International Winner and Scandinavian Reviews

First off, congratulations to Lyn (LMAN) of Australia for winning the giveaway for the Book Depository gift certificate.  I will be in contact and if I don't hear from her, I have a second place winner already lined up from the randomizer....I'll try and do international giveaways more often!                        
Photo  from spare it on Flickr, taken in Albania, as a sort of tribute to Fado, a great book about Albania I am midway through reading. 

Nancy has sent some recent reviews for the Scandinavian Reading Challenge, now past the halfway mark of the year!

http://www.2010theyearinbooks.com/2010/07/darkest-room-by-johan-theorin.html

http://www.2010theyearinbooks.com/2010/06/ice-princess-by-camilla-lackberg.html

http://www.2010theyearinbooks.com/2010/05/catching-up-on-reviews-part-i-dont-look.html

Jose also sent:
http://ignacioescribano.blogspot.com/2010/06/darkest-room-by-johan-theorin.html

Colleen's contribution:
http://colreads.blogspot.com/2010/06/summer-book-is-wonderful-discovery.html

There may be more but my email got messed up, email me if I missed one and I'll add it to the list. 

Great article with writing advice in today's Los Angeles Times:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2010/07/janet-fitchs-10-rules-for-writers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JacketCopy+%28Jacket+Copy%29

From the ARC piles: the last two weeks have been huge, more than 30 books have arrived for reviewing.  Of course, not all will get done, and it seems this batch had a number of unsolicited titles that aren't really appealing and will get passed on.  Strangely, there were tons of dog books.  Dogs are the new vampires:  sad dogs, lifesaving dogs, genius dogs.  I'm a cat person.

Just for fun, Galleycat had a link to a fun little online game that analyzes your writing sample.  I tried it with a blog post and it said I am similar to James Joyce, wow.  Then I had it sample a short story and it said Dan Brown. Oh..  Try it if you feel like wasting some time:  "I Write Like" at http://iwl.me/