My Mini-Challenge for Contest Craze

Hello! Today I am hosting this mini-challenge for Princess Bookie's awesome Contest Craze! Thanks Cindy for allowing me to host!

THE MINI-CHALLENGE

Answer one (1) of the following questions about a character in the book you are currently reading or the last book you finished:

1) What person, dead or alive, would she/he want to eat lunch with? Why?

2) What song describes a situation the character has faced or is currently facing? 

3) What book do you think this character would like to read? 

PRIZES

One winner will get to choose one of the following books:

• (ARC) The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney

 • Rae: My True Story of Fear, Anxiety, and Social Phobia by Chelsea Swiggett

• (Signed) Titus and Atreus by Meridi Myers

RULES:

- US ONLY!!! I'm sorry to all my international readers. 

- Must answer one of the questions. 

- Please specify which book you would like to win. 

- Please leave a way for me to get in contact with you.

Extra Entry:
+1 If you are a follower.
You do not have to be a follower to enter! 

Princess Bookie's Mini Challenge: Most Anticipated

Princess Bookie's Mini Challenge is to post a blog entry on your most anticipated book!

I have a lot of books that I'm anticipating (really good books coming out this year!) But the book I picked to showcase is:

Bumped by Megan McCafferty
Release Date: April 26, 2011

When a virus makes everyone over the age of eighteen infertile, would-be parents are forced to pay teen girls to conceive and give birth to their children, making teens the most prized members of society.

Sixteen-year-old identical twins Melody and Harmony were separated at birth and had never met until the day Harmony shows up on Melody’s doorstep. Until now, the twins have followed completely opposite paths. Melody has scored an enviable conception contract with a couple called the Jaydens. While they are searching for the perfect partner for Melody to bump with, she is fighting her attraction to her best friend Zen, who is way too short for the job.

Harmony has spent her whole life in religious Goodside, preparing to be a wife and mother. She believes her calling is to bring Melody back to Goodside and convince her that “pregging” for profit is a sin. But Harmony has secrets of her own that she is running from.

When Melody is finally matched with the world-famous, genetically flawless Jondoe, both girls’ lives are changed forever. A case of mistaken identity takes them on a journey neither could have ever imagined, one that makes Melody and Harmony realize they have so much more than just DNA in common.

I really enjoyed Megan McCafferty's Jessica Darling series ( you can read my reviews of Charmed Thirds, Fourth Comings, and Perfect Fifths) and I'm very curious to see how this book turns out. In the last year I've gotten extremely into dystopian novels.  Bumped sounds intriguing – a world where teens have babies? And they're considered the most prized members. I can't wait to get my hands on this!!


Other books I'm anticipating:
 Invincible Summer by Hannah Moskowitz
We'll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han
But I Love Him by Amanda Grace
What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
The Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak

Mini-Challenge: Princess Bookie's Name Your Star

This Mini Challenge Consists Of:

Date A Tv or Movie Star

-Close Your Eyes!

-Imagine You Just Won A Contest Consisting Of A Date (Dinner And A Movie)!

-FYI:Cartoon characters are exempt.  

-Mission

-Write A Blog Post Telling Me Who You Would Choose

-Explain Why You Choose Them

-Be Creative In Your Post (maybe include a picture of said person or tell me what you would order for dinner)

LLOYD DOBLER (played by John Cusack)! Holy crap. If you have seen the movie Say Anything (one of my favorite movies and definitely my favorite romance movie) you will understand why I chose him. 

I mean, of course I'm going to choose a guy that plays a boom box with "In Your Eyes" playing. And Lloyd is the sweetest thing ever. After our dinner, I hope it would be raining outside, so when we come to a puddle he'll take off his jacket and put it over it for me to walk over. 

A girl can dream can't she?

As for dinner I'm sure we'd go to a down to earth restaurant, and not anything fancy-smancy. We'd have some type of Mexican or Italian food. And raspberry lemonade (even if it is juvenile). 

***

Other runner up:

Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore) from Criminal Minds

and some other people that I'm too lazy to name

Mini Challenges for Once Upon A Readathon

Here is where I'll be posting all my mini-challenges for The Once Upon A Readathon! The The Eager Readers challenge for part one was to post our favorite fictional characters. 3 of My Favorite Fictional Couples (in no particular order): Dexter and Remy from This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen Alice and Patrick from The Alice Series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Lily and James from The Harry Potter Series by J. K. Rowling Part 2 was to post a crossover couple you would love to see. This is hard for me! I don't like crossover characters but rather, I like seeing characters from the same book that aren't together already. Book Crazy challenge said:

We all have a favorite book, right? We all have a favorite character, right?What I want you to do, since I am a lover of all things music and photo related is to pick one - or both- and put them together!!

One of my favorite books is THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER the song that remains me of this book is Blackbird by The Beatles. Yes, this song is also a song that is mentioned in the book. I Just Wanna Sit Here and Read challenge:

Rules!

~In a comment: 1. Choose a song (sung or instrumental) that represents a chapter that you are currently reading or have read during the read-a-thon thus far. If the book was turned into a movie, and this chapter was shown, what music would you want in the background to convey the emotion or environment.

2. List the book/author/chapter that you choose along with the song(s) you choose.

3. Give a quick synopsis about the chapter (No SPOILERS please!) or the circumstances that take place and why you chose the song to represent it.

1. The song I'm choosing is Schadenfreude from Avenue Q. Yes, the musical! WARNING: If you don't like cussing or crudeness or whatever, don't listen to this song. 2. The chapter I am going to use is from the wicked good book, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau - Banks by E. Lockhart. 3. In order not to give away spoilers I am going to very vaguely explain why I chose this song. In this chapter Frankie Landau - Banks (who is a brilliant character) and another character talk about where they are at and mention that it remains them of the German word, schadenfreude. Happiness at the misfortunes of others (this is actually sung in the song, by the way.)

For Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf challenge she wanted us to write a review of the favorite book we've read so far. I'm planning on writing a review of all the books I read anyway, so I'll just link my reviews back here once I've written them. I didn't read any of my books until last night when I read The Disreputable History. This will probably be my favorite book, because I loved it SO much.

GLBT Mini Challenge for February

The February mini-challenge for The GLBT Challenge is to read a GLBT book, short story, poem(s), or essay by or about a person of color.

I was actually planning on reading Ash for this challenge as it follows under POC and GLBT, but the book has been checked out of my school's library so instead I'll be sharing an article that I found on African American Literature: Lesbian.

Here is one section of it..

"The Harlem Renaissance

Although African-American lesbian literature could be said to have its beginnings in the lesbian, gay, and bisexual culture that flourished during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s, black lesbians' self-naming process occurred only in an ambivalent, highly coded fashion. The increased sexual freedom and openness that made it possible for black gay and bisexual male writers like Richard Bruce Nugent, Wallace Thurman, and Claude McKay to produce gay-identified texts had a less obvious impact on women.

Although a number of lesbian and bisexual blues singers--including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Josephine Baker, and Ethel Waters--attained a level of sexual openness in their music, these women generally hid their same-sex relationships behind a public guise of heterosexuality. Only rarely did their lyrics even allude to their sexual desire for other women, and generally all such allusions were tinged with an ambivalence suggesting an elusive sexuality. In "Prove It on Me Blues," for instance, Ma Rainey simultaneously celebrates and denies her sexual preference by daring her listeners to "prove it" on her.

This ambivalence is even more pronounced in texts by middle-class Harlem Renaissance lesbian and bisexual women writers. In addition to the sexism that made it difficult for early twentieth-century women of any color to adopt openly lesbian lifestyles and identities, the highly sexualized images of black women that developed during slavery to justify the institutionalized rape of enslaved women made it even less likely that African-American bisexual and lesbian writers would risk inadvertently confirming these stereotypes by depicting their sexuality in print.

The writings of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Angelina Weld Grimké, and Nella Larsen illustrate the effects of this culturally imposed self-silencing. Although Gloria Hull has uncovered journal evidence indicating that Alice Dunbar-Nelson was romantically involved with both women and men and that Angelina Weld Grimké had at least one woman lover, these signs of bisexual and lesbian desire appear only in highly veiled form in Dunbar-Nelson's and Grimké's published works.

A similar type of sexual encoding can be found in Nella Larsen's Passing (1929). Ostensibly an exploration of racial passing, this novella can also be read as an account of the growing sexual attraction between its two protagonists, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry. As Debra McDowell notes in her 1986 introduction to Passing, the title has more than one meaning: Just as Clare Kendry passes as white, Passingitself passes as heterosexual, hiding its homoerotic subtext beneath the more obvious racialized theme."

I found this section on the Harlem Renaissance very interesting. I didn't even know this part about it and I will definitely be looking more into this!

*Click here to see what books I'll be reading for the GLBT challenge.

GLBT Mini Challenge for January

The January mini-challenge at the Challenge That Dare Not Speak Its Name is to write a paragraph or so about why the GLBT challenge/or issue is important to you.

WHY the GLBT challenge is important to me: I have always been a very open minded person. I do not care one bit if you are gay, straight, bi, transgendered or whatever. The world is filled with so many problems and I hate that people think that being gay is one of them; it definitely isn't.

Last year, my freshmen year of HS, I joined the GSA club, which is Gay Straight Alliance. It was such a different experience from what I'm used to. There weren't many regular members only around 10. Sometime in February we hosted an event where other high school students that were members of GSA or whatever came. Although, I'm sure I was one of the few straight people there, it was a pretty awesome experience. There were workshops like Gays in history, a senator of Missouri (Kansas City) who is openly gay came, and lots of other cool things. This year, I'm not in GSA. Mainly because I have sports and theatre and stuff. I have absolutely no time for it. Also, ever since the woman who sponsored us last year went to another school and someone else took over, I don't think anyone really goes to it anymore.

I think it is wicked important that GLBT in literature. There aren't that many books out there that include GLBT characters. You love who you love and you are who you are. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

*If you want to check out what books I'll be reading for the GLBT Challenge.