PopConsumer

Book Giveaway: A Baker's Dozen

I continue to make progress in unpacking and de-cluttering.  I emptied out a box of books that I had packed away to deal with donating/recyling.  As I am being a ruthless ninja now, half the books that I thought oh, maybe, someone will want them as a resource even though they are old and out of date, are in the recycling bin.  Classics like the 2000 Zagat New York City Restaurants Survey, the 2004 Consumer Reports Buying Guide and Palm Pilot: The Ultimate Guide from 1999.  When I told you that I moved a lot of crap around unpacked, I was not kidding.

However, half the books are perfectly readable.  Nice, not too taxing and perfect for airplanes, airport delays and too exausted to think but to adrenilne hyped to sleep late night post conference hotel room fare.  In fact, most were purchased at airports. Two were read just while spending 18 hours trying to get from Hartford, CT back to Cali. All were enjoyable. I wouldn't offer you something that put me to sleep or I did not or wasn't interested in finishing. No great art but entertaining, satisfying reads if you like this sort of thing.

I was prepared to attempt to donate them to the library but I thought I'd offer them first to you, dear readers. (If I get no takers by Monday then I'll see if the library wants them and if not then freecycle then recycling bin).

If you win the Take Maria's Crap Off Her Hands Contest, I will send you a box of 13 books comprised of:

Five of the James Patterson Women's Murder Club series (this was made into the TV series starring Angie Harmon as Lindsey Boxer):

2nd Chance (PB)
3rd Degree (HC)
4th of July (PB)
The 5th Horseman (PB)
The 6th Target (HC)

Five of the James Patterson Alex Cross books (there were two movies made starring Morgan Freeman as Cross - Along Came a Spider and Kiss The Girls). There are seven prior books in the series and a few after at this point I'm sure. Patterson is a crank-em-out machine.:

2002 Four Blind Mice (PB)
2003 Big Bad Wolf (PB)
2004 London Bridges (PB)
2005 Mary Mary (PB)
2006 Cross (HC)

The additional three are:

See How They Run by James Patterson (PB)
The Devil Wears Prada
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (who wrote The Kite Runner)

So leave me a comment or send an email if you'd rather not announce your interest in pulp fiction to the world.  I'll count comments and emails by 11:59 pm PST Sunday, January 25, 2009.  If I get more than one "contest entry" I will be shocked and will number by order received and use a random number generator to pick.  Or I'll pick the most entertaining request.  We'll see how it goes.  I reserve the right to make up the rules as I go along :)

Gwen Ifill is a Rock Star!

So the proposed scenario here is that Gwen Ifill has secretly plotted to write a book about race and the political process, shockingly talk about Obama in it and then throw the VP debate, behave partisanly as she never has for decades, somehow single handedly take down Sarah Palin, the American people then for the first time in history vote based on the VP debate and nothing else, decide based on the heaping egg Ifill has slung on Palin's face to elect Obama and drive sales of a book that is not about revealing embarrassing personal details (the promise of which drove sales of both Clinton memoirs and is what earned them millions of dollars and Obama has already received a million dollars for spilling his own secrets) and that she will make a fortune from royalties not from an already paid advance?

I used to work in the music business.  The only artists who made the bulk (or any, frankly) money from sales royalties vs. advances were limited to multi-platinum sellers - less than 1 percent of all the recordings made and sold.  I'm guessing the book business isn't terribly different.  The book authors I know never made a cent beyond the advance.

I'm impressed that folks think that a black woman who hosts a 1/2 hour wonky news show on PBS is so awesomely powerful and that race and politics is the hot book subject of next year.  There might be hope for me getting a book deal and not starving yet!