Please feel free to email me at jen(at)devourerofbooks.com for any questions or comments.
I will accept certain books for review, however please read my review policy before contacting me to review your book.
Support Devourer of Books
If you purchase books through any of my widgets, or choose to donate through PayPal, you will be putting a small amount towards hosting, giveaway and other site-related costs.
It seems funny, but a little over a year ago, Nicole from Linus’s Blanket and I didn’t really ‘know’ one another. Then we worked together on a project for Buy Books for the Holidays, and we found that we worked very well together. As we began to explore one anothers’ blogs, we also learned that we had very similar tastes in books as well. Between those two things, a blogging friendship was born.
Since then, I helped out with That’s How I Blog, then we hung out together at BEA, started a podcast together, and spent countless hours together on google chat. And now, we are working together on a new project, one which you can become directly involved in:
BOOK CLUB.
BOOK CLUB is an opportunity for people to get together to discuss great books from small presses. We both know that there are some fabulous books coming out all the time from small presses and we wanted to make a point to read more this year, and help raise awareness of these books and publishers in the realm of book blogging and beyond. During the first part of 2011, we will be working with Other Press and Graywolf Press to bring you some fabulous books.
We will be discussing a book on either my blog or Nicole’s on the fourth Tuesday of every month. During the second week of the month, both Nicole and I will give away 5 copies of the BOOK CLUB discussion book for the following month. For example, today we are each giving away five copies of “A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear,” which we will be discussing on Tuesday, January 25th at Linus’s Blanket. Whether you receive the book from one of us or pick it up yourself, we would love to have you join in the conversation.
Because Other Press will be providing the books for us to discuss, I ask that everyone requesting this book have either a blog where they plan to review it, a Twitter account where they discuss books, of that they post a review on either a bookish social media site (LibraryThing, GoodReads, etc.) or an online bookselling site (Powells, Indiebound, Amazon, etc). I also ask that you commit to reading the book and joining the discussion. We are limited in our shipping to US-only.
If you are interested, please fill out the Google form below. The first five people who do so and meet the above qualifications will receive a copy of the book from Other Press.
This giveaway is now closed. Please check back in the second week of January for our next BOOK CLUB selection
Don’t know what Thankfully Reading Weekend is? Check out the introductory post over at Jenn’s Bookshelves and sign up to spend the weekend reading and being thankful.
I hope you’ve been having a great weekend reading so far. Have you been using the #thankfulreading hashtag on Twitter? Reading is a solitary activity, but it is something that is even better when you have a reading community surrounding you, which is part of the reason that many of us started blogging in the first place.
So what I want to know, is what reading community are you thankful for, and why? Are you thankful for book bloggers? The book community on Twitter? Your spouse or family that lets you ramble on and on about what you’re reading and doesn’t complain (at least not too much) about the myriad of books flowing into the house?
You can answer with a post on your own blog linked onto the Mr. Linky below, or leave your answer in the comments below.
One respondent with a US mailing address will also win this bag from Cafe Press: GIVEAWAY CLOSED
You can find millions of custom sweatshirt hoodies and funny t-shirts at CafePress – even personalized Christmas gifts!
Whether you link your answer or leave it in the comments, please let me know in the comments if you wish to be entered for the bag.
Of everything I do on my blog, there is one feature which I have been wanting to do for a very long time, the feature which I am actually starting today, and that is Harvest Week. So now you have two questions:
1) What is Harvest Week?
2) Why have you wanted so badly to do this?
Glad you asked! Harvest Week is simply a (made up by me) celebration of those people who have marched opposite to the general flow of American society and made the trek from the city back to the farm. To celebrate I will be reviewing three books that are on this theme to varying degrees: “Coop” by Michael Perry, “The Bucolic Plague” by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, and “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver. I thought that Thanksgiving week was an appropriate time for this, since it was originally about celebrating the bounty of the earth which sustained the Pilgrims.
‘Why Harvest Week’ is a more personal question. Part of the reason was just that I wanted an excuse to make time for the books I will be reviewing this week. This type of food literature has been near and dear to my heart ever since I read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan shortly before I began blogging. They really aren’t quite the same type of book as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” (which I loved), but they do typify the type of life I have been drawn to ever since reading Pollan’s book. As an aside, I don’t think that it will ever cease to be funny to me that his last name is POLLAN, and he writes about FOOD, and PLANTS in particular.
Anyway, ever since “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” I have harbored a not-so-secret desire to have a backyard that contains both a vegetable garden and chickens. They’ll eat my bugs! They’ll provide great fertilizer! Eating grass and my bugs will give their eggs a crazy good flavor compared to the generic junk at the grocery store!
Um, yeah, so anyway, there’s the thing you may not have known about me, I geek out over the thought of raising chickens. I don’t really know how it is done, though, so let’s hope that I pick up some tips from this week’s books.
This has been a fantastic month! I don’t think I’ve read a single book that has disappointed me, and I even got all gushy about three of them. I’ve had a great time learning about and meeting some Chicago-area authors, and I hope that you’ve found some books you are interested in as well, whether or not the Chicago connection means anything to you.
Like suburban neighbor Sourcebooks, Tyndale House was originally based in the founder’s home. Now one of the largest Christian publishers, Tyndale actually has its roots in self-publishing. In the 1950s, Dr. Kenneth Taylor began paraphrasing the King James version of the Bible in order to help his children comprehend the family’s nightly Bible readings. When he finished, Taylor and his wife were so pleased with the result that they spent their own money to produce 2,000 copies of what they called “Living Letters,” what would eventually become the “The Living Bible” and would spend three years as the best selling book in America.
In addition to founding Tyndale House Publishers - named after William Tyndale, who was burned at the stake in the 16th century for translating the Bible into English - Taylor and his wife also established the Tyndale House Foundation in order to make grants to support Christian work around the world. The Foundation was initially funded by the royalties from the various iterations of “Living Letters,” and is now the owner of Tyndale House Publishers, thus funding it additionally with the profit from the publishing house. Tyndale House’s website has this to say about the Foundation:
Over the years, the Foundation has made thousands of grants to support Christian work across a wide variety of categories. Traditionally, the Foundation’s primary focus has been Christian literature work, including new translations of the Bible in languages around the world. But the Foundation also makes grants in areas as diverse as Christian higher education, evangelism, disaster relief, and Christian social services. From 1963 to 2008, the Foundation’s grants totaled $59 million. But after adjusting for inflation, this equates to $139 million in today’s dollars.
Continuing from the great success of “The Living Bible” in the 1970s, Tyndale House is home to some very well-regarded Christian writers like Beth Moore and Dinesh D’Souza. In addition, Tyndale House Publishers had 10 books on the New York Times Bestsellers list in 2010.
Sandy
Michelle
Rebecca Rasmussen
Beth F
Stephanie
fourth Tuesday of every month. During the second week of the month, both Nicole and I will give away 5 copies of the BOOK CLUB discussion book for the following month. For example, today we are each giving away five copies of “A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear,” which we will be discussing on Tuesday, January 25th at Linus’s Blanket. Whether you receive the book from one of us or pick it up yourself, we would love to have you join in the conversation.
Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2010
Don’t know what Thankfully Reading Weekend is? Check out the 
Of everything I do on my blog, there is one feature which I have been wanting to do for a very long time, the feature which I am actually starting today, and that is 
This has been a fantastic month! I don’t think I’ve read a single book that has disappointed me, and I even got all gushy about three of them. I’ve had a great time learning about and meeting some Chicago-area authors, and I hope that you’ve found some books you are interested in as well, whether or not the Chicago connection means anything to you.
Recent Comments