It’s been a fun-filled weekend for sure but I am ready for some downtime. We kicked off the weekend with a school festival which was a lot of fun. Yesterday we hit a friend’s house for a  Halloween party which was also a lot of fun. Trick-or-Treatin’ with others is just more fun than doing it on your own. We saw a lot of wonderful costumes this year. People really went all out. Oh, and the food at the party was really good too. We brought tamales but there were tacos and enchiladas and chips and salsa and oh, all sorts of good stuff.  YUM.

I also watched quite a few scary movies this year. I LOVE a good scary movie. I made popcorn and had a little thriller-fest once the kids hit the sack.

Now for the book talk! This past week I reviewed The Return as part of a TLC book tour. I also reviewed The Girl Who Played with Fire. Yesterday I posted my confession on my troubles with Moby Dick.

This week I plan to review some non-fiction books that I received a couple of months ago. I have to catch-up on my book club reading as my meeting is this week and I am still quite behind with In the Time of the Butterflies. I must-get-it-read.

What are you doing today? Recovering? Pulling out your fave Thanksgiving recipes? Making your list and checking it twice? I am sooo into Holiday mode right now.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

Friday Finds is hosted by Should Be Reading.

The blurb from the publisher:

On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when — or if — it will go away.

Dale Barbara, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens – the town newspaper owner, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a select-woman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing to hold on to the reins of power, and his son. Because time isn’t just short… It’s running out.

First off, this isn’t really a ‘find’ because a lot of people know about it already and there’s been so  much buzz over the cover art (which was released in stages) that it may even seem like old news but I am very excited about this book. Why? Well, in my college years I read a lot of King. I poured over all of  his classic stuff including The Stand which to date, is his best novel yet. Don’t let its cheesy cover fool you, The Stand is really, really good.

After that, it seemed as if his writing got, well…weird. Not weird for King but weird in general. I didn’t care for any of his later books. However, Under the Dome is supposed to be his return to the classic style of writing that he is known for. I can’t wait! It comes out November 10th and I plan to read it over Thanksgiving weekend but I may not be able to wait that long. Is anyone else dying to read it?

Check out this page for more info.

Posted in Uncategorized Tagged: Friday Finds, Stephen King, Under the Dome ]]> http://bookchatter.net/2009/10/16/friday-finds-under-the-dome/feed/ 18 Ti Under the Dome Friday Finds http://bookchatter.net/2009/10/12/youve-won-the-last-dickens/ http://bookchatter.net/2009/10/12/youve-won-the-last-dickens/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:34:51 +0000 Ti http://bookchatter.net/?p=1858 ]]>

Thank you for participating in my giveaway of The Last Dickens.  Now for the winner… Each comment was assigned a number in the order in which it was received, and entered into Random.org’s random number generator.

The winner is Kristina of Kristina’s Favorites!

Congratulations! I hope you enjoy the book! I am sending you an email now!

Note: the winner will have 5 business days to respond to the notification email. If I do not receive a response, another winner will be selected.

Thanks to the folks over at Random House for hosting this giveaway.

It may take awhile for me to get used to the new features and I am still toying with a custom header so that may change down the line but I hope you all like it. For those that are participating in my Confession of a Reader series, I will post the new button on my sidebar tomorrow so please grab it if you want an early start to Saturday’s post.

What do you think?

UPDATE: If anyone has problems addng me to Google reader, use this feed: http://bookchatter.net/feed

1. Whenever you have something you want to share, just spill it (you know you want to). Just create a post of your own, grab the button thingy above and then add your post link to Mister Linky below.

 

2. I will be here every Saturday, but you need not commit to a weekly post. Post when you have something to share.

 

3. Posts can be rants about something you are reading, or a deep, dark secret. All I ask is that the post relates to reading or blog reading in some way. If you want to piggy-back off of what I post, then that’s okay too.

 

4. Posts can be as short or as long as you like and can include more than one topic.

 

5. The goal is to get to know one another better.

Here’s mine:

I’ve asked myself this question a million times but does it really matter if I use a rating system for my reviews? Right now, I do not. However, I about 6-8 months ago, there was a
Twitter conversation about the issue and some bloggers mentioned that they won’t visit blogs that DO NOT employ a rating system of some sort. Really? I was surprised to hear this.
I know that there are plenty of blogs that do use them, but I would never avoid a blog for not using them. Would you?

For me, stars just don’t mean much to me. I would much prefer to read what a blogger has to say. There are some bloggers that have completely different rating systems. Bethany over at Dreadlock Girl has her ‘Stellar Five Chicken Book’ award which I think is brilliant. She awards this to books that are exceptional. Click here to see an example of it. Diane over at Bibliophile by the Sea has a unique rating system as well. Diane assigns ‘faces’ to her reviews to let us know whether or not she liked them. Sort of reminds me of the pain chart at the hospital but it’s clear and I know right away what she thinks of a book. For an example of her system, click here.

I use the rating system on Library Thing and Goodreads but I always feel weird doing so. Also, I have to tell you that when I heard that people may not visit without a rating system, the rebel in me automatically decided not to use one. Isn’t that funny? I’m like a little kid sometimes when it comes to stuff like this. So as it stands now, no ratings for me and I blow raspberries (phwwwtttt) at anyone that won’t visit because of it.

However, I realize that they won’t see my virtual raspberries which is sort of funny in and of itself.

If you’d like to include your own confession, enter the name of your blog below and then add the permalink to your post. Or, if you aren’t quite ready to post your own confession then comments are fine too