Yes, I am a Book Blogger!

In the 3.5 years that I have been blogging, I’ve spent countless hours of my free time reading books, reading and responding to book-related emails, writing book reviews and giveaways, promoting those reviews, and even traveling to book events such as BookExpo America. I do all this because I get frightened when I hear things such as 22% of all Americans are illiterate, or that close to 50% of Americans haven’t read a book since they graduated from high school. I think reading is one of the most pleasurable past times I person can give themselves, and it makes me sad more people don’t do this for themselves. I love nothing more than bringing good books and authors to the readers of this blog.

Since I blog about everything I like and don’t like, I thought I’d interview myself, to show you what type of book blogger I am–as you can see, I read so much I’m double-filing books on my book shelves!

Why do you blog under an alias? Well, when I started this blog, I didn’t think anyone was even going to read it, so I picked a silly sounding name, but also a name that meant something to me. (You can find out more about that here.) After having over 3.9 million visitors, I like to keep my identity private, not only because I am looking for work, but because in our crazy, crazy world, I don’t want someone stalking me, in person or online.

How long have you been blogging about books? I started writing about books about 3 years ago, but have really been super book blogging for over 2 years.

What encouraged you to start blogging about books? Books are my passion, my salvation, my life. How could I not talk about them?

What is your favorite book genre? I am a sucker for memoirs, autobiographies, historical fiction and literary fiction. I read from every genre except romance novels, but I enjoy memoirs the most, probably because I connect with them on a personal level. I have a real passion for reading memoirs not just because I am writing my own memoir, but because I love to find other dyFUNctional authors. I get what they went through and I laugh along with them!

What is the best book you’ve read in 2011? I’ve loved The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure. She paints a beautiful story with the perfect blend of pop culture and loss of childhood innocence in her memoir about Laura Ingalls Wilder.

What is your favorite childhood book? I re-read Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret this weekend. It’s the best book I read as a child, and still stands up for me as an adult today. I identified with Margaret so much. We were both flat-chested girls searching for god. I was raised without religion, read the entire old testament by age 9, and was attending 4 different churches at the time I had read this book. It somehow made me realize I wasn’t alone.

What’s the title of a book that describes your life? Everything Is Wrong With Me (by the hilarious Jason Mulgrew), because I have a crazy mother, a sociopath half-brother, and a rare genetic disease that causes me to over 40 serious and/or chronic illnesses. My life has been a funny-yet-tragic roller-coaster ride. I’m so using that title for my second book, if I ever get my first one finished and published!

If you had to choose 3 books everyone should read, what would they be? How about A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving, The Help by Kathryn Stockett and The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. They all have such important lessons and are written so beautifully.

Name one character from a book you’d like to spend time with and why? Zippy Jarvis from A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. Zippy is a girl like no other. She’s funny, inquisitive, charming and a survivor of dysFUNction and I feel that if we had met as girls, we would have been great friends.

What author would you most like to interview if given the chance? I’m always a little scared to interview authors, because I know that I am so not worthy to interview them. If somehow given the chance, I’d love to meet Pat Conroy and sit down with him and ask him questions for hours about every single detail of his life, as so much of his writing comes from stories from his own life.

What has been the most rewarding part of book blogging for you? When I attended BookExpo last year, an author whose book I reviewed recognized me and told me he was a fan of mine and had appreciated my review. I literally could have died, because this man is a BRILLIANT author and I am a just an unknown blogger! Book blogging is so much fun for me because I love discovering new authors, especially first-time authors. On rare occasion I get to meet them and I love finding out that they are even more wonderful in person than on the page.

What are you reading right now? I’m reading (and loving) Seeds: One Man’s Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton by Richard Horan.

What’s on your to-read list? Actually, I have an entire shelf of books that need to be read. Most came from last year’s BookExpo and Book Blogger Convention. Trust me, it was twice as full last summer, so I’ll get to all these books, someday …

Read my fun plea to Sponsor a Nerd and my official plea for sponsors, Will You Sponsor Me For The 2011 BookExpo America And Book Blogger Convention This May?

Book Giveaway: Win 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson

22 Britannia Road is absolutely riveting. I quite literally could not put it down–I read the entire book in one sitting last week. Now, I love a good historical fiction novel, especially one that takes place after the Holocaust. That being said, I must tell you this book is special. As in future movie special. Do you know how some books are great because they are beautifully written, or because they are exciting, or even because they have unique characters and/or painful subject matter? Well, I have to tell you this book falls into all of those categories, which I don’t see all that often, especially from a first-time novelist.

22 Britannia Road is a deeply moving novel about wartime secrets, secrets that perhaps should have never been told, let alone allowed to occur in the first place. The book begins in 1946, at the end of World War II, and we are introduced to Silvana Nowak and her eight-year-old Aurek, as they board the ship that will take them from war-torn Poland to England. When Silvan is asked for her occupation, “housekeeper or housewife?,” Silvana responds quietly, “survivor.” Silvana and Aurek had a very different type of survival during WWII, as they spent much of the war hiding in the forests of Poland, living wild and living apart from Silvana’s husband Janusz.

Waiting in England is Silvana’s husband Janusz, who has not seen his wife and son for six years. He had no idea that they even survived the war, and he has begun the process of decorating his newly acquired home, working hard in the backyard in order to plant his family a proper English garden, as a welcome to their new lives. Silvana, Janusz and Aurek have all changed during the years they lived apart and have many things to overcome, such as the fact that the boy coos like a bird, refers to his father as “the enemy,” (since he forces the boy to sleep separately from his mother for the first time in his life) and still feeds of off his mother’s breasts.

Everyone has their secrets–Janusz still has the letters from a love in France whom he cannot forget, and Silvana’s secrets are so horrible they aren’t even mentioned until the end of the book. When that happens, you will shudder in horror, because no person should have had to went through what she went through during that horrible war. Even Aurek has his secrets, but everyone is struggling to keep them hidden, and struggling to reveal them to one other.

22 Britannia Road is one of those books YOU HAVE TO READ. If you enjoy stories about WWII, the Holocaust, maternal love, and overcoming hardship, then this book if for you. I promise you are going to love it! Visit Amazon.com to pre-order your own copy of 22 Britannia Road now.

About the Author:

Amanda Hodgkinson was born in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, England and grew up in a small fishing village in East Anglia. She earned an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. She currently lives in an old stone farmhouse in the south-west of France with her husband, two daughters, some chickens and two cats. This is her first novel.

Tour Dates for Amanda Hodgkinson:

May 9 / Coral Gables,   FL / Books & Books / 7:00  PM

May 10 / Mequon, WI / Next Chapter Bookshop / 7:00 PM

May 11 / Petoskey, MI / McLean & Eakin Bookstore / 7:30  PM

May 12 / Ann Arbor,   MI / Nicola’s Books / 7:00  PM

May 13 / Danville, CA / Rakestraw Books / 7:00 PM

May 14 / Corte Madera,   CA / Book Passage / 11:00 AM

May 16 / Oakland, CA/ A Great Good Place For Books / 7:00 PM

May 17 / Lake Forest Park,   WA / Third Place Books / 6:30 PM

22 BRITANNIA ROAD GIVEAWAY – 3 LUCKY WINNERS WILL WIN A COPY

RULES:

**Open to U.S. and Canadian residents only.

**No P.O. boxes, please.

**Must include your email in your comment, unless you signed in to leave a comment with your “real” email.

**All comments must be separate to count as separate entries. For example, if you follow me on Facebook and Twitter, leave 2 comments, one with your Facebook name, and one with your Twitter name. Or, if you posted about the giveaway on your blog, leave 5 comments, all with the link to your giveaway.

**Please read the additional rules here.

HOW TO ENTER:

**Mandatory Entry: Go to Amanda’s website, AmandaHodgkinson.com, and tell me what fun or interesting thing you learned or noticed there.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Like 22 Britannia Road on Facebook.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Facebook. Make sure to leave your Facebook name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Facebook and share a link on your wall with the following comment I entered The Girl from the Ghetto’s 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson book giveaway here http://bit.ly/g2GBYN. Make sure to leave a comment below with a link to your Facebook profile message, or at least with your Facebook name.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter. Make sure to leave your @Twitter name in your comment.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Twitter and tweet the following RT @NerdGirlBlogger I entered the @PamelaDormanBks book #giveaway for 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson here http://bit.ly/g2GBYN. You can tweet 4x a day (Once every 6 hours) for even more chances to win. Make sure to leave a link to your tweet in a comment below.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Subscribe to my blog via email or Feedburner.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Enter one of my other current giveaways and tell me which one.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow me on Goodreads.

+1  MORE ENTRY: Follow Amanda Hodgkinson on Goodreads.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Add 22 Britannia Road to your to-read shelf on Goodreads.

+1 MORE ENTRY: Comment here and tell me why you need to win this giveaway! Do you love reading historical fiction or first-time novelists like I do? Do you enjoy reading in general, or, do you just love winning free stuff?

+5 MORE ENTRIES: Write about this giveaway on your own blog. Make sure to post a link to http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com, and leave me 5 copies of your link via comment here.

Contest ends Monday, May 9, 2011 at midnight. Good luck to you all!

The Movie Version of The Help is Just 109 Days Away!

I CAN NOT wait until August 12, 2011. Simply can’t wait! Wanna know why? That’s when one of the best books I’ve ever read comes to a theatre near you!

After I read The Help, I said that not only was it going to become a film, but it was going to win at least one Oscar, if not 2 or 3. Seriously, it’s that good. I beg you to read it, if you haven’t already done so. Please feel free to check out my book review of The Help here, or read about when I met Kathryn Stockett (and got an autographed copy of The Help) at BookExpo America here.

In case you haven’t read the #1 New York Times best-selling phenomenon, The Help is a brilliant, painful, funny and downright inspiring look at what happens when three courageous women of mixed races strike up an unlikely friendship during the 1960′s in Mississippi. Skeeter (played by Emma Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends’ lives — and a small Mississippi town — upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen (played by Viola Davis), Skeeter’s best friend’s housekeeper, is the first to open up — to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community. Despite Skeeter’s life-long friendships hanging in the balance, she and Aibileen continue their collaboration and soon more women come forward to tell their stories — and as it turns out, they have a lot to say. Aibileen introduces Skeeter to another maid named Minny (played by Octavia Spencer), and along the way, a new sisterhood emerges, but not before everyone in town has a thing or two to say themselves when they become unwittingly — and unwillingly — caught up in the changing times.

I seriously was just moved to tears by that movie trailer. It looks soooo good, and every character is cast perfectly in my humble semi-expert opinion as a former movie theatre manager. I can’t tell you how excited I am for Katheryn Stockett and the director/screenwriter, her childhood best friend, Tate Taylor. I think this is going to become the hit of the summer. Make sure to save the date–because August 12, 2011 will be here soon enough!