Contested: Hoosier Pride.

Are y'all ready for this?
Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani



This is what it looks like when a book disparages my homeland and makes me too angry to finish. Each slur against Indiana made me angrier and angrier until finally there was a comment about a teacher not possibly being able to buy leopard print Sketchers in Indiana because they were too cool. (SKETCHERS? REALLY A-TRIG? Not only have I owned similar shoes (and numerous pairs of Sketchers) but I bought them all at reasonable prices and tax rates because I got them in Indiana!)

I gave this book more than enough chances, we are almost to Thanksgiving in the school year and still the Viola has little to nothing good to say about Indiana and so I'm done. I give up, and you get to reap the benefits of my ex-pat Hoosier pride.


You get to participate in my first ever book give-away contest to win this ARC! I think that my state-bias might be clouding my vision to the rest of the story. Especially since I rather liked Big Stone Gap. So, I'm ready to give this ARC on to someone else to read and review. To win this contest write a comment on this post filled with Hoosier love. By which I mean, it must state at least one reason why Indiana is great (or at least, not nearly so bad as A-Trig is making it out to be.) It can be something you experienced, heard about, learned in school, whateva. I will RANDOMLY choose a winner from the comments. Only one comment per person please.

I know my home state has flaws and parts of it smell funny. I know there are a lot of rednecks (so many that some in St. Louis have replaced the word for redneck with "Hoosier.")But, I also know that some awesome people have come from there, spent time there, or were born there (and no, I'm not even including just generally famous people like John Mellencamp or Dan Quayle in that list, but I am looking at you Will Shortz.)

Many of my friends and all of my immediate family live there, and I feel like many of the qualities I have that I actually like about myself come from being raised there and no where else in the world. So let's hear it for the Crossroads of America, and me passing this not even released yet book onto someone who can appreciate it more than I'm capable. The contest ends Monday, August 3rd at 7pm (EST)Indiana Time (well, most of Indiana time!) Don't forget to leave your email address or some other way for me to contact you if you've won!I'll also be posting the winner Monday night.
Commence to commenting!

Genre study

I have belonged to a genre study group for a year and a half now. I joined the one at IU headed up by Phil Eskew in the summer of 2007 after taking his Readers' Advisory course. Now that I work at a Readers' Services desk I take part in my library's own genre study group that meets, and I'm being honest here, way too early for an awkward librarian to fight the awkward.There is not enough coffee in the world. At this morning's meeting I tried to give an overview of Goodreads, a web 2.0 RA tool that I'm superpassionate about using (please notice the widget, woo! widget!), but I managed to ramble the topic into the ground.

And while Goodreads is awesome, that's not what I'm here to talk about today. I'm here to talk about the book that I realized-in the middle of my genre study discussion- I'm never going to finish it. The book was "Finder" by Emma Bull. But as I was discussing (or again, rambling on about) it as a "book I'm currently reading" this morning, I realized I had nothing exciting or glowing to say about it and though everything on paper about the book seemed to match up with Things I Like In Books and it was recommended via one of the numerous listservs I desperately scramble to fail at keeping up with...I couldn't get into it. Why does it take me so long to realize I won't finish a book, and that I shouldn't have to do so? Do you force yourself to read material you don't actively want to read? Check out the clever poll I devised for you! And riddle me this Batman, how do you RA 2.0 tag those books you just can't finish?