WINNERS announced for two signed copies of THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORES by the indomitable MICHELE YOUNG-STONE!

So excited to announce these winners today! Kari graciously lent me her Thursday post to do so, so thanks, Kari!

A reminder, this is what our lovely winners will be getting:

Signed, sealed, and delivered by Ms. Michele!
(emphasis on the SIGNED!)

I'm really excited to share this book, one of my favorite reads of 2010, with two of the YA-5's readers. I hope y'all enjoy it and will blog about it when you've finished! And again, thanks to Michele Young-Stone and her publisher, Crown, for providing the loot!

Without further ado, here are the shiny, sparkly, lucky winners!


KATE and CHOLISOSE! Y'all, I'll be sending you an email. If the email associated with your blogger account (or the one you left me is inaccurate), please be sure to get in touch with me at e.kristin.anderson AT gmail DOT com. THANKS! And ENJOY!

WIN a copy of THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS by Michele Young-Stone

One thing that I love about books is their indefinability.  You know, we love to label things -- books being no exceptions.  This book is YA, this book is sci fi, this book is for adults -- you know the drill.  But every once in a while you come across a book that seems shareable amongst all readers.  Or, you know, at least crosses that boundary between the YA audience and the adult world.

One of my favorite such books is THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS by the inimitable Michele Young-Stone.  Today, we are giving away copies of Michele's book.  Because a) it is an awesome book that, while labelled as "adult fiction" is absolutely a book worth sharing with YA readers and b) because I love this book and Michele is awesome enough to send my readers copies and c) we are celebrating next week's paperback release of this, her debut novel.

I could talk about this book for days and months and years, so let me just tell you what a few of the fancy reviewers had to say:

"Yes, it's a book about lightning, but it's so much more.  It's about the interconnectedness of our stories, our seemingly lonely and individual sufferings.  It's about the strength of the human spirit.  It's about finding redemption where you least expect it.  This book, like lightning itself, will take your breath away."  Our State Magazine

Young-Stone has written an exceptionally rich and sure-handed debut, full of complex characters, brilliantly described. . . . Her style certainly has an electric immediacy."   The Boston Globe

Author Michele Young-Stone
with her hardcover debut!

So if you want to win your own brand-new, shiny, autographed(!) paperback of THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS -- which you will have in your hands before it even hits store shelves -- all you have to do is leave a comment.  I promise, this won't be a book you'll soon forget.   I mean, Publisher's Weekly named it one of the best debuts of 2010.  (And yours truly does not disagree!  In fact, it was one of my favorite books PERIOD of 2010!)

To review: All you have to do to win is leave a comment (though retweeting and all that is appreciated).  Two winners will be selected by the random number generating faeries, and results will be posted on Thursday.  Good luck!

You know how sometimes you read a book and you're like HEY AUTHOR GET OUT OF MY HEAD? Yeah. That thing.

Ever been just minding your own business, enjoying a good book, when you realized the author has clearly been stalking you? Or perhaps even tapped your phones? Or implanted a microchip in your brain?

You're like, holy crap, how the frick did you know that about me? Because, there is no way that moment could have been captured without a direct link into your cerebellum.

Yeah. It's a little unnerving. But it's also kind of cool. It's one of the best things about books, really.

One of the books that does that for me is HIGH FIDELITY by Nick Hornby. It was one of the first books that I connected to as a young adult, even though it's not a YA book and it's totally about thirty-somethings. What does this say about me? Well, there's the fact that the narrator has a certain sense of self-importance, worked in a record store, and defined his life in terms of the pop culture around him. He made top-five lists (I used to make top-tens obssessively), mix tapes (check), and big mistakes in his relationships (oh yeah). And, okay, he was totally a dude, but he got me. Nick Hornby got me.

I still go back to that book as a home base. I look at passages and smile. I'm still angry at one of the characters. I'm still nostalgic for Championship Vinyl. And I watch the movie that was based on the book as if I'm sitting down with friends. It's just that cool.

What books feel like that to you? Is there anything that just boggled your mind when you read it, like the author might even be yourself in a parallel universe? I need to know. Because, apparently, I've been exactly like a 34-year-old, male record shop owner since I was about 19.