THE LITBLOG CO-OP

Contest Winner Named

If you recall back at the beginning of the Spring 2006 Read This! Discussion period, we posted a notice that everybody that participated in the discussions of the five books that were nominated would be eligible for a random drawing - the winner of which would receive a full set of the five titles.

Out of the many folks leaving great comments during that those discussions, Rebecca Jane is the one whose name was the one pulled and she will soon be receiving copies of the five books!  Thanks to everybody who joined the conversation last time around - here's hoping we'll see the same level these next four weeks.

LBC Party

Reminder - Quiet Week at the LBC

Just a reminder, with Book Expo at the end of this week, and a healthy percentage of LBC members attending, things will be quiet around here until Monday the 22nd, when we'll return and begin our discussion of Here They Come, the fourth spring 2006 nominee.

Meanwhile, if you haven't had a chance to listen to the three podcast interviews of the prior nominees, go back and take a listen - they are all quite interesting.

JUST A FEW MORE DAYS ...

The Spring 2006 Read This! Selection will be announced Monday, April 17th!

The post announcing the Read This! selection, written by its nominator, will start us off on six weeks of interesting, in-depth discussion about five truly fine titles. One additional post per day will follow from the nominators of the other four titles until all five titles have been announced.

Then we hope you'll join us for one full week spent on each of the titles including interviews, podcasts, conversations about the titles between LBC members, authors blogging, and we hope we’ll see many of you readers jumping in on the conversations too. In fact, over the course of the next six weeks, everybody taking part in the conversations via the comment fields is going to be entered into a random drawing to win a complete set of the five books nominated.

We will once again be saving the discussion of the Read This! Selection for the final week, giving all readers a full five weeks to track down a copy and get familiar with it beforehand.

Some small changes are in store for the LBC:

First, in the future we will be reducing the number of books to be discussed in each quarter to three but we'll do so gradually. The Summer Read This! Quarter will see four books being discussed, and from Autumn 2006 forwards, we’ll discuss three titles.

Second, beginning with the Summer quarter, we will be announcing the nominees for the subsequent quarter prior to beginning discussion on the current one – thus the Autumn titles under consideration will be revealed once Summer titles are announced. We believe this gives those interested in the discussions at the LBC the opportunity to read the books through the quarter, and participate even more fully in the discussion.

Speaking of which, the Summer Nominees are:

Michael Martone by Michael Martone from FC2

White Spirit by Paule Constant (translated by Betsy Wing) from University of Nebraska Press

Skin by Kellie Wells from University of Nebraska Press

Crawl Space by Edie Meidav from FSG

We hope you'll take the time to look into those books and return in June to join discussion. But above all, come back next Monday to see what the Spring Read This! Selection is, and settle down to some great discussions over the next month and a half.