Blog Watch Wednesday!

I want to live my life as awesomely as this woman did, but I'm sure I don't have that much balls. (Washington Post)

Save the words! Each year, hundred of words are simply dropped from the English language. Did you know 90% of what we write uses only 7,00 words? Do we really want to lose "historiastor" to the ages? Or "stiricide"? How will we describe a contemptible historian or the act of icicles falling from a house? THINK OF THE WORDS PEOPLE! (savethewords)

Along those lines - test out your own personal vocabulary! They do ask for some personal information at the end (age, country of residence, college level, native language, etc.) but nothing too invasive. My personal vocabulary is 42, 600 words. (Test Your Vocab)

Are you a H.P. Lovecraft fan? If you are, you're among a growing number of enthusiasts. Lovecraftian love is on the rise. (Publishers Weekly)

I WANT THIS! A book clock! How ridiculously awesome can the internet get!? It's currently out-of-stock, but it's just so neat! (Amazon)

Check out Time's 50 Best Websites of the Year! Somehow this blog missed the list (we're looking into it) but there are some truly creative sites in the list. From Get Human, a website that actually provides numbers for REAL customer service reps (instead of an automated response) for hundreds of companies. Or Kickstarter, a website that a person can pledge money to support individual projects like novels, art, etc. From the article, "A Kickstarter effort can be anything from a wristband that turns an iPod Nano into a watch — which received a record $1 million in pledges — to a map of the U.S.A. made up of frying pans. (Time)

 Have you ever seen a shaved bear? Now you have. You're welcome for the nightmares.

 Like Calvin&Hobbes? Peanuts? Fox Trot? Of course you do. Here's an online site to view beloved Sunday morning comics.

Invisibility Cloaks, 50% off! Internet/world, I love you.

Here's a very-well written post about a reader's love for books and eventually an ereader.

This is amazing. Andy Levy, you are my sarcasm hero. I cannot agree more with everything stated in this video. (YouTube)

If you've not seen this amazing video of a humpback whale being freed from multiple nets by two men. It's a bit long, but if you're a hippie envirnmental girl like me, it's more than worth it. (YouTube)

The best artistic expression of the unread-read dilemma in reading I've seen.

Found this JUST now, right after I posted this, but it was so awesome I had to include: author writes story to save libraries. I've never read a Karin Slaughter novel but I might have to because she's brilliant. (Huffington Post)

OH MY HOW COULD I FORGET. Anne Hathaway's alternatively awkward/awesome rapping.  (YouTube.. again)

Review's I've Posted:

Fourth Degree Freedom by Libby Heily

Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst

Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard

The Aviator by Morgan Karpiel

Books I've bought, won, loaned this last week:

 Bought:

Blurb for Eon: Eon has been studying the ancient art of Dragon Magic for four years, hoping he'll be able to apprentice to one of the twelve energy dragons of good fortune. But he also has a dark secret. He is actually Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl who has been living a dangerous lie for the chance to become a Dragon-eye, the human link to an energy dragon's power. It is forbidden for females to practice the Dragon Magic and, if discovered, Eon faces a terrible death. After a dazzling sword ceremony, Eon's affinity with the twelve dragons catapults him into the treacherous world of the Imperial court, where he makes a powerful enemy, Lord Ido. As tension builds and Eon's desperate lie comes to light, readers won't be able to stop turning the pages.

 Blurb for Eona: Eon has been revealed as Eona, the first female Dragoneye in hundreds of years. Along with fellow rebels Ryko and Lady Dela, she is on the run from High Lord Sethon's army. The renegades are on a quest for the black folio, stolen by the drug-riddled Dillon; they must also find Kygo, the young Pearl Emperor, who needs Eona's power and the black folio if he is to wrest back his throne from the selfstyled "Emperor" Sethon. Through it all, Eona must come to terms with her new Dragoneye identity and power-and learn to bear the anguish of the ten dragons whose Dragoneyes were murdered. As they focus their power through her, she becomes a dangerous conduit for their plans. . . .

Eona, with its pulse-pounding drama and romance, its unforgettable fight scenes, and its surprises, is the conclusion to an epic only Alison Goodman could create.

I also grabbed the first six of Rachel Caine's The Morganville Vampires series. They were $2.50 each at my local Bookmans and there's no way I could resist.

 

 From the author of the popular Weather Warden series comes the debut of an exciting new series set in Morganville, Texas, where you would be well advised to avoid being out after dark.

College freshman Claire Danvers has had enough of her nightmarish dorm situation. When Claire heads off-campus, the imposing old house where she finds a room may not be much better. Her new roommates don't show many signs of life, but they'll have Claire's back when the town's deepest secrets come crawling out, hungry for fresh blood.

Claire has her share of challenges. Like being a genius in a school that favors beauty over brains; homicidal girls in her dorm, and finding out that her college town is overrun with the living dead. On the up side, she has a new boyfriend with a vampire-hunting dad. But when a local fraternity throws the Dead Girls' Dance, hell is really going to break loose.

 

Claire Danvers's college town may be run by vampires but a truce between the living and the dead made things relatively safe. For a while. Now people are turning up dead, a psycho is stalking her, and an ancient bloodsucker has proposed private mentoring. To what end, Claire will find out. And it's giving night school a whole new meaning.

In the town of Morganville, vampires and humans live in relative peace. Student Claire Danvers has never been convinced, though especially with the arrival of Mr. Bishop, an ancient, old-school vampire who cares nothing about harmony. What he wants from the town's living and its dead is unthinkably sinister. It's only at a formal ball, attended by vampires and their human dates, that Claire realizes the elaborately evil trap he's set for Morganville.

 The wait is over. dig into the feast...

In the town of Morganville, vampires and humans live in relative peace. Student Claire Danvers has never been convinced, though especially with the arrival of Mr. Bishop, an ancient, old-school vampire who cares nothing about harmony. What he wants from the town's living and its dead is unthinkably sinister. It's only at a formal ball, attended by vampires and their human dates, that Claire realizes the elaborately evil trap he's set for Morganville.

In the college town of Morganville, vampires and humans coexist in (relatively) bloodless harmony. Then comes Bishop, the master vampire who threatens to abolish all order, revive the forces of the evil dead, and let chaos rule. But Bishop isn’t the only threat.

Violent black cyclone clouds hover, promising a storm of devastating proportions as student Claire Danvers and her friends prepare to defend Morganville against elements both natural and unnatural.

In the small college town of Morganville, vampires and humans lived in (relative) peace-until all the rules got rewritten when the evil vampire Bishop arrived, looking for the lost book of vampire secrets. He's kept a death grip on the town ever since. Now an underground resistance is brewing, and in order to contain it, Bishop must go to even greater lengths. He vows to obliterate the town and all its inhabitants-the living and the undead. Claire Danvers and her friends are the only ones who stand in his way. But even if they defeat Bishop, will the vampires ever be content to go back to the old rules, after having such a taste of power?

Won:

Knowledge changes everything…

Hoodoo-influenced Southern Louisiana seems like the perfect place for Camille to relocate and escape her abusive past. She didn’t expect to fall in love and plummet herself into the world of Amaranth, a place of exile for reformed vampires.

Thanks to her deadly vampire ex-boyfriend, she’s confronted with decisions that not only threaten her life but the lives of her inhuman friends that she has come to love. Entangled in her friends’ quest for freedom, she dives into their realm and faces the threats of the ruler of Amaranth—the mother of all vampires—and her own inner demons.

Will she derail her life and make the ultimate sacrifice for the very monsters that interrupted her bumpy path back to sanity—the one she wanted so desperately in the first place? Or will she find a way to escape with her vampire love before it’s too late?

  

I'm in the middle of Morgan Karpiel's Fantasies of New Europa, then I'll probably be reading Philippa Gregory's THE LADY OF THE RIVERS for review from Simon and Schuester. Have a great rest of the week, everyone.