too many giveaways? share your thoughts!

hey peeps! I am not sure about you, but for some reason I am wondering if all the giveaways going around is actually putting a damper on the blogger community. Are you tired of giveaways? Are you all for them? I have recently had a feeling that more people are not entering giveaways, and that there was too much all at the same time. What are your feelings on giveaways? Be honest.

It just seems they are everywhere, and I am trying to figure out my feelings on them as well.
I just got done posting a poll in my sidebar about giveaways, please let me know your feelings :)

Here are the options in the poll, please vote on my sidebar though!!
Share your current feelings about Giveaways:
*Love them! You enter them all.
*Enjoy them. You enter the ones you like.
*Don't care. You don't really pay any attention.
*Starting to get annoying. You used to like them.
*Hate them. You never enter giveaways.

I am very curious to see where everyone is at with this. Does having so many giveaways make us book bloggers seem cheap? As if we are trying to purchase our readers and loyalty by giving them stuff rather than just attracting them for our reviews and posts? I am feeling a little overload, but I currently have a giveaway going on of my own...I am going back and forth on this one and would love to hear your thoughts!!!

Blogger Retreat!?! Are you in?

Trish over at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin'? is trying to gather info about possibly doing a Book Blogger Retreat in 2009! Seriously how fun is that!?!?! She is willing to organize it but is asking for our input. Take a looksy over there and there are a couple of polls she is running to see what the logistics would be.

It would be so fun to have it here in Portland, and yes....Powell's is a dreamland that would be at all your fingertips. More books than any of our minds can handle :)

Book Blogger Retreat

Go vote!! And tell me what you think!! It would be fun, wouldn't it??

The God of Small Things

Photo: Getty Images

Title: The God of Small Things
Author: Arundhati Roy
Pages: 322
Awards: Winner of the Booker Prize
Yearly Count b: 75

Set in India, where fate journeys amongst a family, and a set of twins. Roy using poetry-like prose takes the reader to a place of mystery and magic, superstition and pain. The storyline is not straightforward, but weaves and hops and jumps around complicating the impact of its plot. Good, okay...but nothing near great.

My take on this? I didn't like it. I wanted to, I like liking international fiction but this was too dark, to sad, too much to handle. Not even that much bad happened in the book, but nothing good ever did take place.

I can see that her writing is amazing, but Roy seems to go too far to show that she can write at the expense of plot and depth of character. It is not personable at all. I didn't connect to a single character. I think Roy should write poetry instead. I wish I had a better review to give. This is an award winning book, but I don't really see how.

Sorry guys!

Give me your thoughts, did you like it? When did you read it? Did you feel you connected with the characters and followed the plot? I had to do so much re-reading because either my mind would wander, or I would just not understand what was going on....not a book for me.

Have you entered my giveaway!?!?! I have 5 copies available of Lost and Found!!!

and remember to:

conditions

Mariel suggested this week’s question.

Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?

I used to underline, make notes and do all of the above. Now I dog ear when I like a quote, and yes I am a spine breaker. I'll break yours too if you aren't careful!! hahaha...no, I would never do that! Oh, but I can bend the cover around and it is fine, because I am being gentle, but if my hubby (B) does it...yes I do flinch. Talk about a double standard!

Orbis Terrarum Completed Books

I am going to update the map of completed countries for the Orbis Terrarum Challenge.
Make sure you add any of the books that you have read and are not currently up, onto the Links page.

YAY!!! You all are doing so great. Keep up the reading. We have two months to go!!! I am going to host this again next year. Be sure to let me know if you have any suggestions.

LIFE AFTER GENIUS

I have known several geniuses in my short years, and in truth I saw glimpses of each of them in Mead, the genius in M. Ann Jacoby's LIFE AFTER GENIUS. One of them in particular really stood out to me in reading about Mead. My favourite teacher in high school was a genius (is a genius), he scored insanely high on his SAT and yet he currently lives with his mom, unmarried at the age of 62, and is one of the most socially awkward, blunt people I have met in my life (and I have tons of Italian relatives!). I think about him often, I loved him, in a fully platonic way. I took all his classes, which were actually all of my favourites. I had him for Politics and Government, Senior Seminar (random important stuff to know class), Photography, and Track and Cross Country. I took a class on stock markets my senior year, and several (more than several) times over the last months I have so wanted to call him and as him what he thinks, how he feels about this change in our economics, but I haven't. I haven't visited him in over 7 years.

You might think that is normal, not to go back and visit your high school teacher, but I went to boarding school, and it is really close to where I live. He was my dad away from home, and I just can't bring myself to visit. Why? Well, if you have ever known one of these types you will get it. Last time I went I took my soon-to-be husband down. I sat there for 30-45 minutes while he explained to (B) how I could have been a much better athlete in high school, but that I didn't make it my focus. He went on to tell (B) that my time from my junior year would have taken state by one minute if I had run the same time my senior year instead of opting to run shorter races out of laziness. That is the last time I visited. I wasn't angry, or even upset it was just what I would have expected from him. He knew me, knew my stats better than I did and I am sure still does, he did the mathematical calculations of track lap times in his head, minus the delay you would exhibit out of fatigue. It is insane and he was always right.

I did feel pride when he liked what I did, all the high schoolers did. He was proud of my photographs, so much so, that he entered them into a contest. He also told me that one of my pictures had the best focus that he had ever seen, that it was perfect. I will remember that, that sense of pride. He is an amazing man and I have always known that...but social skills do not come packaged with the brilliance. I almost would say with certainty that I have never met a truly brilliant person who had their social life put together. I have known several and it seems people in their life are just too much for them, too unpredictable, incalculable. But is it them, or is it us? Why do we measure others by what comes so easily to us? What is the deal with that?

I know this is not really a normal review for me. I will post the full review of LIFE AFTER GENIUS in a couple of days. I got my book super late and am over half-way, but I love it so much that I WILL NOT skim or try to rush it. I am in love with Mead, the genius in the M. Ann Jacoby's novel, he is so sweet, so endearing and complex. I am eating this novel up right now. YUM. How have I been so blessed to read so many amazing books recently?? I just can't get over how lucky I am!

An article by M. Ann Jacoby, the author of LIFE AFTER GENIUS

LIFE BEFORE GENIUS

Following is the first paragraph of the first draft of LIFE AFTER GENIUS:

Theodore Mead Fegley was named after his mother’s uncle who had money. It was hoped that, for this reason, little Teddy might be looked upon favorably by his great uncle, possibly even included in his will, since the senior Teddy was an old man who’d never gotten married and had no children of his own. It didn’t happen that way though. Theodore Mead, the original, met little Teddy only once. At his eightieth birthday celebration. The infant was placed in the aging man’s lap and tickled repeatedly in an effort to get the small child to smile up at his namesake. But the reaction the tickling induced came from the wrong end and little Teddy was removed in a flurry of apologies, leaving a wet stain on the senior Teddy’s trouser leg. At the reading of the will seventeen months later, it was revealed that Theodore Mead had left all his money to the First Presbyterian Church, an act that little Teddy’s mother took to be a personal affront. It was the first of many times that little Teddy would feel that he had failed his mother.

In this first draft, when my novel was titled The Undertaker’s Son, I followed Mead from birth to 18 years old. He experienced several childhood mishaps but nothing ever really “happened.” One agent, who liked the above paragraph enough to ask to see the first 100 pages, sent them back with the comment that I had written what seemed like more of a character exploration than a novel. At the time I was at a loss as to what that meant. Only after I learned more about plot and structure was I able to go back and read his comment and know what he was talking about.

That’s the way it happened for me. I learned in fits and starts. Herman made his first appearance at the end of my fourth draft (or was it the fifth?). My readers liked him. So I went back and wrote what I came to think of as the Herman chapters. Then I took a class where the instructor focused on Structure. Out of that I got the idea to go back and forth between the Herman chapters and the Home chapters leading up to the climax where the two storylines meet.

With all this in place I got an agent. A couple of drafts later he was ready to send it out to publishers. And even after I had a signed contract there were more drafts.

Revisions, revisions, revisions. They are a fact of every writer’s life. I used them to learn.

Copyright © 2008 by M. Ann Jacoby

WARNING! Don't watch this unless you want to have to read the book!!! :)

M. Ann Jacoby talks about Life After Genius:

Early Birds Book Tour:

A Bookworm's World
Bermudaonion's Weblog
Booking Mama
Library Queue
Marjolein Book Blog
The Book Nest
Seaside Book Worm Blogger
Books by TJBaff
Linus's Blanket
Diary of An Eccentric
Savvy Verse & Wit
The Optimistic Bookfool
The Printed Page
My Friend Amy
Shooting Stars Mag
Books, Pugs and More
A Novel Menagerie
TomeTraveller's Blog
Chikune
Book Critiques
B&b ex libris
Sharon Loves Books And Cats
At Home With Books

Have you entered my giveaway!?!?! I have 5 copies available of Lost and Found!!!

Lord of the Flies

Title: Lord of The Flies
Author: William Golding
Pages: 190
Yearly Count: 74
Awards: William Golding is the winner of the Nobel Prize

The allegorical novel, about a group of school boys who become society forming groups for hunting, making fire and learning to exist alone on an island. This group of school boys tries to put in place a governing system that works for them, and even those who have not read this know that a group of little boys governing themselves, fending for themselves on a solitary island will run into trouble. This is Golding's take on human nature. I don't think it is far off, as our instincts for survival do make us into beasts even in the modern world today.

I had never read Lord of the Flies, but it is one of those that I had always wondered about. I found the reading a little slow and filled with description, but it was written in the 50's and absolutely mirrors the pace of that age. I can't say I enjoyed it, or that it was fun to read, but I did see the importance of it. Golding does a great job with the writing, and one becomes involved in the survival and hopeful rescue of these little savage boys.

I could not help but think of LOST...I know I shouldn't think of TV when reading a classic, right? But it constantly reminded me of the LOST series.

It is a classic, but have you read it? There are many classics that I have not read, but this is no longer one of them. I had a good time hearing about Ralf and Jack and Piggie...boys will be boys!



Have you entered my giveaway!?!?! I have 5 copies available this book!!!

Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst Giveaway!

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About Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst:

"Parkhurst treats the game show as an opportunity for the contestants to decide, as the producer asks of them, "What have you found?" The answer for readers: heart and wit to spare." —Publisher's Weekly

Summary by the publisher:

A suburban mom, her troubled daughter, divorced brothers, former child stars, born-again Christians, and some young millionaires have all been selected to compete on LOST AND FOUND, a daring new reality show. In pairs of two, they will race across the world to compete for a million-dollar prize.The only question is not only who will capture the big jackpot, but at what price.

Carolyn Parkhurst is also the author of the bestseller The Dogs of Babel.

"[A] deeply affecting page-turner.... Parkhurst endows each [character] with complexity and pathos, even when she doesn't approve of the choices they make. What emerges is less a satire than a straightforward character study—one that we're reluctant to put down even after the last contestant crosses the finish line." —Rebecca Marx, Elle Magazine

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Click on this open book widget to take you inside of Lost and Found:

Giveaway Details:

Thanks to Hachette Book Group (and publicist Valerie Russo), I can host this book giveaway!! We will start out with one book to giveaway, and for Each 10 entries I will add in an extra copy of the book, up to a total of 5 books.

Residents of the US and Canada only, sorry we cannot mail to PO Boxes.
Enter by the 6th of November, I will pick the winners on Friday the 7th!!!

To enter the giveaway for Lost and Found:

1.) Comment on this post, include why you would like to read it, what interests you about it, or anything else besides, "enter me please" :)

2.) For an extra two entries post about it on your blog, and let me know that you did.

Good Luck y'all!

and remember:

The Wednesday Sisters

Title: The Wednesday Sisters
Author: Meg Waite Clayton
Pages: 304
Yearly Count: 73
Awards: the Happy Chicken Award, by B&b ex libris

Five unlikely women meet at the park, they are all so different, and yet they are all in the same place. They need friends, they need to lean to define themselves for more than just their roles as mother, daughter, wife. The sisters, who are not actually sisters at all, and don't meet on Wednesday anymore, learn though difficulties that their friendship will stand the test of time, hardship and misunderstandings. It takes place in the 60's when women are learning to ask questions, to speak up and to take charge.


I have seen The Wednesday Sisters raved about on blogs over months and months. I can now say that I think every woman should read The Wednesday Sisters. It is not just, "oh, that was a good book, I liked it" it is " I will remember that book for the rest of my life as a powerful portrayal of relationships, love, difficulty and beating the odds". I am so glad I gave it a shot. I cried, laughed, cried, laughed and did it over and over.

Reading the Wednesday Sisters is really more like hanging out with a group of real women, ladies who care about each other, and work through their differences. This book is just a cut above, it is actually the reason I came up with my Happy Chicken award in the first place!! If you have seen this one around, and have been holding out, know that you really are doing yourself a huge disservice.










Have you read and reviewed the Wednesday Sisters? Leave me your link...I know there are tons of reviews out there!!

Book trailer for the Wednesday Sisters:

remember:

The Happy Chicken Award!

Today I decided to create an award. I have not settled on a rating system, but I want you to know which books really are my complete faves, the ones I will remember long after I read them, the ones that I grieved when I finished. :)

So with a super happy smile I would like to present to you the Happy Chicken Award: Reserved for the Best of the Best! I went through my reads this year and figured out which ones would receive this award:

Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic
The Writing Circle by Rozena Maart
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
The Shiniest Jewel by Marian Henley
The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton
(not yet reviewed)

When you see this image, know that the book you are reading about isn't just good, it is the best. I know, the Happy Chicken Award is a bit strange...but so am I :) Enjoy.

ps. This is a picture of my chick, who is now a chicken. Her name is jewel!

Forbidden Tales: Sword (Guest Post!!)

Title: Forbidden Tales: Sword
Author: Da Chen
Pages: 240

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This is a guest review, written by Susan Canfield, my mother-in-law. She is a literature teacher at a local junior high school. Who better to read/review a YA literature book than a teacher? Enjoy her thoughts on Forbidden Tales: Sword by Da Chen:

Emperor Ching has commissioned Master Swordsman Mui to create the finest weapon on earth. Shortly before the swordmaster delivers his heavenly creation to the emperor, he has a premonition that this honor would bring tragedy to his family. His fears are realized when the emperor has him brutally murdered to prevent him from ever making another sword that would match the magic of his treasured blade.

Soon after his death, his widow gives birth to a daughter, Mui, Mui. The child's destiny in life is to seek her father's murderer and take his life in revenge. Although outwardly, she appears to be nothing more than a wood gatherer, she is being secretly trained to fight and conquer not only her enemy, but her own passions and will. Her journey of vengeance requires her to find the son of her father's apprentice, a young warrior by the name of Tong Ting. Together, they plot to attack and destroy the emperor during his prayers at the Festival of the Sun.

Having lived her life under the shadow of almost certain death while she accomplishes her mission, she is surprised to find that Tong Ting awakens in her the dream to live and build a future. Now she must battle, not only the supreme enemy, but her own misgivings and desires. Should she fight and avenge the honor of her father, or should she flee to safety and honor her father by bearing his heirs?

I enjoyed getting a glimpse of rural China, of geese and wood gathering, traditions and superstitions. Mui Mui had a unique viewpoint for a woman in her culture, detesting the expected roles, succeeding in martial arts and swordsmanship and yet, delighting in her womanhood and maintaining a desire to find a soul mate

Author Da Chen grew up in China and most of is books, including Colors of the Mountain, a New York Times best seller, are set in his native land and explore life during the Cultural Revolution. Sword brings to life the brutal repression he experienced during his boyhood years in rural China. Da Chen has written several children's books and Sword mirrors the simplicity of a children's tale. I was completely taken in by the author's introduction where he tells of seeing his town's deeply treasured book collection burned by the local political powers. Da Chen writes with the passion of one who treasures the gift of fiction.

BTT: Couples

Monica suggested this one:

Got this idea from Literary Feline during her recent contest:

“Name a favorite literary couple and tell me why they are a favorite. If you cannot choose just one, that is okay too. Name as many as you like–sometimes narrowing down a list can be extremely difficult and painful. Or maybe that’s just me.”

I will pick a few, and to me couple just means two, not a romantic couple:

Franny and Zooey in Franny and Zooey by Salinger- they are stunning! eccentric, confused, confusing and still both are written with such beauty.

Hazel and Fiver in Watership Down- A true portrayal of friendships ups and downs, trust, courage and love all shown by two rabbits...amazing.

The Wednesday sisters- yep them all...how could I take two away from the rest!?! This will be on my top five books this year, I just finished it and can't get over the emotion, the love, and the closeness that grows through pain to tie the bonds tighter.

210 people will now have clean water, thanks to you.

Thank you, THANK YOU! There is no way I can tell you just how amazing it has been to see your generosity for people around the world to be able to drink clean water! Thank you for giving to Living Water International. When I set the initial goal of $100.0o I thought that that was high, half way through the read-a-thon I knew that we would break that easy. I then set the goal fund raising target at $200.00. I am excited to announce that we have broken that goal as well. We are currently at a total of $210.16, and not even all the funds are in yet. Check out the sidebar widget!!!

So in raising $210.16 we have given clean water to 210 people for one year!!! Yes, each dollar is enough to give one person clean water for an entire year!!!


Here are my amazing financial supporters, you all are amazing!

Susan
Bill and Diane
Floyd
Ronda
Trish
Corinne
Dawn
Ellyn
B&b

THANK YOU!!!!

Looking ahead...
$1 per book, in 2009:
I am going to give one dollar per book for every book I read all through next year, 2009. Consider joining me. Yes, it is great to read about international hardship, to become educated and know what is happening worldwide, but to stop there is to be powerless. To know of desperation and not make a change is a hopeless place. Knowing about the need is not enough. Knowing is half, doing is the other half. I know many of you support different organizations, and charities. That is great!

However, Consider joining me, one dollar for every book. If you join with me in supporting Living Water International that would mean for every book you read you'd be giving one person clean water for the entire year!

I will make the official announcement in December. Think about it.

The Shiniest Jewel

Title: The Shiniest Jewel: A Family Love Story
Author: Marian Henley
Pages: 176
Yearly Count: 72

A graphic novel memoir of Marian Henely's experience with foreign adoption, and all that surrounded her life at that time. Her father is getting sick, she is learning to understand her parents approval for what it is, and Henely's vulnerability really is laid out in this book. The Shiniest Jewel, I could not put it down. I sat down with it unstarted, and got up with it finished. I cried, laughed and felt the range of emotions in between. I loved this graphic novel memoir. It is the best graphic novel I have ever read. Marian Henely's illustrations are minimalistic and clear, but really help the reader understand even more deeply than just the writing alone would her ups and downs, her stresses and all the setbacks in the process of adoption. I can't say enough.

I think books like this one, The Shiniest Jewel really help bring awareness of what adoptive parents go trough. I know not all foreign adoptions are the same, but all the stories I have heard personally have been equally difficult. Hopes up one moment, hopes dashed the next. I watched a friend of mine mourn when the girl they were supposed to fly over and adopt from Nigeria died before the fight was confirmed. The idea that they would KNOW her, an ocean away, and morn for her is understandable, isn't it? It is just like a pregnant woman who almost carries to full term, dreaming of all the meals she will eat with her child, all the baseball games they will watch together, all the shoes that will need to be tied, and then the baby does not make it.

Because foreign adoptions are such a big thing these days, this book is published in excellent timing. To help those who are going through the emotional circus of the adoption process, but also to help their friends, family and anyone else understand the difficulty and joy in bringing home a baby from a world away.

Amazing book.



Author Website: MarianHenley

Dating Da Vinci

Title: Dating Da Vinci
Author: Malena Lott
Pages: 288
Yearly Count: 71

A 36 year old woman stuck in a rut, with two kids, a widow, and is unsure as to how to really be happy in life. Oh, yes she can be happy while eating fries and chocolate shakes, but as soon as they are gone, she is moping around again. Ramona Elise is a professor teaching an English Class when a beautiful Italian man walks in, and not just into her classroom, but into her life. Will he fit? Will she let him? Are they truly happy, or just no longer lonely?

I don't read chick lit very often, but sometimes it is nice. It is like that cotton candy that you wait for at the fair....not something you could handle for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but a sweet break. Reading Dating Da Vinci was that special treat. I read it during the read-a-thon, and it was good. Light, funny, silly, and still serious. There was enough intrigue to hold my attention and some aspects of mystery as well. I liked it....it was a nice treat of light, pink sweetness after reading Beasts of No Nation.

It is really interesting, it may be me, or just what I have read lately. But it seems that modern fiction is finally taking its dreamy eyes off 18 year old blonds, and diving into the difficulties we will all face someday of aging. When you are no longer considered "young" or "full of promise". When you reach the age where people expect things of you, require more of you. In Dating Da Vinci Malena Lott does an excellent job of capturing that feeling of inadequacy. The feeling of being older, uglier, and for that less valuable. But is that really true, or do we imagine it? One thing I do know, we as a society need to learn to age gracefully and allow others to do the same.

Beasts of No Nation

Author Photo by Seth Wening

Title: Beasts of No Nation
Author: Uzodinma Iweala
Pages: 176
Yearly Count: 70
Awards:

• The Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
• Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• First-Place Winner of the 2005 2005 Discover Award, Fiction
• The Best Book of the Year by Time, People and Slate Entertainment Weekly New York Magazine
  

A boy soldier, Agu, a child of a nondescript age (between 9 and 12) and from an unnamed West African Nation, speaks forth of the reality of child soldiers everywhere. Written as a novel, Iweala has taken bits and pieces of child solders worldwide, and formed a conglomerate child soldier in his character Agu. Beasts of No Nation is filled with their inner thoughts, their heartbreaks, and what they are asked to do. Agu's own morals, ethics and survival take a backseat to the desires of his leaders, who all in all are only different degrees of jaded and violent in this war of confusion.

I read this during the read-a-thon, and I was impressed with the writing, the detail and the thoughts it stirred, but it was really hard to read about. I have become even more impressed with this novel after I read it and it settled in and I realized that the author wrote it when he was 23 years old. Inner war of the conscience plays a large part in Beasts of No Nation, of what Agu was taught, and what he is now forced to live. He was brought up going to church, reading the Bible, and now he feels nothing could be further from the beast he has become. This approach of conscience that Iweala used brought me inside Agu, to the thoughts and debates going on inside this child soldier, and really helped me feel a connection to him. Despite his outward actions of war and savage acts forced upon him, inside the war was just as strong, a battle of will, conscience and ultimately survival.

Commandant is shouting, but I am hearing him like he is speaking through one big bag of cotton. He is saying, let us pray, let us pray and then he is asking the Lord to be guiding us in everything we are about to be doing. I am thinking that we should not even be asking God for anything because it is like he is forgetting us. I am trying to forget Him anyway even if my mother would not be happying with me. She is always saying to fear God and to always be going to church on Sunday, but now I am not even knowing what day is Sunday (p. 44).

Author information I found interesting:
Stop Trying to 'Save' Africa article in the Washington Post by Uzodinma Iweala
Uzodinma Iweala Article in The Morning News
Galley Girl Catches up With Uzodinma Iweala Article in Time
I Don't Ever Want to Sit Back, Michelle Pauli, of Guardian interviews Uzodinma Iweala

sunday salon- I have a read-a-thon hangover!!

I did the read-a-thon. I was awake for all but 2 hours of it :) Today I have a read-a-thon hangover.

This is what I read:
(thank you fyrefly for helping with my pics! They aren't backwards anymore :)

The Shiniest Jewel by Marian Henley

Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

Dating Da Vinci by Malena Lott

And I started this:

Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway


You have to check out the silly posts I did. (sort of embarrassing.... with 2 am videos and all!). But it was all for an amazing cause, that I will tell you a little more about.

not like this.

I read for clean water worldwide!!! I made this button (above), and you are welcome to use it if you want. We are giving the money raised over the read-a-thon to Living Water International. I had no idea clean water was such an issue...did you?
Did you know this to be true??:

Water-related disease is the single largest killer of infants in developing countries—diarrhea alone causes 1.8 million child deaths each year—and access to safe water is the most important factor in the survival of children under the age of five. Nearly half of all people in developing countries are suffering from water-related health problems. The annual number of deaths from water-related diseases is six times greater than the number of deaths from armed violence.

If you want all the info and pictures, here is my post on reading for clean water worldwide.
Anyway, money is still coming in, but during the read-a-thon we earned/gave/were sponsored for: $165.50. I want to thank all of you for giving!!! You are amazing.....INCREDIBLE! Did I say you are AMAZING!?!?! Thank you so much.

Anyway, for the rest of the year, each book I read I will donate another dollar to Living Water International
You are welcome, at any time to give as well. I am going to leave the link up. When the $200.00 mark is met, I will let you know what will happen then.