I was tagged by Trish at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin?' for this meme which originated here:

As I read yet another book review of a memoir this weekend, my husband told me that I should write one. I said that my story would be much too short and rather boring so when I ran across the following book I decided it was just my speed. A six word memoir! Written by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser, Not Quite What I was Expecting: Six Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure is a compilation based on the story that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in six words. His words were- For Sale: baby shoes, never worn. There’s a video on Amazon with examples from the book, it sounds like a fun read! I’d like to start a six word memoir meme and here are the rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir

First, I hate 'Springing Ahead'. I had a headache for 2 days because of the time change. My body can't adjust. Second, this week is kinda crazy. It's March break and I'm trying to entertain a 5 year old, meet my reading commitments, set up an Etsy shop and take over the wor... never mind. So if I don't reply to comments right away don't be offended.

While resting at stop lights, I did think of a few 6 Word Memoirs, as I was tagged by Stephanie last week.

The Six Word Memoir

If I'm not blogging much this week, it's because I have an idea up my sleeve and I will be reading. No, honest I will!

Teddy tagged me for 6 Unimportant things about myself. Thanks Teddy!

The rules are:
1. Link back to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share six unimportant things about yourself
4. Tag six random people at the end of your blog entry.
5. Let the tagged people know by leaving a comment on their blogs

Hmmm...

1. I have chocolate everyday (sometimes just a smidgeon).
2. I'm always cold.
3. I'm a neat freak.

My very first award ever! Sarah at PussReboots awarded me the You Make My Day Award. This is the first award any of my blogs have won. I'm honored thanks!

Winners of this award are to award it to at least 10 more people. So without furthur ado, Bloggers who I believe deserve this award!

A Gaggle of Book Reviews - the first book review blog I ever read, the one that got me thinking of becoming more active with my blog.

I was tagged by Melody for this fun meme.

The rules of this particular meme are:

1). Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2). Open the book to page 123
3). Find the fifth sentence
4). Post the next three sentences
5). Tag five people

Although I am currently reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman, The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan was the nearest book. Here I go:

I was tagged by Ravenous Reader for this. Who in turn was tagged by Eva (A Striped Armchair)

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

I truly am put of by much publicized books or authors. Any book by Paulo Coelho. I did read that much reviewed 'The Alchemist'. Somehow that book did nothing to me. It was an mad irrational buy. Hence I shun readig any other book by Coelho.

I forgot to wrap it up! As simple as that! All this week I left links at various blogs and a few fellow bloggers too, left their links. I have added those links to the main posts. However, I might have left out a few links. Do feel free to remind me. I have made lists of book reviews for 2006, 2007 and 2008, which shows on the top of my left side bar. I have even put up a message about link exchange.

As I have not being reading, I have no reviews to post here. I have received two books from Collins, a branch from HarperCollins. Those are non-fiction and that too something entirely different genre. Nothing about people, places or animals..

You can understand by reading the tittles what I really mean:

1). Grow your Money/101 easy tips to plan, save and invest by Jonathan D. Pond
2). Babyproofing your Marriage by Stacie Cockrell, Cathy O'Neill and Julia Stone

I will get around those books and write my opinions. I have already written reviews for two books, I received from Collins.

Downsizing Your Home With Style by Lauri Ward
The Ultimate Tea Diet by Mark “dr. tea” Ukra with Sharyn Kolberg

I've just realized that I've lost the little box thinger that shows the book blogs I enjoy. If you are reading this and have linked to me, or know that I used to link to you, please comment below so that I can work on restoring my blog links. Lord knows where they went off too. Of course, if you don't link to me and would like to, comment here and I'll return the favor. Book blog links should be restored soon...ish.

I was given this award by two of my blogging friends, Rhinoa and Wendy. I should have responded to this a long time ago but I have been sick and am just starting to feel better. Most people have already been given this award but I will still post a list of the 10 blogs that make my day not including Rhinoa and Wendy's which, of course, do make my day. So here they are:

3M(Michelle) at 1 More Chapter- 3M is an avid reader and we share a lot of the same tastes. I have gotten several great recommendations from her. She is one of my prime enablers for feeding my challenge addiction. Plus, I love the design of her blog.

Stephanie tagged me for this meme, an invention of Eva (A Striped Armchair). She asks some really interesting questions:

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

The Book Thief. I know it's good but it scares me.

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?

From Dewey:

The theme for Week 2 is something I borrowed (yes, she said it was ok!) from Darla at Books and Other Thoughts. She says in her sidebar that if she reviews a book that you’ve reviewed, you can email her and she’ll link to it in her review. I love this idea for three reasons.

1. As a blog reader, I like that I can have my review linked in someone else’s blog.

2. As a blog reader, I like that if I’m interested in a book Darla writes about, there will be other reviews linked at the bottom of the page, so I can get other viewpoints. You can see how this works here.

3. As a blog writer, when I review a book, I often remember that I read someone else’s review at some point, but whose? And when? With Darla’s method, people tell her about their reviews, and she can see what they had to say about a book that is still fresh in her mind.

Dana of the Ace & Hoser Blook tagged me for Eva's Reading Meme.

On so many of these questions, I have the feeling that I'll wish I could go back and change my answers as soon as the post is published.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

Stephanie at Confessions tagged me for a meme. This one requires relying on ones memory. Oh boy, not always reliable.

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago:
1. Getting ready for my first Christmas in my first house!
2. Working at the Dollar Store (Worst Job Ever)
3. Enjoying being engaged
4. Meeting my baby niece-to-be who I ended up being a nanny to
5. Driving an old Bronco (my man won it at a police auction)

Booking Through Thursday

Suggested by Nithin:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response (so people don’t have to go searching for it) in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

I am kind of liking to participate in weekly geeks. A good way of community building, to discover new blogs, new books, new bloggers. Best is to read different perceptions about same books! That is the theme for this week's geek which Dewey borrowed from Darla's blog, books and other things. You review a book and then link it with the review of the same book reviewed by a fellow blogger. That way you and your reader get to read diverse viewpoints. I think this is a great idea. I have infact linked a few of my reviews in previous posts, before this.

Searching through archives might take a while but well worth the effort. Time for me go link hunting and post those here. The linky think might work well after each review. That way, more might look out for their older reviews and just copy/paste the links in the linky thing.

Now that it's May and I'm not laser-focused on poetry each day, I have a plethora of things I'd like to catch up on. I was thinking of a whole stack of reviews I want to get posted, I have memes to participate in, and some links to share; but then I took a look around to see what's been going on.
Lo and behold, Dewey has set up the Weekly Geeks, with the first week's assignment being to find at least 5 new blogs from those signed up so far. Well, I just spent a LOT of time on this; there are so many of the blogs I read all the time signed up (yay) but I did find a bunch of new ones. I know I'll now be busier than ever keeping up with the bookish set...

So here are 5, new to me:

She Reads Books
Anyone who says "cataloguing is my crack" is just fine by me! :)

Bookstack
I enjoyed looking through Ravenous Reader's posts, and feel the same kind of notebookism as she does. Books, paper and pens make me happy.

Passion for the Page

I just stumbled upon some book blogs I've not seen before and they are giving books away!

She Reads Books is giving away 5 books but the deadline is Thursday, June 3 at midnight EST so hurry on over! A comment give you one entry. Posting about the contest on your blog earns you two more!

A Book Blogger's Diary has very frequent giveaways! The current one is A Fatal Waltz by Tasha Alexander. Enter by June 15!

Mama Bear Reads is giving away her copy of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik. Contest ends June 10 (her birthday)

Book Room Reviews is giving away a copy of The Safety of Secrets by Delaune Michel. Contest ends June 15

Darling Stephanie at Confessions of a Bookaholic bestowed this award to me. I think she's the bees knees too. Thanks, Steph! Here's the explanation:

Although we here in Canada had Thanksgiving in October, I'd like to wish my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving. Love that Macy's parade!

Booking Through Thursday is a little different this week. First, it was posted on Monday and, second, it's hosted by someone else. So here it goes:

Connecting Words

Kristin Gorski of "Write now is good" has tagged me for this.

10 signs that I have written a book:

1). It is set in, of all places, Australia. Frankly I don't know, why. I have never been there. However, I would like to write a book set in Australia.

2). It is about a man lost in the forests trying to find his way out. He can talk to animals and commune with trees. He is not your macho man.

3). No fairy tale like endings. Our man will cry when he is hurt.

4). There is lot of internal dialogues. Symbolism is must.

5). It would be a third person account. I cannot write in first person.

Trish from Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? (love that blog name) gave me this BFF award:

How sweet is that?! Thanks so much Trish. I've been enjoying reading Trish's blog. Her posts are so entertaining. It's relatively new to me. She's also hosting the Novella Challenge.

I'm not sure what the rules are so I'll give this to 5 blogger friends whose blogs I enjoy and are visitors to my blog as well:

Teddy @ So many precious books
Michelle @ Fraternity of Dreamers (Something tells me her name is Michelle. Boy, I hope I'm right)
Rob @ Rough Draft
Raidergirl @ An Adventure in Reading

As it is Buy A Friend A Book Week, there are many book giveaways going on. I will keep on adding to this post about new giveaways! Don't forget to check this out!

1) Dewey at The Hidden Side of the Leaf is holding one here. Do check out her link for further details!

2) Literary Feline at Musings of a Bookish Kitty is giving out two books. Check it for further details!

A Meme:

Both Gautami & Marg tagged me for the 123 Meme.

1). Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2). Open the book to page 123
3). Find the fifth sentence
4). Post the next three sentences
5). Tag five people

From Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie:

"No,"said Poirot. "Two people who saw nothing and heard nothing."
"Shall we see the Italian?"

Intriguing.

I just bought this from the used bookstore and found a small card with 'To Nanny I Love You Holly' inside. Aww. Hope Nanny liked it.

Now who do I tag:

John
Raidergirl
Teddy
Charity

I've been tagged by Antipodean Owl to catch up on a few memes making the rounds at the moment. They are all quite entertaining to read on others' blogs so here is my go:

What else do you do to pass the leisure time?

What do I do when not reading? Well...blogging, writing (creative writing, journals, and letters to many penpals), sewing - though not as much as I used to do. I spend a lot of time cooking, as I find that very relaxing and creative. I talk to my sisters on the phone a few hours a week all together, and hang out with my funky sister-in-law and her husband. Mostly, though, I just like hanging around the house, puttering, with my husband; we chat, cook together, do housework (oh, wait, no, that's just him...), play Scrabble, watch a bit of tv - all those things that somehow contrive to use up any of the time I might have left over after reading.

123 Meme:

So the rules for this one are:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the next three sentences.

My friend Breeni of Breeni Books tagged me for the What are you reading? meme.

I'm supposed to -
Turn to page 123 of the nearest book, go to the fifth sentence and post the next three! Then tag five more people.

I'll cheat and do this for the two books that I'm most actively reading at the moment and not tag five people.

First - Tobacco particulate thickens the air.
A shelf of books: Auden, Veblen, Spengler, Steinbeck, Dos Passos. Tropic of Cancer, out in plain view, it must have been smuggled.That's from Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, which I am reading in preparation for our book club discussion on Wednesday.

This week’s theme comes from Samantha, who suggested that one week we all write about our fond memories of childhood books.

You could approach this several ways. I’ll probably list my favorite childhood books with maybe a paragraph about each book: why I loved it, how old I was when I read it, where I got the book, etc. You could also just pick one childhood favorite and review it as you would any other book. Or, if you’re fast, you could make up a meme other weekly geeks might like to use. It’ll be interesting to see how everyone personalizes this theme. Don’t forget to come back and leave a link to the post in your comment once you’ve written your post. No wrap-up post this week; just the one childhood books post.

I haven't been posting for awhile, a whole week almost went by! That's crazy! So it was a nice gift to come back and go thru my favorite blogs to see that Alisia over at Book Haven has given me an award! The You Make My Day Award!! Now I get to have fun choosing 10 blogger friends who make my days a little brighter.... Thank you Alisia!!!

Now this is going to be really hard because I love every blogger in my blog roll. I would most definitely choose Alisia because she is one of my favorites but since she was the one who chose me, here are a few more that stand out:

Kookiejar from A Fraternity of Dreamers makes my day because her blog just cracks me up, but Wednesdays she has all kinds of goofy news and links! Check her out!