In honour of Valentines Day—and in the absence of reviews to post—we’re spreading the link love around!

Lovely book things

First, a big congratulations to the City of Sydney librarians who put together an excellent Library Lovers event at Customs House last Thursday. I’m told the event was booked out. Rather than hiring professional actors, library staff did the readings—from Greek poetry to an excerpt from Kiss Me, Annabel by Eloisa James to one of my favourite poems, Close Reading, which we were lucky enough to be able to publish here at Book Thingo last year.

The Australian Romance Readers Association today launched its new website designed by Australian author Paula Roe. If you’re an ARRA member, the newsletter also came out today and in my column I talk about why I like reading the end of the book first. Also, it looks like the Annual ARRA Readers Awards Dinner is set for May 15 in Sydney. No details on the venue yet.

If you only have a couple of minutes, check A Regency Romance in 2 minutes (more)

I’m currently addressing some parcels I owe to winners of past book giveaways. I’m sorry they didn’t make it for Christmas, but I hope they’ll herald a great start to your reading year.

Photo credit: perfect gift 1 by lusi (stock.xchng)

Giveaway winners

Congratulations to Therese, who won a copy of Red Dust with entry on what she loves about celebrating an Aussie Christmas:

I love christmas in Australia because of the heat, getting together with family, hanging out with the neighbours, enjoying a wonderful baked dinner and then spending the afternoon playing games outside with everybody.

The result was pretty close because Wandergurl, Decadence and I all had different favourites! (more)

Source: Pink flower on stilts by avlxyz (via Flickr)

For non-Aussie readers who follow the blog, today we’re celebrating one of the biggest national events in Australia.

Melbournians are lucky enough to have a public holiday today, and are probably enjoying a champagne breakfast as you read this.

That’s right. They have a public holiday for a horse race.

You see why Australia is the best place to live in? The rest of us grumble about having to go to work, but seriously, who’s working now?

That’s what I thought.

So to celebrate Cup day, we’re running a Readers’ Sweep. Here’s how it works:

1. The first 24 people to comment here or post a reply to me on twitter (@BookThingo) are in.
2. Participants must sign up before 1pm to give me time to allocate the numbers. (more)

A recent First Page entry at Dear Author (Trespasses and Sins) nearly made my brain explode. The first paragraph starts thus:

The lamb’s blood was splattered against the wall. Its bleating shrieks of pain and surprise drowned out the crowd noise around them. The woman covered her ears to the animal’s pitiful cries. In a circle, the seven of them stood around the dying creature.

Of all the bloody (ha!) things to criticise about the work, some commenters immediately latched on to the first sentence. Among the criticisms (I’ll link directly to the comment for attribution—this post isn’t about pointing fingers):

#1 Ouch, started in the passive!

#13 The gore didn’t disturb me as much as the passive voice… (more)

& by Leo Reynolds (via Flickr)

For today is National Punctuation Day, the day to pull out all the stops, to revel in comma karma, to get to the exclamation point. It’s a day for high colonics and high semicolonics. — John Kelly, The Washington Post

In honour of National Punctuation Day, I’m reposting one of my favourite poems for your enjoyment. Now go forth and punctuate!

On Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to @redrobinreader that one of my favourite poems uses punctuation and literature-speak as metaphors for sex. I couldn’t find the poem online, so I tracked down the poet to see if she’ll allow me to post it here.

Close Reading by Alexis Harley was originally published in Tangent 2000: An anthology of women’s creative work.

Alexis Harley has generously given Book Thingo permission to post the poem in its entirety. Here it is for your reading pleasure. (more)

This week is Book Blogger Appreciation Week (BBAW). Marg, whose blog Reading Adventures was shortlisted in the BBAW Award for Best Romance Blog, posted a lovely write-up on Book Thingo. I thought it only fitting to pay it forward by listing some of the book blogs I most frequent or which continually inspire me.

Monkey Bear Reviews

SarahT’s blog is even younger than Book Thingo, but it’s already on my must-read list. I love reading Sarah’s opinion on various issues around romance blogland—she gets me thinking even if I don’t always agree. Sarah isn’t afraid to tackle controversial issues, but she does so in an articulate, fair and well thought out way.

Literary Minded

Okay, I don’t read every article on Angela Meyer’s blog, but if there’s one blog that has inspired me to be a better, more creative reviewer, it’s this one. Angela plays around with different styles when reviewing books, interviewing authors, or covering Australian literary events. She also convinced me (probably without realising it) to try two books that look set to make it to my list of best reads for the year: Addition by Toni Jordan, and Affection (more)

Today’s post is our first ever guest post at Book Thingo, written by Keira, who runs Love Romance Passion, a romance book review blog for readers by readers. She’s been reading romance since she was a teenager and began blogging about romance so she could share her passion for her favourite genre. She loves reading paranormal, Regency, historical America, and highlander most of all, and completely adores blind and wounded heroes.

Kat asked me to tell her about my top 10 books from September (so far anyway) to go with the Books Alive 2009 Reading Challenge. These books are not all romance—some are young adult—but they’re all new to me.

1–5. Artemis Fowl (Books One, Two, Three, Four, Five)

Listening Library and Random House are my heroes. Love Nathaniel Parker’s voice. He’s so amazing. The story fairly leaps out of the speakers. Book 5 shows a hint of future romance as Artemis hits puberty, but it’s not a main feature of the series at all.

6. Lucky in Love by Carolyn Brown

Very funny contemporary Western romance. I loved the phrases and sayings (more)

Thanks to everyone who entered our contest to win a copy of The White Queen.

Congratulations to the winners, Nikki and Edie!

I’ve sent you an email with instructions on how to claim your prize, but in case you don’t get it, please email me ASAP.

Nikki’s book-to-film choice was The Constant Princess, also by Philippa Gregory, starring:

Scarlett (Johannson) as Katherine, the desperately loving princess ripped from her spanish life who ends up with the wrong brother but spends her life fulfilling a promise to her true love.She’s got the brow, the skin, the cleavage, the tiny waist, the lips and the eyes. Not too many modern actors who’d do well if sucked into a vortex and spat out in Tudor England, but SJ is one of them. She’d be a star there, too.

She’d also excel at the decades long endurance and tragic end. (more)

It warms my heart to know that romance readers love Aussie characters, but it takes more than the odd “no worries, mate” to get Aussie readers to believe that a character really is Australian.

To help authors out, here are 15 tips on how to make your Aussie characters more authentic. I’ve written them with romance authors in mind, but they apply outside of romance, too. Update: Check the comments for more great tips!

1. Eric Bana is a comedian, not a sex symbol. Do not, under any circumstances, compare your hero to Eric Bana unless he wears a mullet, and there had better be a very good explanation for that.

2. Aussies are obsessed with sports. Obsessed. It’s theoretically possible to have a hero—or heroine, for that matter—who doesn’t have at least a passing knowledge of cricket and/or footy (rugby union, rugby league or Aussie rules), but they’d better have a damn good reason for it.

3. We don’t buy coffee from Starbucks. (more)

Gratuitous use of a still from Mr Darcy's pond scene in Lost in Austen (via lovestoknit at Flickr)

If you thought zombies were blasphemous to Pride and Prejudice, beloved classic of romance literature, check out this hilarious Twitter parody by Mad over at Under the Mad Hat.

Here are some snippets:

MrsB: A Mr Bingley–worth 50,000 followers a year–has joined Twitter! He’s brought a friend, Mr Darcy–worth 100,000 followers a year! Pls RT

… LizzieB: @JaneB If I could love a man who would love me enough to take me for a mere 50 followers, I should be well pleased…

LizzieB: @JaneB …but such a man wouldn’t be sensible & I could never love a man who was out of his twits. LOL

… CubicleSurfer: Does anyone know what #Bingley is and why it’s suddenly the no. 1 trending topic? (more)