Summer Travel, Contests, General Updates ...

This is sort of a catch-all post since I've got lots to comment on ...

Summer Travel
Does anyone have big plans for this summer? Personally, I'll be quite busy ... a wedding in West Virginia, a 4th of July wedding in Boston, hosting all-day scrapbook workshops, baby showers (and my sister's due date!), VBS, my 10 yr wedding anniversary, book club meetings (one with an author) ... did I mention that I still have to work?! ... yeah, summer will just FLY by for me!

If you have time and plan to travel, why not add some literary adventures to your trip? Check out this post from the blog at ReadingGroupGuides.com for some great travel ideas. For more info check out the new book Novel Destinations. !

If you've never checked out the blog over there at ReadingGroupGuides.com I encourage you to do so. They have posts on a wide variety of book- and book-club-related topics by authors, librarians, book clubbers, etc. I've done two guest posts for the blog (click here and here to read them) and I'm thrilled to announce that I've been invited to be a monthly contributor! WooHoo! My first post goes up near the end of June ... I'll be sure to let you know when exactly.

Contests
On the contests front, I've got some cool news to share. In June I'm starting a monthly book giveaway here. What's better than a free book? Why, two free books! So to kick off the new contests I'll be giving away 2 books to one lucky person in June I've got some special things lined up for the next few months (ok, ok, just a sneak peek for later this summer ... how about a signed copy of Matrimony by Joshua Henkin and a signed Mary Higgins Clark book?!) I'll post the details of the first contest hopefully by late next week, but no promises there.

She Reads Books is running a contest right now and get this - she's giving away 5 books! Click here to enter her fabulous contest.

And here's a link for a really cool contest that you'll want to enter too. You can a BAGFUL of books including Novel Destinations (the one I talked about above).

General Updates
Thanks to my loyal readers (and in part to NaComLeavMo) I'm now getting between 50-100 visits per day to my site - way cool!!! Thank you to everyone who is dropping by. I hope you are finding things that interest you. Please add me to your blogreader so you won't miss out on the upcoming contests and fun reviews.

In other news, my book club is meeting with DL Wilson, author of Unholy Grail, in late July. He graciously offered to give copies of his book to each member of our club - and there are 17 of us! Plus he's coming to our meeting to explain the research he conducted for this book and whatever else we want to talk with him about. I'm excited about this meeting - I'm sure I'll have lots to post about it.

I'm taking part in three reading challenges at the moment. I expect to finish the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge first. If you're a fan of this genre, be sure to check out the blog we have going; all challenge participants are posting their reviews on it so you're sure to find something new that you'll like. I've also committed to the Irresistible Review Challenge which ends on Sept. 1 ... I've got quite a bit of work to do on that one still. And finally, I'm working on the 1% Well Read Challenge. Unfortunately I keep changing my mind about which books to read after checking out the other participants reviews!

So that's about all I have to say for now ... how about you? Any summer plans? Cool contests you know about? How are your challenges progressing? I'd love to hear from you!