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Beverly Hills Literary Escape

September 27, 2010 in award, book group, classics, giveaway, history, Literary Event, memoir, mystery, recommended reading, spirituality by Kim | 4 comments

I’m counting the days to this event!

Watch for a seismic shift in the literary landscape of Southern California next month.  No, it won’t be an earthquake, it’s the inaugural Beverly Hills Literary Escape, a unique weekend for literati.  This isn’t another festival where the attendee sits in the audience listening to a panel of authors and a moderator and then line up for a few Q & A, here the goal is for everyone to mingle and have conversations.  The organizers, Julie Robinson and Tyson Cornell, are striving to create an European cafe culture and Algonquin Round Table atmosphere of give-and-take between authors and readers.  Here’s the schedule:

I’m in a terrible choice bind about which events to choose for the lunches and afternoon lectures.  I can tell you this, I’ve never met a woman who hasn’t fallen in love with Lynn Batten after hearing him talk about Jane Austen.  I recommended both Ethan Canin and Susan Straight before and would love to hear them speak, but that could mean downgrading my groupie status with Lynn.   What could be better than having lemon cake with Aimee Bender, yet one of my favorite books this summer was Gin Phillips’ The Well and the Mine (if you liked The Help, run to the store to get The Well and the Mine).  I’ll be wallowing in the torture of deciding for awhile.

Two events are free:  An evening with Colum McCann author of Let the Great World Spin where he will receive the first Medici Book Club Prize (more on that in a future post) and a discussion with Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone. The prices for the remaining events vary and there are passes for multiple events. (Click here to purchase tickets.)  Readers of Bookstore People are entitled to purchase the lowest price passes and tickets for conversations by using the discount code LITERARY. There will be one private VIP event, a coffee with Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland, on October 15th.  We have one ticket to the O’Neill coffee to giveaway, just leave a comment that you want it by 11:59 October 7th and we will pick the winner.

It looks like a spectacular event, don’t miss it!

Disclosure:  Kim is a Medici Founding Patron

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GIVEAWAY!! Two Copies of If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now by Claire LaZebnik

September 23, 2010 in chick-lit, giveaway by Kim | 8 comments

Claire’s latest novel, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home By Now, hit the shelves this week!  We’re giving away two copies! Of course, Claire will sign them.  Here’s how you can enter our drawing:

  • Leave a comment with your e-mail for one chance to win,
  • Add a link to your favorite independent bookstore and we’ll give you an extra chance to win,
  • Tweet about the giveaway with a link to this page and tell us you did so in a comment and we’ll give you another chance to win.

The drawing will end at 11:59PM on October 3rd.  We will randomly pick two winners.  Good luck!

Claire has various book signings and she would love to meet readers of this blog, stop by and say say hello.  (Plus, she almost always has free food, I’ve already put in my request for hummus.)

Village Books in Pacific Palisades on October 2nd at 2PM  - This is Claire’s ‘home’ bookstore, so the atmosphere will be cozy and lots of us will be there to ask personal questions (actually, her kids are always good for a question that puts her on the spot a bit).

Vroman’s in Pasadena on October 16th at 5PM – Southern California’s oldest independent bookstore in a lovely area full of great restaurants so make a night of it.

21st Bank of America Festival of Arts, Books, and Culture in Cherry Hills, New Jersey on November 10th – Claire will be there along with a full roster of authors.

If you can’t see her in person, then join the online book club sponsored by Manic Mommies on October 20th at 5PM PST.

How ever you do it, get the book, you’ll love it!

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BOOK GIVEAWAY

August 16, 2010 in giveaway, Uncategorized by Claire | No comments

Psst.  There’s a book giveaway contest going on over at my Facebook page.  If you like getting a free book now and then, or know someone who does, come on over and check it out.

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Hey Kermit – It Is Easy to be Green

February 13, 2010 in environment, gifts, giveaway by Kim | No comments

Claire and I work at being green.  We both buy our veggies from the same organic service (ParadiseO, tell them we sent you!) and strive to reduce, re-use and recycle.  Truthfully though, Claire is in a different league.  When she re-landscaped, she chose succulents and water tolerant plants; when you see my garden, you’ll think “English.”  When they stripped out the grass to replace it with a more environmentally-friendly type, she watered the dirt and waited for the weeds to grow and be pulled rather than use a herbicide.  Let’s just say that never would have occurred to me.  She composts; when I mentioned composting to our landscaper she laughed, patted me on the shoulder, and said “let’s work on watering the pots regularly.”  Claire gave up meat for a year for environmental reasons; I try not to have any meat until dinner, but mostly for caloric purposes.

We’ve talked about the used book quandary – they’re better for the environment because a book is being reused, but not so good for the author who doesn’t get a cut of that transaction.  Claire is an author.  Eco-Libris provides the answer, buy a tree for every book you read to balance out the paper used to manufacture the book.  Eco-Libris also works with publishers to promote the sustainable production of books.  Now, they are combing the two and adding an extra incentive for readers to participate:

  • Customers who balance out 25 books at Eco-Libris will receive a $10 gift card for Strand Bookstore in New York City (one of the world’s best independent bookstores). These cards are good for any in-store or online purchases and they never expire.
  • For customers who will balance out 50 books, Eco-Libris will send a gift - a choice of “green” book, printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. Customers will be offered to choose from a list of 5-6 books that will be changing occasionally.  The books are from last November’s green campaign; we loved our copy of From Green to Gold by Harold Enrico.
  • Customers who will balance 100 books will receive a$25 gift card for BookSwim, a Netflix-style book rental library service, lending you paperbacks, hardcovers and college textbooks.

Help the environment and get rewarded for it, what could be better?

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The Best List of All – Your Own!

December 16, 2009 in gifts, giveaway by Kim | 1 comment

logo-holiday2What do book lovers like best during the holidays?  A book!  We can be difficult to buy for, people aren’t sure what books we have or what books we want.  IndieBound has the perfect solution, your own book Wish List.

I recently set up my list.  It was simple:

  • Click on My Book Lists on the header (I already had a profile, if you don’t it’s required and simple to set up),
  • Type the title/author/ISBN # for the book you want,  
  • When the picture pops up, click on the Add to this Book List button and presto, there it is on the list!

There are a couple of neat bells and whistles – I could rank the books I wanted in order by designated which book was to be the first on the list, which the last, and then moving the others up and down one position at a time.  I put the books I don’t have to read for book groups or other commitments first and then the ones I know I’ll buy for myself last.   I can also write a note up to 250 characters to attach to each book (such as “please, please, please buy this for me”).  And, for those of us who love our local bookstores, the list includes a link to a favorite local store for easy online ordering.  Buy from the store and have the book shipped to the recipient.  Or, find your own local store using IndieBound’s store locator function.

There are two ways people can access your list, either you can e-mail the list to someone (there is a button that will send the list on its way and room to add a message, such as “please, please, please buy this for me”) or anyone can access it via your profile.  That’s a good reason to use your name as your log in, make it easy for people to find you and your wish list.  Unfortunately, the login didn’t have enough spaces for  my  long name, so I’m Kim Allen-Niese.  Just part of the price I pay for hyphenating my name.

I wanted to see how the list worked once a book was purchased.  Luckily I’m married to a good sport who agreed to buy my number one choice, Wolf Hall.  He loved how easy it was to buy the book.  Just a few clicks and he’s done, well, with this purchase.  The book is waiting for him at our local store, he even requested that it be gift wrapped.  One downside is that my wish list didn’t automatically update the fact that Wolf Hall was purchased, I had to go in and delete it myself. 

Check out my list, tell me what you think I should add (my husband will appreciate the help) and set up your own!

Remember, if you buy two books at an independent bookstore by the end of the year, you are a Holiday Helper and can qualify to win an ABA Gift Card.  You can use it to buy the one book everyone forgot to give you.

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