Book Chat: 12.5.12 (Featuring a Giveaway)

book chat is a monthly feature where i will chat about different book related things. it will appear the first wednesday of the month.

Goodreads Choice Awards

Goodreads announced the winners of its 2012 readers’ choice awards. The winners were:

Fiction: The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
Mystery & Thriller: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Historical Fiction: The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
Fantasy: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King
Paranormal Fantasy: Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness
Science Fiction: The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter
Romance: Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James
Horror: The Twelve by Justin Cronin
Memoir & Autobiography: Wild by Cheryl Strayed
History & Biography: Elizabeth the Queen by Sarah Bedell Smith
Nonfiction: Quiet by Susan Cain
Food & Cookbooks: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier by Ree Drummond
Humor: Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson
Graphic Novels & Comics: The Walking Dead by Kirkman, Adlard & Rathburn
Poetry: A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver
Goodreads Author: Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Young Adult Fiction: The Fault in our Stars by John Green
Young Adult Fantasy: Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Middle Grade & Children’s: The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan
Picture Books: Olivia and the Fairy Princesses by Ian Falconer

Things like this are a little difficult for me because I don’t read a lot of contemporary books, but this year I read two: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman. So, naturally I voted for both of those in their respective categories.

While I have yet to get around to posting a review of The Fault in Our Stars, I want to use this momentum to announce my first giveaway. See the end of this post for guidelines.

The New York Times‘ Best Books of 2012

While I tend to think in general that the end of November is too early to start making best of the year lists, The New York Times’ book reviewers do know about any upcoming December releases, and they must not anticipate anything good. 😦  Here are the 10 best books according to The New York Times:

Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Building Stones by Chris Ware
A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers
NW by Zadie Smith
The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro
The Patriarch by David Nasaw
Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt

The New York Times reviews of these books can be found here. Also, you can read their list of 100 notable books from 2012 here and the notable children’s books of 2012 here.

Giveaway

Yes, you read that right. It’s time for my first giveaway. I have a signed, unread copy of The Fault in Our Stars available for one lucky reader (or one unlucky reader, it really depends how you look at these things).

To win, you need to leave a comment on this post. Although the content of the post doesn’t matter, please entertain or inform me if possible. Only one entry per person. I will give the book away whether I have one or 1000 entrants.

I will use random.org next Tuesday night to determine the winner.  I will contact the winner on Tuesday night. He or she will then have a week to contact me and provide an address for me to mail the book. As I’m unemployed, funds are currently tight, so this will be shipped (by January 1) media mail only within the lower 48 states. Sorry, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, and etc!