Hello everybody! Happy Sunday to all!
We have a couple of winners to announce.
Giveaway Winners:
The winner of one copy of River Marked is…
The winner of Shine, Coconut Moon and Jazz in Love is…
Congratulations! You know the drill – send us an email (contact AT the book smugglers DOT com) with your snail mail address, and we will get your book out to you as soon as possible.
Arthur C Clarke Award 2011 – Shortlist
The shortlist for this year’s Clarke Awards – the most prestigious award for science fiction in Britain – has been announced last Friday. Here is the list:
• Zoo City – Lauren Beukes (Angry Robot)
• The Dervish House – Ian McDonald (Gollancz)
• Monsters of Men – Patrick Ness (Walker Books)
• Generosity – Richard Powers (Atlantic Books)
• Declare – Tim Powers (Corvus)
• Lightborn – Tricia Sullivan (Orbit)
We are surprised, yet delighted to see a YA novel making the list (apparently it is only the second ever YA to be shortlisted). Monsters of Men is a fabulous book and it made Thea’s top 10 last year. We also really liked Lightborn but Ana was not keen on The Dervish House. We haven’t read the other three books but we are might curious now and Thea will be reading Zoo City really soon.
Speaking of the Clarke Award, in the build up to the announcement, Martin Lewis, one of the judges, has published a series of posts last week with statistics about the submitted novels and they are pretty interesting to read about (my personal favourite is the one that reflects how “science fiction is overly bloodthirsty whilst simultaneously too childishly squeemish about sex.”)
Check out this intro post with an explanation and links to the stats.
And on the subject of awards…
Nebula Awards Readathon
Have you heard about our Nebula Awards Readathon?
Here’s the skinny:
In an attempt to read all of the books in the awards’ two categories before the awards are announced on May 21, we will be posting our own mini-reviews of the nominees above, ultimately coming to a decision regarding which books in our opinion deserve the big award! And, we Smugglers are inviting YOU to participate in the readathon effort. We’ll be reading the nominees along with the schedule below, and on each set date, we invite everyone to write their own reviews of the scheduled nominee(s).
Next week, we kick things off with the following:
March 13: The Native Star / Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword
…and we hope you’ll join in!
The Book Smugglers: The Web-App Enabled Version
In other news, we’ve finally got our web-app enabled mobile version of The Book Smugglers up and running. If you use an iPhone, you have the ability to now save The Book Smugglers as an app on your homescreen, so you can get your Smuggler fix without having to navigate through your web browser! The process is easy – just visit www.thebooksmugglers.com through Safari, then tap the center button at the bottom of your touchscreen and select “Add to Home Screen.” You’ll be prompted to name the app (we recommend “Smugglers” or “TBS” – since “The Book Smugglers” is too long to fit the field), and VOILA! You now have your very own web-app version of the site.
This Week on The Book Smugglers
On Monday, to celebrate the release of Numbers: The Chaos by Rachel Ward, we ae going to be running a special giveaway of the book.
On Tuesday, Ana reviews Fantasy novel Champion of the Rose by Andrea K Höst…
…and on Wednesday, the lovely YA novel The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly.
On Thursday, Thea reviews the newest novel from Carrie Vaughn, the swashbuckling/time-travel YA title Steel.
On Friday, we post our joint review of The City in the Lake by Rachel Neumeier who is fast becoming a Smuggler Favourite.
Finally, on Saturday, Thea reviews Dark Mirror by M. J. Putney, plus a mini-interview with the author and a giveaway as part of the official blog tour.
Oh wait, it is not over, because on Sunday, we post our first mini-reviews in the Nebula Readathon!
This is going to be one of those weeks! Woot!!
For now, it is au revoir. As usual, we remain….
~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers
8 Comments
Gerd D.
March 6, 2011 at 7:37 am“science fiction is overly bloodthirsty whilst simultaneously too childishly squeemish about sex.”
I always enjoyed that the most about SF, no pointless, extraneous sex scenes to bother with. 😈
Bibliotropic
March 6, 2011 at 8:43 amLots of good books coming up on your blog this week! I’m going to enjoy seeing all the reviews and comments – most of those books are ones I really want to read!
thekla
March 6, 2011 at 8:56 amHey there, dear smuggler!
This has to be best looking stash ever, look at those covers, each more gorgeous than the other! I cannot wait to see what’s inside those beauties.
I’ve been following your blog for a long time now and wanted to tell you how much I love your reviews. They are fun, structured and honest.
I’ve just (finally!) finished reading the Artemis Fowl series and was curious to see what other readers thought of them, so I browsed your archive, but didn’t find anything. I’m just curious, did you not have the time to get into it so far, or did you just not get around to do a review on it (it IS quite an elaborate series, after all). If it’s option number one, all I can say is that it’s highly recommended. The author describes is as “Die Hard with fairies” though I’m more inclined to calling it “Better than Die Hard. AND with fairies.” But then, that’s just me,
your humble reader 🙂
shabbygeek
March 6, 2011 at 6:46 pmWoo, can’t wait to read both your thoughts on Steel & Calpurnia Tate!
Tiah
March 6, 2011 at 8:51 pmI won The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate from Goodreads! Can’t wait to hear what you thought of it.
Julie Jones
March 8, 2011 at 11:39 amFound your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later …
KMont
March 10, 2011 at 8:52 amJust realized I missed yalls Stash and On the Radar posts over the weekend! Lord I need to get with it. 😉
Anyway, yalls site being a mobile app now is beyond cool. Excellent, my friends! Going to go download right now!
Book Smugglers App « Reading 2.0
March 31, 2011 at 5:13 am[…] Want to keep up to date on the newest YA releases? Do it conveniently on your iPhone with the Book Smugglers Web-app enabled version of their website. […]