Marcelo is thrilled when he gets a golden retriever puppy for his birthday, but now he faces one of the toughest jobs of his life, not only because owning a pet is a huge responsibility, but because he has to find the perfect name for it—and that’s hard!

This is only the second children’s book I have reviewed here on The Book Stacks and it is the first children’s book in e-book format I have ever reviewed here. I’m not usually one for e-books, but I liked this book so much that reading it on screen instead of on page didn’t take much away from my enjoyment.

This very sweet book about Marcelo and his first puppy had me smiling all the way through. (And wishing I had a puppy of my own!)

Mayra touches on the responsibilities of owning a puppy while keeping it simple so even a very young child can understand both the love and work surrounding having a puppy. While I could nitpick about some of the words Marcelo says, perhaps I’m underestimating the intelligence and vocabulary of children. Besides, it doesn’t take away from the story whatsoever.

What’s even more is the art is done well with a lot of colours that every child will enjoy.

I definitely recommend this book for children – especially those who have a love of dogs. This short and sweet book will be the perfect present.

This week’s Booking Through Thursday question…

It’s a holiday weekend here in the U.S., so let’s keep today’s question simple–What are you reading? Anything special? Any particularly juicy summer reading?

It’s funny how things work out because I was meaning to put an updated “What I’m Reading” list up this week and, well, here you go! I love it when things work out like that.

Remember to play the Monday game for your chance to win an Aussie postcard from me.

If you would like to try your hand at reviewing, please feel free to contact me using the contact me button under the site description on the right. I’m more than happy to put up guest reviews. I’m also thinking of a best book review contest, but it’s just an idea floating around in my brain at this point.

Reading:
Savage Survival – Darrell Bain
In Bad Dreams – Horror Anthology – Edited by Mark Deniz and Sharyn Lilley
Xenocide - Orson Scott Card
Don’t You Marry the Mormon Boys – Janet Kay Jensen
Janeology – Karen Harrington

Going to Read:
Supernatural – Graham Hancock
Marwan: The Autobiography of a 9/11 Terrorist – Aram Schefrin
Sabriel – Garth Nix
Neutron Star – Short story collection – Larry Niven
Firebirds – Fantasy/Sci-fi Anthology – Edited by Sharyn November
The Lab – Jack Heath
Remote Control – Jack Heath
The Foreshadowing – Marcus Sedgwick
The Jaguar Legacy – Maureen Fisher
Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hilary Clinton – Kathleen Willey
To Truckee’s Trail – Celia Hayes
The Redemption of Althalus – David and Leigh Eddings
The Serpent Bride – Sara Douglass
Loving the Goddess Within – Nan Hawthorne
Bad Girls Club – Judy Gregerson
Stand – Debbie Williamson
Season of Sacrifice – Tristi Pinkston

Upcoming Reviews:
Crash! – Mayra Calvani
Eon – Greg Bear
Organic for Health – Sandy Powers
Sword Dancer – Jennifer Roberson

So what’s on your list?

Anywho, because of what happened, it came to my attention just how many people read here that have no way of getting in touch with me when the site is down. For the majority of you, that’s not a problem. Either you have my email address or you’re just not that upset about not being able to contact me for whatever amount of time. And that’s okay because I’m not always the best correspondent.

However, it would have been very nice to be able to let you know what was going on.

Because of that, I have been ‘inspired’ to tell you about a few of the other places you can find me, should something like this happen again. (Let’s all hope that it doesn’t.)

Twitter

Facebook

I’m at other places to, but these two are the ones I generally check in on every day. If you have any recommendations of other things I should join, let me know. Just keep in mind that I’m usually quite lazy and I’m proud of the fact that I have two social sites that I visit daily.

Feel free to friend me on any of these sites. It would be great, though, if you could let me know that you’re friending me because you saw this post. (“Hi, I’m ___. I read you on ___.) That’s not possible for all the sites, but I will definitely appreciate it if you put it in when you can.

Thank you all. Now it’s time for lunch.

PS. I just joined GoodReads if you want to friend me there.

Think about your favorite authors, your favorite books . . . what is it about them that makes you love them above all the other authors you’ve read? The stories? The characters? The way they appear to relish the taste of words on the tongue? The way they’re unafraid to show the nitty-gritty of life? How they sweep you off to a new, distant place? What is it about those books and authors that makes them resonate with you in ways that other, perfectly good books and authors do not?

One big thing that gets me on an author’s fan list is the characters and their relationships. Well done characters can have you sympathizing with them or hating them faster than you can blink and you don’t even know it. What they do, say and think are things I want to know and enjoy reading.

A good author also doesn’t let their writing overwhelm the story. The story always takes the main role and the writing just gets you to wherever the story is going. I don’t like it when authors get so caught up in the fact that they are writing that the story becomes secondary.

My favourite authors have a wonderful ability to take me to places that are familiar enough to give me a bit of footing but different enough to make me want to explore all the wonderful spaces the new world holds.

Phew! We are back in action (as you can see). Did you miss me? I missed you!

Group hug!

Too much? Okay. I’ll behave.

I am very glad to be back in action and posting here on site. I apologize for all the down time, but as happens with technology sometimes, we had a bit of a technology burp. Apparently some drives and servers went down at headquarters and things were a bit messy for a while.

Don’t ask me to go into it further because it’s probably, ultimately, quite boring.

Thank you all for your patience (and for coming back after such a long gap). I know that going too long without posting can be a bit of a ‘virtual death’ for any site, so I doubly appreciate all of you who have been checking in with me via email, twitter and other things.

If any of you are interested in alternative ways to contact me (should the sites ever go down again, heaven forbid), leave a comment and I’ll post up some of my information.

I would like to reward everyone who stuck around through all this by holding a contest. I know I just held two big contests, but that doesn’t mean I can’t hold a few more, right?

If you have any ideas for a contest, please let me know. I’ll be taking your suggestions for the next few weeks so we can hopefully get something going soon.

Once again, my apologies, and thank you to everyone for your patience. I’m very glad to be back.

Have a good one!

The game works like this: Each week I will choose a word and offer a few titles that I’ve come up with containing that word in the title. Then it’s your turn to come up with book titles containing the same word, without duplication (yes, that includes my titles.) I would also like the author, but that is just so I can find the book if I want to read it.

The current challenge: I challenge you all to reach 32 titles containing the weekly word by midnight Friday, (with no more than 10 titles commented per person and not including *my* titles in the total.)

My forfeit? For this challenge I’d like to do a little something different that will hopefully have the both of us smiling. If you all work together and reach the goal, I will send each of you who participate a post card.

Whoo-hoo right? Right! For those of you who don’t know, I live in Australia so you will be getting a postcard featuring the lovely, lovely city of Melbourne. (If you’re willing to give me your postal address, which I promise to delete as soon as I write it on the postcard.)

So if you’d like a post card, join in!

If you don’t reach the goal, we’ll try again next week. If you reach the goal, I’ll have a brand new challenge for you next Monday where you’ll get another chance.

(If you’re feeling pouty about the ten titles per person limit, why not get a friend to come and comment as well? The more, the merrier.)

The word this week is:

Time

I Say: Nick of Time by Ted Bell

You Say…

The game works like this: Each week I will choose a word and offer a few titles that I’ve come up with containing that word in the title. Then it’s your turn to come up with book titles containing the same word, without duplication (yes, that includes my titles.) I would also like the author, but that is just so I can find the book if I want to read it.

The current challenge: I challenge you all to reach 32 titles containing the weekly word by midnight Friday, (with no more than 10 titles commented per person and not including *my* titles in the total.)

My forfeit? For this challenge I’d like to do a little something different that will hopefully have the both of us smiling. If you all work together and reach the goal, I will send each of you who participate a post card.

Whoo-hoo right? Right! For those of you who don’t know, I live in Australia so you will be getting a postcard featuring the lovely, lovely city of Melbourne. (If you’re willing to give me your postal address, which I promise to delete as soon as I write it on the postcard.)

So if you’d like a post card, join in!

If you don’t reach the goal, we’ll try again next week. If you reach the goal, I’ll have a brand new challenge for you next Monday where you’ll get another chance.

(If you’re feeling pouty about the ten titles per person limit, why not get a friend to come and comment as well? The more, the merrier.)

The word this week is:

Quote

I Say: Quotable Quotes by Readers Digest Editors

You Say…

Novice or Seasoned… New to the publishing game? TWFSP takes you step-by-step through every stage of your publishing success story. Been around the block a few times? You’ll walk away with a whole host of new tools and insights. Far from theoretical, TWFSP is one big case study: the author’s own “real-world” success chronicle.

In this how-to book from Peter Bowerman, nothing is hidden and no resources are withheld. Bowerman lays it all out for you so you have a true step-by-step guide instead of only the bits and pieces of what he wants to share.

TWFSP is an excellent book if you’re looking for a resource book in pursuing self-publishing. It’s easy to read and can probably answer any questions you have. Bowerman has a way of talking to you rather than at you about things so you can’t help but start feeling excited about the future possibilities for your book(s).

You have to be careful with charisma, though, because it’s easy to get caught up in an idea. While he does mention it in the first chapter, Bowerman could have spent more time emphasizing that it takes a lot of hard work to sell a book on your own and it also takes your own money to make things start happening.

Overall, this book is a great resource. It’s full of websites, examples, to-do lists, and much much more that any author or would-be author would benefit from having around.

Peter Bowerman’s Website

As you have all probably well and truly noticed by now, 451press blogs have been having a few… problems lately. The sites take a long time to load sometimes and it’s not always easy to comment.

I want to apologize for all the problems and let you know that you aren’t the only ones having difficulties. It’s not just you, not just your computer. Even we bloggers are having difficulties just posting.

Why is it happening? Well, going by the amount of spam comments I have to clean off my sites every day, I think being attacked by one or more spam monsters is driving our servers down into the dumps a bit. Day in and day out of offers to increase the size of your man parts and show you free cartoon porn would do that do anyone, I think.

Hopefully we’ll have everything sorted out very soon and will be back up and running normally soon.

Always remember that you can feel free to contact me using the ‘contact me’ button under the site description. I’m not sure if anything would be so urgent that you would need to let me know, but hey, I’m always up for a casual chat as well.

Please bear with me as all this stuff is happening. It’s not fun for any of us and we certainly don’t like it when our readers are unhappy.

And, just to occupy your time, here is a link to one of my favourite web comics:

Questionable Content

Think it’ll work?

You may have noticed that a couple books have moved back from the ‘reading’ list to the ‘going to read’ list. That’s because of a combination of things including having reviews that have to be put up by certain dates and not being able to focus on the book. I will be getting back to them, though.

Remember to play the Monday game for your chance to win an Aussie postcard from me.

If you would like to try your hand at reviewing, please feel free to contact me using the contact me button under the site description on the right. I’m more than happy to put up guest reviews. I’m also thinking of a best book review contest, but it’s just an idea floating around in my brain at this point.

Reading:
Savage Survival – Darrell Bain
In Bad Dreams – Horror Anthology – Edited by Mark Deniz and Sharyn Lilley
Xenocide - Orson Scott Card
Eon – Greg Bear
Janeology – Karen Harrington

Going to Read:
Supernatural – Graham Hancock
Marwan: The Autobiography of a 9/11 Terrorist – Aram Schefrin
Sabriel – Garth Nix
Neutron Star – Short story collection – Larry Niven
Firebirds – Fantasy/Sci-fi Anthology – Edited by Sharyn November
The Lab – Jack Heath
Remote Control – Jack Heath
The Foreshadowing – Marcus Sedgwick
The Jaguar Legacy – Maureen Fisher
Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hilary Clinton – Kathleen Willey
To Truckee’s Trail – Celia Hayes
The Redemption of Althalus – David and Leigh Eddings
The Serpent Bride – Sara Douglass
Loving the Goddess Within – Nan Hawthorne
Bad Girls Club – Judy Gregerson
Stand – Debbie Williamson
Season of Sacrifice – Tristi Pinkston

Upcoming Reviews:
Crash! – Mayra Calvani
The Well-Fed Self-Publisher – Peter Bowerman

So what’s on your list?