27, 2011 by · 39 Comments

This is a weeky meme hosted by the ever awesome Parajunkee and Alison.
For details on how this meme works, be sure to click on the image above.
This weeks question:

Q.If you could have dinner with your favorite book character, who would you eat with and what would you serve?

Wow, I have so many different characters I love – but a lot of them I wouldn’t want to eat dinner with – because they are sort of villains (like the Grand High Witch of The Witches by Roald Dahl for instance..) but let’s see.. I would love to have dinner with Donna Parisi from Putting Makeup on Dead People, simply because she’s so down to earth and I would feel comfortable around her, I don’t think I could ever feel comfortable around say Hermione Granger or any of my other like.. character “idols” haha but Donna IS one of my fav characters BECAUSE of her down to earth personality. I’m not sure what I would serve for dinner.. nothing fancy, maybe I’d order Chinese takeout and we could sit in the living room and eat it and chat about whatever. :)

Top SpotTop Spot

My Top Spot for October is really, really hard – so I’m going to “cheat” and go with my Top 2 favorites.

           

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian & The Infernals by John Connolly (review top come)

Happy Friday People!

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Interview: Will Lavender Author of Dominance

July 9, 2011 by · 4 Comments

I’m excited to present Will Lavender today to My Shelf Confessions to answer questions about his newly released book Dominance!

Welcome to My Shelf Confessions! Can you give us some idea of the research you did for Dominance, anything in particular?

I did very little research for Dominance. My first book, Obedience, demanded some research because one of its characters is the real-life social scientist Stanley Milgram. This book is set in a world that I was pretty familiar with, the college literature classroom, and so for the most part I pulled from my own experience while writing it.

Where did you get the idea for the Procedure?

The Procedure was pulled from a radio story I heard about a game college students were playing. In the game, there were students who role-played zombies, and students who played zombie hunters. It was glorified tag, basically. But I thought it’d be really interesting if a game like that were used in a more serious way. I used The Procedure in three or four works in progress before beginning Dominance, and the last iteration is pretty much its most brutal and mysterious.

Would you ever play the Procedure with a novel if given the chance? If so, what novel would you most like to play it with?

You would have to be extremely smart to do it well. I have seen people who can play the old “first line” game with books, where somebody will toss out a line and someone else will identify the work. I’m not like that. I read a lot of books, and there are very few I fall in utter love (or is it obsession?) with the way the characters in Dominance do with the work of Paul Fallows. I mean I love literature, but the characters in this novel take it to kind of a worrying–and dangerous, as it turns out–extreme.

There are so many passages and quotes taken from The Coil and The Golden Silence; do you have copies of these books in your house? Have you considered writing them in full and publishing them?

Those passages were made up on the fly, as was the entire backstory and history of Paul Fallows. Maybe one day I will revisit Fallows and his two novels, but for the moment I am on to something else entirely.

If Dominance were made into a film who would make up your dream cast, especially for Richard Aldiss and Alex Shipley?

Whoa, this is a tough question. I rarely ever see my books as films. I do think the casting of Richard Aldiss would have to be really particular. He couldn’t be an Anthony Hopkins sort for obvious reasons, but he’d have to be just as menacing. I think somebody like Donald Sutherland would be interesting in that role.

Your next novel, is it in any way related to Dominance? If not, do you ever plan to write a follow up book – perhaps where Dominance left off?

My next novel is called The Descartes Circle. It’s about identical twins, the nature of good and evil, and a disease called graphomania, which is the constant urge to write all the time. People asked me after Obedience if I would ever write a sequel to that book, and my answer will be the same when it comes to Dominance: I like leaving things to the reader’s own interpretation. To pick up after Dominance ends and go further with the story would, I fear, end up diminishing that book. I’d rather see what I can do next.

Do you believe novels can be taken apart, examined and ultimately reveal clues about the author?

Great question. In the novel, there are times the professors literally rip apart the books. This comes from a story I heard in college; one of my professors had a teacher in grad school who took a straight razor and cut all the pages out of the book. This is extremely interesting to me. It’s usually not necessary to get so hands-on with a book, but the very act of it suggests a kind of obsession with the source material.

Thanks so much for stopping by My Shelf Confessions, will you share one confession with us? (can be about anything)

I used to read V.C. Andrews. There, I said it.

You can read my review of Dominance HERE.

Have you read Dominance, what questions did you have about the book? Please mark any comments with spoilers as “SPOILER” in the first line of the comment so readers are not taken unaware.

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Book Review: Dominance by Will Lavender

Book Review: Dominance by Will Lavender

July 9, 2011 by · 8 Comments

 

Dominance by Will Lavender bookIn 1994, Jasper College was host to a controversial class, Lit 424: Unraveling a Literary Mystery. Nine undergrad honor students are invited to attend the class taught by the infamous Dr. Richard Aldiss who’s been convicted and currently incarcerated for the murder of two students at Dumant University. The class, held in the basement of the school to prevent prying eyes and distractions from protesters, is where they first meet their professor – via satellite – on a TV screen stationed in the front of the room.

Fifteen years later, Dr. Alex Shipley, one of the night students goes to meet Dr. Aldiss at his home. She’s come to speak with him about a murder – the victim being another student of the night class, Michael.  He was found in a scene arranged much like the Dumant University murders, surrounded by books and open books covering their eyes.

All those years ago Alex unraveled the literary mystery that ultimately set her professor free, now given a new mystery that begs to be solved, will she be successful before more of her classmates are murdered, or will she prove that the answers she uncovered the first time around were false?

Let’s start with a shelf confession or two: I LOVE books about books and books that take place in a school/academic setting. I can’t explain why, but it’s like a little niche of goodness in the book world – especially books about books that I can’t get enough of.

I can say with total assurance that Dominance is MY FAVORITE book about books of ALL TIME. I really don’t see any other book being able to take it off that mantel any time soon. From the very first page I was totally glued to the page, already interested, wondering what was coming next. I knew I was holding something special, and I immediately told my book blogger friends who had access to the book, BEGGING them to read it with me, to set aside whatever they were reading and just READ THIS BOOK.  I’m lucky I have nice friends, one of my friends was already reading the book, and another friend started reading the book based on my insistence and another friend made me wait in agony as she finished her current book.

I’ve really tried hard to not GUSH all over the blog with this. I’ve put this review off for awhile, trying to come about it in a completely professional way, all OMG, OMG, OMG’s aside. But I just can’t.  This book was SO completely AMAZINGTASTIC, it had EVERYTHING I have EVER wanted in a book and the best part – it DIDN’T disappoint!

The timing and pace of the book is one reason it’s so great. We go from past to present, from the time when the night class was taking place, to the present when there is a murderer at large and all the classmates are suspects. Alex Shipley plays a key role in both areas, taking the role of “investigator” for both sets of mysteries we unravel simultaneously. What I loved, is that normally when a book takes you from past to present you end up liking one time over the other, preferring to read more and then the time changes and you feel discontent. In this case, yes you want to read more, but you’re also as desperate and hungry for answers in both sets of time equally, so you don’t feel that sense of loss of place.

One of my favorite characters is Dr. Richard Aldiss. I couldn’t help but picture him very Hannibal Lectorish. He has the same sort of creepiness and deep intelligence. He knows how to manipulate a situation and get what he wants – while knowing exactly what you want, and deciding whether or not he will give it to you.

Let’s talk about the books within the book. There are two books that play a central role in the mystery The Coil and The Golden Silence both by Paul Fallows, a mysterious author whose identity is a mystery in and of itself.  There are passages from the books and you learn so much about them that you can’t help but want to read them, to feel their pages in your hands yourself, to see if you can read the clues as well.

I really can’t say enough about this one, if you love books about books, mysterious authors, or want a mystery/thriller that will take you on the ride of your life not only with a worthy mystery but also with intelligence and oozing with booky goodness. Yes, I’m making up new words for this review. Booky goodness, amazingtastic, even bookgasmic! I have not been this excited WHILE reading, and AFTER reading a book in a awhile!

So I will close with this, if you only read one book this summer, or this year, or for the next FIVE years – choose Dominance and you will NOT be disappointed.

I’ve also got a special surprise – an interview with the author, Will Lavender!

Dominance is Available from Amazon / B&N / Simon & Schuster

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*Galley provided from Simon & Schuster via Galley Grab. This review and all opinions expressed therein are my own.

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