Around this time last year, Queen Amy the Super-Marvelous threw us all a lavish love-in.  And while some douche-holes pulled out there nits and began picking, the rest of us enjoyed our bash enough to demand a Round II.

And because nothing says love-in like rehashing where you’ve been, please enjoy this list of Shit That Went Down In The Last Four Months of 2008 and the First Eight Months of 2009!!!  *sigh*  It appears Twitter has taught me nothing about brevity.

Despite the mousey, bookish reputation of litnerds, the bookbloggonets were awash with STRONG OPINIONS LOUD VOICES this year.  Like when Bloomsbury lied about their Liar cover lying, 

and much rabble was roused and they changed it, proving that despite the #gameondiet bookbloggers still have some serious weight to throw around.

I mean, not that we’re bullies.  SPEAKING of bullies (and the award for best segue goes to…), Alice Hoffman demonstrated her clear ignorance of How the Internet Works by tweeting her rage against a tepid reviewer.  When she realized that NO ONE in the review-o-sphere was going to help champion her cause and barrage the reviewer with hate-mail, she sent in half her ass to apologize.  At least she didn’t send in her husband.

Quirk Publishing likewise tried to hogtie its constituents with a condescending letter commanding us to, among other things, not post quotes from their Pride and Prejudice zombification, perhaps not realizing that 95% of PPZ was directly cribbed from La Austen herself.  But then, contra Ms Hoffman, they said sorry in a heartfelt and sincere way that made us kind of want to make out with them again.

In some lighter dueling, the Nerds pitted YA against itself and generally geeked out until they squeee’ed up a winner.  Teams Gale and Peeta picked up where Teams Rochester and Darcy left off, and abandoned Teams Edward and Jacob to battle Team AndthenBuffystakedEdwardTheEnd (go team!).

And then there were epic rivalries that people had no idea they were a part of.  Old-skool vs. new-wave, cool vs. uncool,  ARCs for everyone vs. you-are-a-book-grubbing-whore and so help me I am not going to flog this dead horse ANYMORE!  I would rather make out with a mer-pire than debate blogger integrity.

Speaking of ARCs (last time, promises), even though Hatchett continues to have extravagant giveaways (do those guys not know that we’re in a recession?) the FREEBOOKTSUNAMI of 2007-8 seems to have slowed to a manageable flood, no?  BUT HEAVEN FORBID THAT WOULD SHRINK MY TBR STACK STOP RECOMMENDING THINGS TO ME YOU GUYS!!!!

*phew*  Ok.  And if we got fewer books read this year it’s because we were all on the Facebook finding out what kind of cocktail we are, or on Twitter hashing out whether The Time-Traveler’s Wife movie was going to be Really Good or Total Dreck or, to a lesser extent, ninging or Digging or stumble.upon.ing or del.i.cious.ing or otherwise falling into the whirling vortex that is social media.  So sue us.

Because we actually met in real-life sometimes (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘everyone except me’ *cries into Cheerios*), like at BEA and the LA Times Festival of Books and in Oregon and Utah.  And everyone who wasn’t meeting IRL at these things was meeting to #tweetsulk about not being at these things (and again, by ‘everyone’ I mean ‘everyone except me’ because I was not yet hip with the twitter).  And twitter proved what a soulless bastard it really is by not being able to differentiate between a bot and, say, a party hostess or a really enthusiastic Cheer-a-thonner.

And even though we never had enough time for reading, there was always, you know, Time For Reading.  24 Hours to Read-a-Thon, 48 hours to Read-a-Mystery-Thon and also to Read-a-Mother?  To Read-as-a-Mother?  To Mother-Reader?  Whatever, we were reading and there were snacks involved and a great deal of cheering and some midnight madness.

There was also time, surprisingly, to get our collective asses in gear and have a ship-shaping Bloggiesta.

And the kidlitosphere became an actual thing, and various bloggers dared various other bloggers to do various scandalous things (ok, mostly just to read more YA or to watch a chick flick), and we all continued to read Philippa Gregory even though she’s pretty much just having monkeys write her books now.

And a lot of people lied about their lives and we kind of got our knickers in a knot because if a memoir is mostly double-un-true, does it still count for our Non-Fiction Challenge?

And then Dewey shocked us all by up and dying, and we all looked at each other like, Is this ok, that I’m sad?  What do we do now?  Can I shed actual human tears for this person I’ve never met IRL?  And then we flung our collective arms around each other and wept, because Dewey was a Force To Be Reckoned With and we will never see her like again.

But if Dewey’s death impressed on us nothing else, it is that we are all still alive.  Stephanie had The Cancer this year, and she’s still alive, and I had The Cancer this year (maybe), and I’m still alive, and Dawn walked 60 miles to ensure that others who have The Cancer will also be still alive, which HAD BETTER WORK because 60 miles is far.  And you, bookbloggers and readers both, despite sickness and tragedy and an mysterious plague of zombie-vampires, YOU are still alive, and I feel that deserves a general HUZZAH!

So huzzah for all the things we’ve accomplished!  Huzzah for Reading Dangerously and Imbibing Peril.  Huzzah for having Salonned our Sundays, Mailboxed our Mondays, Teased and Thingered our Tuesdays.  Huzzah for Wednesdays both Wordless and Wondrously Wordy.  Huzzah for having Booked through Thursdays and Followed Fridays with a well-earned Saturday nap.

Huzzah for the books dnf, the tl;dr, and the books tbr.  For the posts to be written, the comments left, and the donuts shared between friends.

Huzzah, my friends.  You are the very best ones.

Dear Book Bloggers,

As a debut author, I will be forever indebted to you.  I’ve been actively reaching out to Book Bloggers about my new Strangely Beautiful series and have been overwhelmed by what an exceptionally wonderful group of people Book Bloggers are.  I have corresponded with some of the most clever, kindest, most generous, enthusiastic people in any business, anywhere. Some of the most engaging, educational and important material in our popular culture I find on your blogs. I am honored to call Book Bloggers personal friends, on-line friends, and I can’t wait to encounter many more as authors and readers come together on your sites to form a community with a beloved common cause.  Thank you for what you do, because my greatest dream is coming true and I treasure your part in it.  Keep up the great work, your authors and readers need you.

Leanna Renee Hieber
http://www.leannareneehieber.com
2009 Prism Award Winner: DARK NEST
Upcoming from Leisure Books / Dorchester Publishing:
THE STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL TALE OF MISS PERCY PARKER – the ghostly, Gothic Victorian fantasy begins 8/25/09!

Special Giveaway:  Leanna has offered five copies of her debut novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker in celebration of BBAW!  Just leave a comment expressing your interest in the book and you’ll be entered!  Open worldwide.

Can you believe it’s already Day 4 of BBAW?  Where has the time gone?  Well hopefully you’ve discovered plenty of new book blogs to clog up your RSS feed readers and introduce you to more marvelous books throughout the year!  But let’s talk about that book you know, the one you discovered only because you read about it on a book blog and then you realized you couldn’t live without it!  And then you read it and you loved it so hard!  Tell us about it and about the blogger (or bloggers!) that introduced the book to you!

I interrupt these festivities to let you know about two things!

The first is that tonight there is a special episode of Blog Talk Radio show hosted by Miriam Parker of Hachette Books all centered around BBAW!  The panelists are Natasha of Maw Books Blog, Katie of Babbling about Books and More!, Kathy of Bermuda Onion, Adam of Letters on Pages, and myself of My Friend Amy!  Please listen and call in, and let’s have fun!

Secondly, I wanted to make sure you knew all about the Kidlit Con coming up in October in Washington D.C.!  If you blog about kid’s books, are an author, editor, or publisher of kids books, or simply interested in learning more about blogging about children’s books, you are welcome to register!  You can find out all the details at the Kidlitosphere page devoted to the conference.  What a great chance to meet other bloggers and work on improving your craft!

The question, the theme, is why I appreciate book bloggers.  The thoughts in my head are urgent and many.  I appreciate book bloggers because they redeem, energize, and fortify an industry that would, I firmly believe, be in an untenable position without them. Few can rally readers to books the way that book bloggers do.  Few can herald, in true blogger style, titles yet to come or books that too few of us notice.  Few care as much as book bloggers care about covers, issues, themes.  Book bloggers are readers, they are teachers, they are bookshop employees, they are librarians, they are parents, they are neighbors, and they love books. They summon and articulate their passions on a regular basis—not for pay, not for honors, but on behalf of stories, authors, and the written word. 

I think of the time (and money) that book bloggers pour into their craft—all that reading, posting, commenting, all that mailing and sorting, all those events—and I ask myself:  How did this come to be?  And, Where would I be without book bloggers?

For truly:  Where would I be?  I am a writer of literary books—no commercial giant, no Personality, not the glam gal on the limo tour.  I care—enormously—about the books that I write.  I want them to find their right readerly homes. I know that, without readers, I do not have a writing future.  But I have little control over the fate of my books.  They are released into the world, and I wait.

It’s the angels with wings who move in after that—angels, by which I mean book bloggers.  Those souls whom I have never met, who live in places I have never seen, who take an interest.  On the release date of Nothing but Ghosts, this past June, I woke to a virtual book launch party that had been engineered by no other than My Friend Amy and Presenting Lenore.  I had not seen it coming.  I could not believe my eyes.  I told everyone—for weeks afterward—that something extraordinary had happened.  “They threw me a party,” I kept telling friends.  “They believed in this book, and in me.”  They had thrown open the doors to their own community, and invited me in, to stay.  I have met extraordinary bloggers in the aftermath of that party.  I have found, within myself, a deeper faith in the kinds of books that I try to write—literary books that cross genre borders, that will live or die solely on the recommendations of readers, readers who also happen to be book bloggers.

I am getting teary-eyed writing this.  I am thinking about all those book bloggers who have come into my life since I myself started blogging two years ago—the stories they’ve told me about themselves, the books they’ve insisted that I read, the love that they have given, so freely, to me.  I would be not be who I am without these souls.  That’s a fact, firm and unyielding.

Thanks, thanks and more thanks!

This seems like the appropriate way to start a guest post for Book Blogger Appreciation Week. Too Tall Alice, the first children’s book I’ve authored and Dom Rodi illustrated with me, was released on March 15, 2009.

My publicists, Gail Kearns and Lucy Levenson at To Press and Beyond, put together a marketing program which emailed to Book Bloggers. The first Too Tall Alice press release went out, and within 48 hours, we had received approximately 80 requests for review copies. We’d never seen a response like that before.

I sent copies of Too Tall Alice, and virtually everyone who had requested a book posted a review. The Book Bloggers had links from their sites to Amazon, posted their reviews in newsletters and magazines, and some even sold my book in their virtual and brick and mortar bookstores. All but a handful of reviews were four or five stars, the rest three stars—which isn’t bad. Your reviews also landed me online and broadcast radio interviews and started a very effective viral marketing campaign.

For me, however, the most exciting thing about getting the reviews was reading them. I was so touched by how Too Tall Alice really touched the reviewers who read it. YOU GOT WHAT I WAS TRYING TO SAY, and moments like that are very rare in life. Thank you, again.

It’s not easy to be an independent publisher—particularly when you’re a small start-up. You’re bucking the big houses on the bookshelves and in the major magazines. The retail environment is tough, and buyers are going with household names. How does a new writer and publisher get a break? Book Bloggers—and here’s the beauty of this. You’re readers. You’re the people who love and buy books. You eliminate the middleman and let writers know what readers really think about their books. That’s a gift. The reviews I received from all of you opened doors for me. They made a difference when my distributor made sales calls, and they really helped my new business to get off to a strong start. Thank you.

Simon Thomas here, from Stuck-in-a-Book.

George Bernard Shaw (or someone like him) once said that Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language.  Since he was Irish, that brings a whole other factor into the equation, and perhaps it’s best to pretend Dorothy Parker said it, and move on… because this is my roundabout way to say that Amy has very kindly asked me to write a bit for BBAW about the UK blogging scene.  (Doesn’t the word ‘scene’ make that sound edgy?  In half an hour or so, I’m going to join the cup-of-tea-and-biscuit scene.  Wow, it works for anything.)  Yes, that’s right, the country which brought you Shakespeare and Austen and Dickens and, erm, J.K. Rowling has also been busy a-blogging.

Of course we aren’t wholly divided blogging worlds – some of my favourite blogs are written Stateside, such as Danielle’s A Work in Progress – but most of the blogs I read are UK-based, and, as L.P. Hartley didn’t quite say in The Go-Between, the UK is another country; they do things differently there.  For a start, we read different books, because different books are published here.  The American blogs I read tend to be of an Anglophile persuasion, so perhaps the disparity isn’t so evident, but UK book blogs often go weak at the knees when Virago Modern Classics are mentioned, or Persephone Books, or proper orange-striped Penguins. UK’s independent publishers are celebrated, not least because they often prove most willing to send out review copies to blogs.  We get excited when the Booker Longlist is announced – to American bloggers, Booker might just sound like a Creole equivalent of ‘reader’.  We tend not to host reading challenges so much (don’t know why), our style is perhaps a little more dry, and, of course, over here 1800 isn’t very old and 1900 feels like yesterday.  Jane Austen was dead before Herman Melville was in short trousers, etc. etc.

But we need some names, don’t we?  Being a wee little place, our blogging community sometimes feels quite compact.  There are doubtless thousands of literary blogs here in sunny Albion, but the ones I want to write about all more or less know each other – pop around for a cup of sugar, things like that.  A whistle-stop tour of my favourite UK blogs always has to start with Cornflower.  With a complementary ‘domestic arts blog’, Cornflower’s friendliness and charm comes with great book recommendations and beautiful things to look at as well.  Elaine at Random Jottings is another favourite, since we share more or less the same taste in books – also does a sideline in opera-chat.  And Simon S of Savidge Reads should get a mention, not just because his blog is always lively and witty and good, but because we follow each other all over the blogosphere – Simon S, Simon T, Simon S, Simon T.  Try saying that five times whilst drinking a glass of water.  Actually, don’t.

Alongside these old faithfuls, I must just mention one or two newer UK blogs to keep an eye on.  I love Claire aka Paperback Reader and am rather excited by a very new blogger, Hayley at Desperate Reader.  Of course there are many others – Brit Lit Blogs lists quite a few, though with slightly bizarre weightings given to some, and obscurity to others.  Still worth a look, if you can navigate it.

One of the benefits of living on a small island (aside from never being more than 72 miles from the coast: fact) is that none of the UK bloggers are that far apart from each other.  I can pop up to Edinburgh in much the same time it would take a Canadian to get a pint of milk.  In fact, I will be doing that soon, hopefully, and seeing Karen from Cornflower whilst I’m there.  Meeting bloggers in person is one of the fun, unexpected bonuses of writing a UK blog. Seeing the face behind the font is always exciting, and rather easier here than Across The Pond – I’ve met the good people behind Geranium Cat’s Bookshelf, Random Jottings, Dovegreyreader, Cornflower, Other Stories, Oxford Reader, The B Files, and Pursewarden – and there is talk of a UK blogger meet-up before the end of the year, watch this space. 

If you can get on a ‘plane and join us, you’d be very welcome – but for now I hope I’ve done my bit for the blogs of Great Britain.  Do stop by and say hello, forgive us when we –ise things instead of –izing them, and maybe we’ll make Anglophiles of you yet.

Today’s it’s all about the creativity.  We have this fabulous reading meme for you below and all you have to do?  Pick ONE or answer them all in as few words as possible!  Be creative, have fun, stand out!  That’s all! 

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of
writing in books horrify you?
How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears?
Laying the book flat open?
Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?
Hard copy or audiobooks?
Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you
able to put a book down at any point?
If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?
What are you currently reading?
What is the last book you bought?
Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can
you read more than one at a time?
Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read? 
Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?
Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?
How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)

I’m so excited to be participating in (and guest-blogging for!) Book Blogger Appreciation Week! My name is Ari and my blog is Reading in Color. I’m half Black, half Latina and I’m in high school. Reading in Color is a teen book blog that reviews YA books about people of color (Asians, Latina/os, Native Americans, and African Americans). While there may be an occasional off-color (aka book being reviewed with a white protagonist) book review, the reviews will generally be only about teens of color.

I started Reading in Color for two reasons. 1) I love to read. It’s my passion and sometimes I will choose to stay home and just curl up with a good book, rather than go hang out with friends.

2) Since I loved to read so much, I was always visiting book blogs, (especially book blogs that reviewed YA books) to find new books to read. However, I quickly noticed something. Most of the books reviewed were about white girls. This bothered me. I wanted to read books about teens who looked me or who were at least different from the white norm.  So I decided to start a blog that would review the kind of books I wanted to read, books that celebrated and promoted cultural diversity.

It’s vital that people read books about people who are different from them. Reading about people from different ethnic/class/religious backgrounds helps promote tolerance. I firmly believe literature can help combat racism and raise tolerance. Once you read about people from different backgrounds, you realize that while they may look different or wear different clothes or practice a different religion, they are a lot like you. The struggles that teens face in everyday life are generally the same (love/sex, drugs, alcohol, school, family, friendship difficulties).

I review books about teens of color because I want teen readers to have options, especially teen readers of color. I don’t want teens of color thinking their options are limited, that there are few books about people who look like them.  The statistics of teens who read who are not white is very low. We need to encourage more teens of color to read. Raise literacy levels and you help encourage kids to get an education, get kids an education and they go to college and ultimately become successful in life. Getting more teens to read is the first step. Also, I want publishers to put more faces of color on book covers. The Liar controversy firmly convinced me that authors should have a say in the making of the final book cover, it also taught me that sometimes publishers just don’t understand. My hope is that if there is a positive enough response to my blog, that more people go out and buy books about people of color, the publishers will look at the numbers and say “Well since lots of teens are reading books about people of color, let’s start putting faces of teens of color on the covers”.  Ambitious goal, but I think if more people start reviewing YA books about people of color, it will happen.

True confessions: I was once a nerd. At least, by eighth-grade standards. In fact, I was a kid who loved to read and spent large chunks of time holed up reading, escaping the angst of adolescent life through the pages of books. (Please note, however, that I did NOT wear glasses.)

The summer before eighth grade my family moved from Connecticut to Michigan. Which meant I was the new kid, with braces and pimples, who knew no one, and had nothing to do until school started. And I mean really nothing to do. But our public library was six blocks away, and it was air-conditioned and sometimes had snacks.

I don’t remember exactly what I read that summer. I’m guessing it included some Judy Blume; some Mary Stewart, whose historical fiction and romance novels were favorites then; as well as Booth Tarkington, whose “Penrod” books my Dad loved. I’m sure I re-read Little Women and Anne of Green Gables for the thousandth time. I know I read Immortal Queen by Elizabeth Byrd, and became temporarily obsessed with Mary, Queen of Scots.

All my reading that summer didn’t shoot me into the ranks of the wildly popular when school started that fall. But it did provide me with a sense of perspective that made adolescence slightly more bearable. I knew all kinds of people and ways of looking at things existed, because I’d read about them. I knew people made bad decisions, and good decisions, and were sometimes heroic and sometimes shameful and sometimes proud and sometimes modest and sometimes all those things together. I knew history repeated itself, that good guys didn’t always win, that life wasn’t fair, that throughout time and the world there had always been people in far worse circumstances than mine, and people who had it better.

This is why book blogs matter. Because all of us who love reading—who may be introverts or extroverts, insanely happy or in despair, athletic or clumsy, beautiful or not-so-much—have, through the common bond of reading books, the chance to know we’re not alone. Reading books lifts us out of the daily worries over kids, the mortgage, school, deadlines, angry bosses, roof repairs, and laundry. It launches us beyond ourselves, in spite of ourselves, which is really the point of life, isn’t it?

This year alone, I’ve spent time on the isle of Guernsey, worked as personal shopper at Barney’s, visited an estate in the Hamptons, felled trees in a Norwegian forest, and attended a tone-y private prep school, and that’s just in the books I’ve read. I’ve done even more through the reviews I’ve read on countless book blogs—blogs that made me smile in recognition, shake my head in disagreement, and add to my TBR pile with an immediate click.

I’m not calling book bloggers nerds. Bookworms? Maybe. Kindred spirits? Definitely.

Kathleen McCleary is the author of House and Home.