And the winner is...

I have had a couple of giveaways running that have come to an end, so now it is time to announce the winners and the answers to my Hunger Games questions.

First, I want to thank each and every one of you who have signed up as a follower for my blog. I have been very fortunate to have so many wonderful people to share my love of reading with. And I value each time you share your love of reading with me.

The winners of my 300 follower giveaway are:
Nicole who choose Wings by Aprilynne Pike.
Aurora who choose Fat Vampire by Adam Rex.
Tiffani who gets Slayers by CJ Hill.

Thank you to everyone who participated in my 300 follower giveaway!



Second, I had so much fun with the Hunger Games Countdown Trivia and Giveaway. I hope my buddy, Jen, will want to do another one soon! *wink* *wink*

The winner of the giveaway was Krista, who already has a ticket to the midnight showing of the movie. Who else will be there at midnight?

Here are the answers to my questions:
1) What is the first line of The Hunger Games?
B) When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

2) When Katniss tells the reader about life in District 12 and how she knew Peeta, she says this "is never the cause of death officially. It's always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But that fools no one." What is she talking about?
C) Starvation

3) Who are Venia, Octavia, and Flavius?
D) Katniss' prep team

4) Before going to the Capitol, Katniss says she has ridden an elevator two times at the Justice Building in District 12. What were the occasions?
A) Once to receive the medal for her father's death and then to say her final goodbye to her friends and family.

5) What did Peeta's mother tell him when she went to tell him goodbye?
D) "Maybe District Twelve will finally have a winner...She's a survivor, that one"

6) Before Caesar's interviews, what characteristic did Cinna tell Katniss that no one can help but admiring in her?
B) Her spirit

7) How many Tracker Jackers attack (or sting) Katniss before she drops the nest on Peeta and the Careers?
B) Three

8) What does Katniss' mother always say is the first treatment for burns?
D) Cold Water

9) Who said, "I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not."
B) Peeta

10) Which tribute did Katniss identify first as one of the muttations when she, Peeta, and Cato were defending themselves at the Cornucopia?
A) Glimmer

11) What outfit does Peeta say he remembers Katniss wearing when his crush on her started?
B) A Red Plaid Dress with her hair in two braids.

12) What "sensible" meal do Peeta and Katniss share as Chapter 23 opens?
A) They each have a roll, half an apple, and an egg-size serving of stew and rice.

13) What does Katniss hide the sleeping medicine in when she gives it to Peeta?
A) Mashed up berries that she calls Sugar Berries.

14) Katniss describes how District 12 handles the Hunger Games as?
A) "We grit our teeth and watch because we must and try to get back to business as soon as possible when they're over."

15) Which of the following is the last line of The Hunger Games?
C) "I take his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the camera, and dreading the moment when I will finally have to let go."

So how did you do? What did you think of the questions?

TBR Intervention (13)

I was at a conference last weekend so I missed the TBR Intervention.  But I am back this week happy with my progress--even if I have missed some of my targets.

Last TBR Intervention

I finished this one and it was a lot more intriguing than I originally expected. My review will be out on March 19 and the author will have a guest post on his journey to becoming a published author on March 20.


I finished this one--review is coming soon.  I have to say that Charlaine Harris has brought me into her world.  I have not decided if I want to get the DVDs for the True Blood the television series.


I had read One for the Money once before and was not impressed.  After watching the movie, I gave it another chance--and I liked it so much better the second time.  I am excited to read the rest of the series now.

Next Week

Luckily, I got to renew this one from the library.  But I am determined to read this one this week!


I have been very excited to read this one as I hear it is a great dragon-focused book!

Summary (from inside flap):
Dragons Exist.  They're ferocious.  And they're smart: Before they were killed off by slayer-knights, they rendered a select group of eggs dormant, so their offspring would survive.  Only a handful of people know about this, let alone believe it.  These "Slayers" are descended from the original knights, and are now a diverse group of teens that includes Tori, a smart, but spoiled, senator's daughter who didn't sign up to save the world.

Now the dragon eggs have fallen into the wrong hands.  The Slayers must work together to stop the eggs from hatching.  They will fight, they will fall in love.  But will they survive? 


This book is the one I will be giving away as part of the World Book Night celebration. I wanted to re-read it before April 23.

Summary (from Amazon):
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

What books do you plan to read this week?

The Book Addict Celebrates 300 Followers With a Giveaway

I want to thank you all for participating in my Under the Never Sky giveaway. The lucky winner was Xia. I will be mailing the book out on Saturday.

I had so much fun with my last giveaway--and during the course of my last giveaway I hit a major milestone of 300 followers (sincerest thanks to each and everyone of you). So I felt the need to celebrate again--and of course a celebration means another giveaway!

Since I have reached 300 people I will be selecting 3 winners. The first winner will have their choice of the three prizes. The second winner will have their choice of the remaining two prizes. The third will will get the third prize. All of these books come from my amazing experience at YAllapalooza!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Book Addict Attends YAllapalooza

Who: Tom Leveen, Cecil Castellucci, C.J. Hill (AKA Janette Rallison), Adam Rex, Robin Brande, Amy Fellner Dominy, Aprilynne Pike, Bree Despain, Anna Carey, Kiersten White, and James A. Owen
Where: Burton Barr Central Library in Phoenix, AZ.
Hosted by: Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ.
When: 4pm on January 28, 2012 (but again I got there early so I had a wonderful seat--again).

I wish I had pictures--but the authors panel was in front of a beautiful window and the light from behind made it so I could not get a good picture.  But it was a fantastic view behind a fantastic authors panel.

The only author at the event that I had read before going was Kiersten White (I loved Paranormalcy).  So I went hoping to learn about a bunch of new-to-me authors--and this event delivered in spades!

Here are some highlights I collected that have firmly moved some of these books onto my TBR list:
1) Tom Leveen encouraged future writers to be honest with their characters.  That is what it takes to write characters that people care about.  And always take the opportunity to prepare and learn about the process and not just focus on the end product of having written a book.


2) Cecil Castellucci loves Star Wars.  And the first thing she remembers writing was a sequel to the original Star Wars movie.  This story really inspired me because I remember writing all kinds of fan fiction of alternate endings or continuations or episodes for my favorite books, movies, and television shows.


3) Janette Rallison (AKA C.J. Hill) recommends that new or aspiring writers keep a notebook with them at all times because you never know when you will be inspired or when you will get an idea and you will want to write it down because it may not come back to you again in the same way. 


4) Adam Rex wrote The True Meaning of Smekday as a way to explore history and in particular the way that the British colonies affected the Native American people when they came to America.  So he brought that idea to the future with aliens--but he is glad that the book does not come across as having such a forced lesson that it is not also fun.  I bought Fat Vampire, but now I want to read Smekday just as much if not more! It is on my wishlist!


5) Robin Brande was an attorney who was inspired after 9/11 to change careers and do what she loved and what she was passionate about: write.  She said repeatedly that a big part of being a good writer is to get out into the world and live an interesting life.  It is much more believable to read interesting stories if you have had interesting experiences.


6) Amy Fellner Dominy encouraged aspiring writers to not focus solely on the end goal of writing a book.  Take any opportunity to write, and through all of it develop the love of writing.


7) Aprilynne Pike really kept a smile on my face the entire panel.  She was very witty--and it made me so glad that I got the first book in her series!  I also got a glimpse of book 4 in the series and I cannot wait to get to it!  But the thought that struck with me was when she said she wrote for teens because she had always been raised to love teenagers.  Her parents could not wait until she and her sibling grew to teenagers because they knew it was such a fun and exciting times of their children's lives.  And now she cannot wait until her own children are teens because she knows it will be a fun and exciting time of her children's lives.   


8) Bree Despain always loved to write.  The story that stuck with me the most was that she wrote her assigned high school English journal as a fictional story because her life was "boring."  She was also an aspiring actor who took a job as the theater director for a camp.  She was supposed to help the kids in the camp put on a three hour play--which was a tall order when many of them had trouble reading.  But she wrote a cinderella-murder-mystery for them to perform which ended up being a big hit!  I wish I had had a play like that to do when I was in high school.


9) Anna Carey said that it is never too old to start writing especially if that is what you love.  She told us that the hero in her novel came to her first--but more of the voice of the hero then the fully developed character that we find when we read her book.


10) Kiersten White said that she gets her ideas from taking two seemingly-unrelated-ideas forcing them together and then seeing what happens.  For instance, for Paranormalcy she said that she was struck by what would happen if vampires (a feared being) had been hunted almost to extinction and so now they needed to be protected as an endangered species.  What mechanisms would need to be put into place to protect the vampires as well as the humans?


11) James A. Owen impressed me so much with his drawings (I did not know he drew his own illustrations until I met him!).  My favorite story was when told about his first "published" work: Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Jim Owen Age 6.  He found a copy of this work on eBay and was bidding for it.  When he lost--he reached out to the person who won.  It turned out that he knew the person--and that person now claims to have the most complete James A. Owen collection.  :)

I also had to share the amazing drawing he did with his signature in the book! I could not believe that he did this freehand.

Overall--it was an amazing event to participate in and next year I want to do the writers conference too!  I had so much fun that it is all I have been talking about all day!