Upcoming Events

There are a few exciting book blog projects gathering force at the moment, for those of you who like joining in (in real life it’s quite an effort, online much easier):

Dewey’s Read-a-thon – Participants sign up to read for 24 hours from 1pm GMT (5am Pacific )Sat 24th Oct – 1pm GMT Sun 25th Oct , or they can sign up to cheer on the readers electronically, or do both. There are already 146 readers signed up. I’m so impressed to see 39 cheerleaders this year, the cheerleaders really do keep the event going and it’s a great job for those who can’t take the whole day off to read as you can commit to cheer for just a one hour. If you’re an author passing through, a publisher looking for a little promotion, or just a generous person you can donate something by emailing the organisers at DeweyReadathon at gmail.

Rebecca has turned her tentative idea into a reality and begun setting up the ‘Classics Circuit’. In case you missed her original post Rebecca wanted to see classics getting just as much blog time as the shiny, modern books and proposed starting a ‘Dead Authors’ tour. That idea will get its first outing in Nov when book bloggers will have Wilkie Collins ‘stop by’ their blogs in a scheduled blog tour. I signed up and I’m really excited about this, I think it’s going to recreate the kind of excitement readers at the time felt whenever a new Collins, Dickens etc popped out. The tours restricted to dead authors, but there are still plenty of modern classic authors who qualify and to dispel any idea that classics only spring from the dead, white male canon an Elizabeth Gaskell tour will run at the same time as Wilkie Collins is dropping in on bloggers. You can get interactive right now and suggest a future tour.

Whatever you’re doing to try and hold Christmas back it is a-coming. Why not sign up for a book related Secret Santa at ‘Never ending Shelf’ and embrace the season?

Will you be taking part in any of these events? I see so many people mentioning Wilkie Collin’s ‘The Woman in White’ already, as an RIP choice, it almost seems he’s taking over the book world yet again!

CORA Diversity Roll Call: Blogs

The current CORA diversity roll call task is to shine the spotlight of joy (not interrogation) on some bloggers who are different from you, for example:

“ think about blogger(s) who:
a. Identify with another race and/or ethnicity, religion, cultural background, age, etc.
b. from you. Live the farthest from you
c. Have entirely different tastes in books from you (but you love their blog anyway)”
I’ve linked to MissAttitude at ‘Reading in Colour’ and Doret at ‘The Happy Nappy Bookseller' before, but I thought I’d quickly point out a few other bloggers who I’ve just started reading and who are a different race from me.

Susan at ‘Color Online’ runs a blog where she and other writers showcase books written by and about black, latina, asian and native American women. She also maintains a small library collection which gives girls a space where they can read about characters like themselves. If you find yourself with a little Christmas spirit later in the year you can donate a book or two to their shelves.

‘Image Nation’ is a blog that primarily reviews books about Africa. It’s a massive continent, with so many different traditions and variations of culture that it really deserves at least one blog dedicated to it.

Zetta Elliot at ‘Fledgling’ is the self-published author of ‘A Wish Before Midnight’. I suspect I may have linked to her before, but she always has the best stories covered at her blog and she’s a blog activist, engaged in the ‘Writer’s Against Racism’ series.

Speaking of WAR Amy Bowllan is the creator of this series that collects writers experience of prejudice together. She writes at ‘School Library Journal’.

Finally ‘Browngirl BookSpeak’ is a new addition to my feedreader and she recently gave me an award. Everyone on the list above should consider the 'Who Loves You Baby' award passed on to them : )