Waiting on Wednesday #015: Monument 14 & Struck

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

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Monument 14 by Emmy Laybourne
Release Date: June 5, 2012

From Goodreads.com
Fourteen kids. One superstore. A million things that go wrong.

A huge store isn’t the worst place to be stranded. There’s food and water, bedding and books. But what if it’s not safe to leave? Emmy Laybourne had us from the get-go with her utterly fresh and fast-paced debut.

Six high school kids (some popular, some not), two eighth graders (one a tech genius), and six little kids are trapped together in a chain superstore. Together they build a refuge for themselves inside, while outside, a series of escalating disasters, beginning with a monster hailstorm and ending with a chemical weapon spill, seems to be tearing the world—as they know it—apart.

As soon as I read the blurb in my Shelf Awareness email this morning I knew I wanted this book & NOW please! It sounds like it will be like Trapped by Michael Northrop but bigger. Where Trapped was a little sleepy & seemed to cut off just as it was getting good, this book seems to promise all the juicy details all the way to the very end. Yes, please!

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Struck by Jennifer Bosworth
Release Date: May 8, 2012

From Goodreads.com
Mia Price is a lightning addict. She’s survived countless strikes, but her craving to connect to the energy in storms endangers her life and the lives of those around her.

Los Angeles, where lightning rarely strikes, is one of the few places Mia feels safe from her addiction. But when an earthquake devastates the city, her haven is transformed into a minefield of chaos and danger. The beaches become massive tent cities. Downtown is a crumbling wasteland, where a traveling party moves to a different empty building each night, the revelers drawn to the destruction by a force they cannot deny. Two warring cults rise to power, and both see Mia as the key to their opposing doomsday prophecies. They believe she has a connection to the freak electrical storm that caused the quake, and to the far more devastating storm that is yet to come.

Mia wants to trust the enigmatic and alluring Jeremy when he promises to protect her, but she fears he isn’t who he claims to be. In the end, the passion and power that brought them together could be their downfall. When the final disaster strikes, Mia must risk unleashing the full horror of her strength to save the people she loves, or lose everything.

This has the potential to be a really great read. Possibly epic if the author has done it well. I like the idea behind it & have never heard of a book about a girl addicted to lightning before! I just hope that it doesn't turn out to be a book about a girl who constantly goes back & forth between trusting the guy she's falling in love with. That will get annoying quickly. If not, I think this sounds like a lot of fun!

What are you waiting for this Wednesday?

Book Trailer: Starters by Lissa Price

I am still really excited about this book Starters by Lissa Price & I want you to be excited too! You still have one day left to enter to win an ARC of this book. Not to mention you can read an excerpt here or even read the short story Portrait of a Starter: An Unhidden Story set in the same dystopian universe. And then there's the book trailer. Short, sweet, & to the point, it gives you a quick taste of what's in store in this novel where surviving is just the beginning!

PS: Isn't the German cover awesome? "Roman" means "novel" in German.

3 Tips for New Bloggers

I'm not 100% sure how many people read my blog but I hope that if you do read, even if you don't comment, that you get something from what I have to say. If you know me, you know that I am all for making sure new bloggers get their foot in the door & not end up discouraged in the process of trying to establish themselves in the book blogging community. I still consider myself a fairly new blogger (I haven't even been around 2 years yet) but I was thinking recently about a couple of new suggestions I wanted to pass on to new bloggers. So here goes!

1. Professionalism is key to being taken seriously by other bloggers, publicists, & publishing houses. You should always strive for your blog to have the appearance of being organized & intelligent. Preparing your posts with proper grammar & spelling & with a polished feel that says you thought about what you were writing before you posted it.
   
   Too many times I have read rambling posts full of poor grammar ("would of" is bad grammar - it should be either "would have" or "would've") & teeming with personal prejudices or attacks on authors/characters/etc.
   
   Always use the rule of thumb to run a spell check with grammar check as well before you post. Make sure your posts don't wander from the point you're trying to make & that they are not personal attacks or cut downs to anyone. This is one of the best ways to be taken seriously as a book blogger from the get go.


2. Don't force it. Enjoy it. There are a lot of bloggers out there who plan their posts in advance, writing a lot ahead of time & setting them up to post on specific days. And that works for them because they have a lot to say. But if you don't, don't force it. Don't write a lot of nonsense just to have content every single day. Enjoy writing your posts. Enjoy talking about books & all things book-related. Enjoy yourself because pumping your blog with content that is only there to fill space will lead to you losing interest in your blog.


3. Numbers don't always matter. Don't judge the success of your blog by the number of followers or commenters you have. If the book blogging world is only a popularity contest for you, I have a feeling you may be disappointed. There are a lot of very well-established blogs with thousands of followers. They've been around for years & earned every follower & comment by starting just where you are starting. It won't happen all at once & it takes hard work.
   
   I personally haven't made a huge effort to collect followers because I feel that what I write is for me & if others want to stop by & enjoy it, so be it. I do giveaways to get books into others' hands, not to draw followers. I like writing about books & reading & there are a faithful few who provide feedback & a few who read silently & keep going. And so I have about 290 followers (through Blogger & GFC) while bloggers who started after me have 1000+ & I'm happy with it because I'm accomplishing what I want with my blog.

So there's three of my thoughts right there. Basically look good & enjoy yourself & your books! Oh & enter my giveaway. And keep your eye out for future giveaways (I'm about to clean off my ARC bookshelf). I want to give you a book!

Mini Rant: Music & Your Blog

So they say music soothes the savage beast. And mostly that can be true. All curled up with my laptop, Spotify playing out Regina Spektor, Tori Amos, Ben Folds, & even a little Tchaikovsky. Surfing the web or writing my blog to the beat of Cascada, Duck Sauce, or LMFAO. That's the best.

And then I randomly stumble on to a site that absolutely jars my nerves. Why? Because I'll be looking at photos or reading content & unbeknownst to me, silently & sneakily is loading a playlist. Which then launches about 5 minutes after I've gotten pretty settled in & focused. It unleashes the loudest, most obnoxious tunes from either the Billboard Top 40 or some nasty hip hop anthem about hoes & niggas & what they do in bed.

And the kicker? No off/mute button. ANYWHERE.

This has happened to me with book bloggers web sites. I know, right? I just think to myself that I will never be back here again. So my message is that it's really a bad idea to embed music into your blog unless it's something relatively simple with no words that isn't as loud as a rock concert or the tarmac at a busy airport. Because not everyone feels they should have to wear Depends just to visit other book blogs.

</rant>

Rules for Renters

Because the book Starters by Lissa Price deals with the idea of renting your body to allow older people to enjoy youth again, I would love to get a conversation started about this. Would you do it? Why? Why not? What rules would you want in place before you would even consider this, even at your most desperate?

Below are the rules given to Renters in Starters. What do you think?

Image snagged from Random House. No copyright infringement intended.

BACON SUGGESTS...
Reading, writing, & blog related sites to check out as suggested by Bacon, the zombie pig.

Win an ARC of Starters by Lissa Price
Right here on Into The Morning Reads
Author Web Site
Read the Lissa's blog & catch up on what else she's doing.
Starters Books Site
Get the latest info on the trilogy on Random House's Starters book site.
RandomBuzzers.com
Random House's teen community is featuring Starters all week long!

Giveaway: Starters by Lissa Price

I just got this awesome book from Random House this weekend & they were so generous as to provide me with a second copy to give away. So here you go! I'm about half way through it myself & I can honestly say it's a highly addictive dystopian. Read the short story Portrait of a Starter: An Unhidden Story and sure to join me on RandomBuzzers.com for a week of all things Starters by Lissa Price!

Summary
Starters by Lissa Price
Format: ARC
Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie. Callie's only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man.

He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders—seniors who want to be young again. Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor. But the neurochip they place in Callie's head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter, living in her mansion, driving her cars, and going out with a senator's grandson. It feels almost like a fairy tale, until Callie discovers that her renter intends to do more than party—and that Prime Destinations' plans are more evil than Callie could ever have imagined...

-- from Goodreads.com

Rules
1. Fill out the Rafflecopter below.
2. You must be 13 or older.
3. You must be from the US only.
4. Contest deadline is February 27, 2012.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thoughts on Retro Reads & Nouveau Fare

So I have neglected my blog for a month in the pursuit of fulfilling at least a large part of my first reading resolution for this year. I have read almost entirely through the box of Richie Tankerseley Cusick books I possess and have found myself really enjoying the experience. I had forgotten how simple, formulaic, mysterious, and easy-to-read they were. The stories all focus on one girl (or, in the case of Someone At The Door, one girl & her little sister) who ends up in a strange situation, cut off from friends & family somehow, and being stalked by someone nutty through some labyrinthine house or building. There are usually at least 3 guys with varying attraction to the protagonist & invariably the stalking nut job is mystery (at least to me) until the end. I love them!

What I noticed while I was reading these books is that, in their simplicity, they have held my attention over 2 decades in ways that a lot of newer YA releases have failed to accomplish. I think one of the main reasons for this is that editors, publishers, & ultimately authors as well have all decided that they need to find the next Twilight or Harry Potter. So books have gotten longer, leading to sometimes a lot of convoluted (or lack of) plot & bizarre character development. It has also brought about a craze of being bigger & better & pushing the envelope as far as possible without getting a smack down by critics & parents -- and sometimes not even caring about that!

I miss the simple, every-day girl from the YA books I used to read. Like I've been reading this month. She is who she is without apology & without having to be over-the-top edgy in some way. She doesn't need to stand out. She just exists to be stalked by a nut job and entertain me without making me feel sorry for her emotional issues. Which is not to say that I have a huge issue with books about gritty real life. I'm just wondering what happened to books that didn't need to get into all that? I liked those too!