Smugglivus 2013: An Introduction (& Week 1 Schedule)

Ah, Smugglivus, we meet again, our old friend! It’s almost unthinkable that 2013 has basically come and gone, and it’s already time to once again start our month-long celebration of all things bookish and geeky! But here we are: Smugglivus has officially arrived.

For the uninitiated, here is a quick primer:

Smugglivus, what?

Smugglivus is our month-long (ok, technically it’s about five weeks long) end of the year celebration. Back in our first year of The Book Smugglers in 2008, we wanted to do something special at the end of the year leading up to our blog anniversary in early January. So, we came up with the idea to host a holiday bonanza to celebrate our favorite books, authors, and bloggers of the year. Thus, inspired by Seinfeld’s infamous Festivus, Smugglivus was born.

Each year, Smugglivus begins on December 1 and features guest posts from our favorite people across the interwebs (with a healthy serving of our regular reviews and giveaways, of course). The event ends with a bang on January 7, our very own blogiversary. (It’s our sixth this year, can you believe it?)

What can you expect from Smugglivus 2013?

Awesome Guests

Every single day for the duration of the event we will feature at least one (but often more) guest. These guests include authors whose books we loved this year to our very favorite book bloggers. Our guests will talk about different topics: their favorite reads/TV/movies of 2013, what they are looking forward to and/or have planned in 2014, or anything in the holiday spirit of sharing bookish thoughts.

This year, our all-star author lineup includes, among many others, Mary Robinette Kowal, Kate Elliott, N.K. Jemisin, Elizabeth E Wein, Courtney Summers, James Ponti, and Bennett Madison. Of course, we’ll also have plenty of awesome bloggers over to play, including, Renay from Strange Horizons and Lady Business, A Dribble of Ink’s Aidan Moher, Foz Meadows, and many, many more.

Giveaways

We have loads of books to giveaway, some of them generously donated by some of our guests, some sponsored by us – including a special giveaway on Christmas Day. Whee!

Feats of Strength

What is Smugglivus without a little danger, a little death-defying challenge? The Feats of Strength are our “dare” challenges – taken to the next level. We like to think of it as Dares on crystal meth (oh hai Breaking Bad, we miss you). This year, we’re continuing the tradition we started two years ago: both Smugglers have to read and provide mini reviews for 5 books each.

What makes this feat even more difficult? Each mini review can only be 50 words long.

That’s right. You heard us.

Airing of Grievances

The Airing of Grievances is quite possibly our favorite Smugglivus ritual, in which we rant. We rant about books, TV shows, movies, the Internets, reading, and maybe even each other. *GASP* (All in good nature, of course. Most of the time.)

Ana and Thea’s Most Excellent Books of 2013

In which we post our top 10 (ish) favorite books of the year, including notable mentions and favorite books published prior to 2013. We’ll also post about our favorite TV shows and movies in our “Best of The Rest” feature.

And that is Smugglivus in a nutshell! We will of course, continue with our regular schedule with reviews (albeit less than the usual 5 titles per week) here and at Kirkus, but Radar and Old School Wednesdays posts will go on a break till January. Our usual Sunday stash will be mostly dedicated to the festivities as well.

We do hope you join us for the event and have as much fun reading our guest posts and reviews as we had organizing them!

We leave you now with the line up for the first few days of Smugglivus!

This Week on Smugglivus:

This year, our very first guest to kick off the festivities tomorrow is Ann Leckie, the author of Ancillary Justice. Ancillary Justice has made it on both Ana & Thea’s Best of 2013 lists (quite possibly the #1 read on both Ana & Thea’s lists), and it is also recipient of the elusive and extraordinarily rare Smuggler Double 10. To celebrate the start of Smugglivus in the giving spirit, we will be giving away one signed copy of Ancillary Justice.

On Monday, it’s A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy‘s Liz Burn’s turn to pick favorites with her sophomore contribution to Smugglivus, followed by first-time Smugglivus guest Merrie Haskell, author of The Princess Curse and Handbook for Dragon Slayers.

On Tuesday, we host two YA authors: Erin Bow, author of the fabulous Plain Kate and this year’s Sorrow’s Knot and James Dawson, Brit author of incredibly fun books like Hollow Pike and Cruel Summer.

On Wednesday, we are proud to host Tansy Rayner Roberts, fantasy author and Hugo Award winner for Best Fan Writer! Then, we welcome V.E. Schwab, author of Vicious (one of Thea’s faves of 2013) to talk about her own favorites of the year.

Thursday we give the floor over to Smugglivus veteran Aidan Moher from A Dribble of Ink, followed by a post from one of Ana’s fave scifi writers, Susan Jane Bigelow.

On Friday, Sarah McCarry (author of the incredible All Our Pretty Songs) stops by, followed by fellow bloggers Kelly and Kim from Stacked.

Finally, first week of Smugglivus comes to a close on Saturday, when we host Caitlen Rubino-Bradway (author of the lovely Ordinary Magic, another of Thea’s fave discoveries this year), and then we pass the microphone over to Charlotte from Charlotte’s Library…

…OH YEAH, and we have a few reviews planned for the week as well (a certain new Garth Nix joint review may be in this week’s future).

The 2013 Poster:

Finally, Smugglivus would not be Smugglivus without a Smugglivus Poster! This year, Thea herself designed our poster…

With that, dear readers, we declare Smugglivus officially open! Happy Smugglivus everybody!

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers