Happy New Year!

Another quarter, another five nominees.  The Litblog Co-Op spent a good portion of the holidays reading, as sure a path to comfort as egg nog, roasting chestnuts and warm bodies. 

So in addition to wishing you a happy new year, we wanted to announce that on January 16, 2006, we'll be revealing the winner, as well as the four other nominees over the course of the week.  We think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what our five nominators (this time, Max, Megan, Dan, Sam and Scott) turned up. 

Like the last round, we'll be featuring roundtable discussions with our members and we invite you to chime in with your thoughts.  And we're working on snagging some of the authors and editors who put these amazing books together to make some appearances here, so that you can ask them your questions.

And for those of you familiar with The Bat Segundo Show, I'm also excited to announce that we'll be featuring podcasts with all five authors, along with audio testimonials from our nominators about why they picked the book.  The podcasts will appear in various forms both here and at the Segundo site.  But if you really can't wait, look here first.

In addition, Dan Wickett has some very exciting things in the works too.

So stay tuned here for some sizable happenings, stay warm, and be sure to look both ways while crossing the street. And of course, happy reading!

Comments

[kj]

Hi...just wanted to throw a recommendation out there for '06. I just finished reading the ARC of Brad Listi's debut novel, "Attention.Deficit.Disorder." He has a great original voice. I admit it. I'm a dork. I've been addicted to his MySpace blogs for awhile. I'll just send you to that site for all the info: www.myspace.com/attentiondeficitdisorderb

Happy reading. kj

[Jozef Imrich]

In these crazy times, we have to keep our eyes on the things that matter most: the life and health of our families, our communities, the planet. And to keep our sanity, some of us need to reserve a bit of time for reading and for writing.

May your next book is peppered with hope. Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords ;-)

[Jozef Imrich]

In the context of the current Frey controversy, it's hard to know which is worse: a writer who acts as though there is no distinction between a novel and a memoir, or a publisher who does not care

Jim Hanas points out that despite the media uproar over the James Frey and JT LeRoy controversies, many American writers have been "less than honest about their work and themselves http://www.hanasiana.com/archives/001096.html
More Famous Literary Liars

CODA: The Cold River, a true emotional and factual story, Comes in From the Cold http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=1554043115
The Drowned and the Saved: If It Were All So Simple

[Arethusa]

Oh yay, I can't wait. I really really liked Stern's book (I bought "Wedding Jester" afterwards), and I dug the Christa Wolf book from the first LBC round of nominations.