BDB cheat sheets updated

Just a quick note to let you know that the ever lovely—and very thorough—Decadence has updated the BDB cheat sheets, including the spoiler thread for Lover Unleashed. You can find links to all the BDB posts here.

Bookish people are meeting up TONIGHT

A quick reminder that we’re having a casual get together for book bloggers, twitterati, Goodreaders, Facebookers, lurkers and any other bookish people who are part of an online community. (Okay, and even if you’re not!) We’re meeting at the Arthouse Hotel (257 Pitt St, Sydney). If you have a book that needs a new home, feel free to bring it along for a book swap.

Click here for more details and to RSVP. We’d love to see you there. If you decide to come along on a whim, feel free to pop by even if you haven’t RSVPed. You’ll find us when you see books!

One more sleep until ARRC 2011

I’m so excited for the Australian Romance Readers Convention like you wouldn’t believe. If you’re keen but still unsure about going, check out Decadence’s post on why you must NOT miss this event. I’ll be at the Welcome event tomorrow night, so please grab me and introduce yourself. (You may have to do this a few times—I have trouble remember names when I’m meeting a lot of new people at once.) A few unofficial social things to think about:

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Lover Unleashed by J. R. Ward - Australian/UK paperback

If you’re hungry for clues about upcoming books in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, Decadence has put together what we think we know about what’s coming next. LAST UPDATED: 28/3/2010

This post contains spoilers from earlier books in the series, including Lover Mine, and spoilery speculation about future books. None of this stuff is set in stone, so please don’t blame us if something changes between now and when the books are released.

The ninth book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, titled Lover Unleashed, is about Payne, blooded daughter of the Bloodletter, and Manuel Manello, MD.

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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Without any discernible plot or direction the story is all icing and no substance. And not particularly sweet icing at that.

Rose Edelstein has a gift: when she eats, she can taste the emotions of the person who made the food. Her mother’s lemon cake has never tasted more desperate, and Rose becomes the keeper of her family’s secrets—including her own.

I picked this book up for the Goodreads Aussie Readers Summer Reading Challenge as my Oprah book. The title is just so delicious. Some of the descriptions of food and emotion are scrumptious. For example, Rose envies her best friend Eliza’s turkey sandwich:

I’d tasted that turkey sandwich before. The whole thing was just a sonata of love—the lettuce leaf, the organic tomato grown on a happy farm, even the factory mayonnaise took on such delicacy of feeling it seemed like an exquisite violin solo. It was difficult, and rude, to hate my friend so much.

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The second Australian Romance Readers Convention is right around the corner and if you haven’t been to the first one, you probably have no idea what a treat this is going to be.

The program has something for everyone: paranormal, erotic, contemporary, category, historical, urban fantasy, rural romance … whatever your taste, there’s bound to be a session that interests you. A panel that proved very popular at the last convention was This One Time, where the authors talked about the weird and funny stuff that go on behind the scenes when publishing a book or crazy fan stories. This time, the topic will have two panels. Aspiring writers are sure to find Publishing Ins and Outs useful.

I’m really looking forward to hearing the keynote speakers, Cindy Gerard, Anna Campbell and Nalini Singh. I’ve met Nalini a few times and she is awesome in person. She was an entertaining speaker at the ARRA Awards dinner last year where she revealed the title of her third angels book for the first time. At ARRA events, you get the scoop first. In February 2009, keynote speaker MaryJanice Davidson told us about a book idea she had about an FBI agent with multiple personalities that became Me, Myself and Why? published in September 2010. You just never know what’s going to happen.

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The Countess by Lynsay Sands (Madison Sisters, Book 1)

Light on plot, on character and on plausibility. And they make out next to a corpse.

The Countess was one of the first books I requested from NetGalley. In the process, I made some important discoveries:

1. DRM-protected NetGalley books expire 60 days after downloading.
2. It isn’t unusual for me to take me more than 60 days to review a book I’ve read.
3. Sony Reader’s note-taking feature is linked to the ebook file. When the ebook file expires, my notes are unreadable.

Technology sucks sometimes.

Luckily, I can still do this review, but it’ll be a little more general than usual. Except when I specifically mention making out next to the dead guy. More on that later.

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Join us in April for a month-long celebration of awesome Australian authors.

You may have been wondering why reviews have been scarce on Book Thingo. Aside from the obvious answer—we’ve been lazy but not that lazy—we’ve been saving up some of our reviews for a special month-long event.

April is Aussie Author Month!

Aussie Author Month is a cross-genre collaboration to support and promote Australian writing. During April, we’ll be featuring bestselling and upcoming Australian authors, and highlighting some of our favourite Aussie books.

At Book Thingo, we’ll be reviewing Australian-authored books, most of which will be romances or feature romantic elements.

Who else is participating?

Aussie Author Month started off with a tweet last year, and it’s been a collaborative effort between several bloggers:

Nyssa at A Writer Goes on a Journey via the Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFFWA), who will focus on Australian sff authors,

Ali and Rosie at Fangtastic, who will focus on urban fantasy and paranormal romance authors,

and later joined by Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, who reads within and outside of romance and sff.

You can find a list of participants here.

What’s in it for you?

Here are some of the activities we’ll be undertaking:

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Book blogger meet up

A quick reminder that we’re having a get together for any book-inclined bloggers, tweeters, Facebookers, Goodreaders and lurkers on Thursday, March 24 at the Arthouse Hotel. Click here for more details. We’d love to see you there!

Mad month for historical romance readers

Historical author Ashley March is hosting a month-long celebration of historical romance. Her blog will feature guest posts from historical romance authors, daily giveaways and she will be highlighting websites that support historical romance. Book Thingo will be featured on March 29, but if you love historicals, make sure you check out the party every day this month. Leave a comment after the March Madness posts and you can be in the running to win a prize!

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This month’s mailbag features fishing, horse riding, vampires, shapeshifters, magical worlds and, of course, love.

Thyla by Kate Gordon

1/4/2011 – 9781864718812 – Random House
Teen/YA urban fantasy, Australian author, Australian setting

Thyla is a story of Tasmania: of darkness, of convicts, of devils and tigers, and of promises that stay true through the centuries. It is the story of what happened to Cat, and what Tessa really is.

My name is Tessa. I am strong.
I am brave. I do not cry.

These are the only things I know for certain.

Found wandering in the mountains behind Hobart, Tessa has no memory of who she is or where she came from. Frightened and alone, Tessa tries to make sense of the mystery of her past and her strange nocturnal longings. And of the strange vicious scars on her body…

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I’ve been meaning to post a regular round-up of interesting links and news from Twitter and various loops and mailing lists I’m on. Here are some recent tidbits.

Booku — New Australian ebook shop

The folks from Boomerang Books has launched an ebook shop, Booku (pronounced book-oo). Click here for their romance catalogue. It’s not very extensive, but a new player in the local ebook retail market can only be a good thing.

Impulse — New digital only imprint from Avon

Avon has launched a new digital imprint, Impulse, which will publish one book each week, starting next week. Their first title, a novella, goes on sale next week: A Lady’s Wish by Katharine Ashe.

A manifesto for romance readers

Kate Cuthbert wrote a brilliant essay for the New York Journal of Books on Why I Read Romance. If you’ve ever suffered from book shame, or have had to justify your reading preferences to anyone, this is a must read.

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We’re having a book blogger/tweeter/online lurker meet up!

If you’re in any way involved with or interested in the online Australian book community, you’re invited to come along to our first get together.

Whether you’re a blogger, tweeter, Facebook fan, Goodreads user, regular commenter, irregular commenter, lurker or a friend of a friend of a lurker … we’d love to talk books with you. In person. Preferably with cocktail in hand. My hand. (Yours too, if wish.)

Authors, publishers, editors, booksellers, librarians, reviewers and readers are all welcome. The more the merrier!

When: Thu, 24 March from 6pm
Where: Arthouse Hotel (275 Pitt St, Sydney)
Who: Book bloggers, tweeters, Facebookers, Goodreaders and anyone else who hangs around the book communities online

Dress code applies after 5.30pm. See the website for details.

If you’re interested in coming along, we would love it if you RSVP here.

We haven’t booked an area at the Arthouse (because that requires a deposit), so if there are any last-minute venue changes, we will post it on Twitter. If you include a mobile number in your RSVP, we’ll send you a text message on the night.

Thanks to the ladies at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader (Marg), Book Bites (Jacq) and Fangtastic (Ali and Rosie) for helping to organise this event.

If you’re coming along to the meet-up, let us know in the comments. And just for fun, if you were to create a bookish cocktail, what would it be?