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Remember last week when I said I’d be blogging every day? Hahahahhaahahaaaaaahhaa. I’ll get there; it’ll just take me a week or three. I’ll lean on the tried-and-true bibliophile’s excuse: there are too many books and not enough time. In the meantime, I thought I’d point you to my last two Publishers Weekly blog posts, since both of them are DC-oriented:

The Olsson’s Conundrum: Take a look at the comments on this post and tell me what you think. What is the future of bookselling?

Books in Bits: Have you picked up a copy of Bit o’ Lit? This DC-only (for now) commuter read contains 5-6 excerpts of hot new books in each issue.

Tomorrow you’ll get an absolutely fresh new post, and thanks to all of you who nabbed copies of Jonathan Miles’s Dear American Airlines – those books will go out soon, and I hope you’ll enjoy the read.

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Greetings, readers. It’s the end of my first week of daily posts, and I’m raring to write more. Here at Author, Author! I’m planning to indulge myself (and you, I hope) with plenty of reviews and links to other great litblogs. It’s going to take me just a week or two to get up to full speed, but since a few of you have expressed interest in more reviews, you will get them. I also plan to find a way to add an archive of reader reviews, especially those of books you’ve picked up here in our bimonthly giveaways.

 For those of you who have missed a book or two that you did nab as a giveaway, please bear with me. These books will come your way! I so appreciate your sticking with this vlog while we’ve worked through some of our growing pains.

What are you reading this weekend? I plan to finally, finally, finally relax with Elizabeth George’s Careless in Red, which  is downloaded on my Kindle. The Kindle has its flaws, but one great thing about is that you can hold it and turn pages with just one hand. Makes it easier to maintain a grip on a cold drink while in the hammock…

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My apologies for getting this up in such a tardy fashion, but since no one commented on yesterday’s post, remember: we’ve got SIX copies of Dear American Airlines to give away today. I’m going to go an let everyone on my Facebook list know about them…

 More on Miles in a minute!

UPDATE: If you want to claim a copy of Miles’s book, please tell me what’s on your nightstand, now…

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1. Two more copies of Dear American Airlines to the first two readers who respond to this post with their nightstand reading…

2. Check out my Publisher’s Weekly blog, “The Book Maven,” where I’ve been asking for recommendations of what my younger daughter should read next. There are some great picks in the comments!

3. I’d love to offer more here for readers — and to gather more readers here. If you’ve been lurking, or if you’ve been posting but have comments, suggestions, criticisms…let me know! You can post here, or you can email me directly: thereadingwriter at gmail dot com.

4. We’ve got a great summer lineup of author interviews, including people writing about Brooke Astor; Gloucester, Massachusetts; and World War II-era Warsaw. Please come back for those every two weeks, however…

5. In the meantime, I’ll start posting daily here, with lots of book reviews, publishing news, and some giveaways of my own that aren’t based around the author interviews. So please stop back soon!

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I love an unreliable narrator. Holden Caulfield or Bridget Jones (yes I include her), a Poe crazy or any Ruth Rendell protagonist, the Wife of Bath or Huck Finn — they’re all meat and drink to me. So meeting Benny Ford, the hapless narrator of Dear American Airlines who has a hugely overblown sense of his own place in the universe, was like a steak dinner with a great bottle of Cab.

I’ve left at least one friend unconvinced that Benny was pure delight. “I wanted to tell him to shut up already!” she said. So if you decide to listen to the siren song of this post and grab a giveaway copy, don’t say I was unreliable. I told you I might be wrong.

We’ve got ten copies of what I consider to be a strong, hilarious, and smart debut novel. I’ll be giving away two of them each day this week to the first two people (by blog time and datestamp) who share their current nightstand reads.

Please come back on Wednesday to watch my interview with Miles. I had a great time talking with him, and I think you’ll enjoy hearing what he has to say about Benny Ford.

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Novelist Jo Graham calls her book “an historical fantasy,” but I don’t want that to put off anyone who wouldn’t normally read romances, because Black Ships is really so much more than that. Graham has meticulously researched the Heroic Age, but she is careful where she puts historical details in, spending more time on her characters and their development.

In this interview, Graham also talks about how and why she originally became interested in her protagonist, Gull. She also explains what sets Gull apart. Of course, what sets the character apart for me is that I’d gladly read another book with Gull as narrator…is Graham working on another book? You’ll have to listen to find out.

You might want to check out Orbit Books, too.

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One of the best parts of my job is when someone sends me a book that I would never have picked up on my own — and I read and love it. That’s the case with this week’s title, Black Ships from Orbit Books.

Orbit is a new imprint at Hachette Book Group that deals primarily with science fiction and fantasy. I’m not a big reader of either genre, but I trust my friends at Hachette, and when a publicist there who knows my reading taste quite well sent me a copy of Jo Graham’s Black Ships I knew I should at least take a peek.

Cue the “I didn’t do another thing until I finished” tape. I was hooked from the first page on this rich and moving retelling of Virgil’s epic The Aeneid. Graham’s narrator is not Aeneas, or one of his warriors — it’s Gull, a Trojan girl who is chosen to be trained and to serve as Pythia, Servant to the Lady of the Dead. In her role as Sybil (a priestess), Gull sees the same events that Virgil imagined, but with a decidedly different perspective.

It’s an amazing story, and a great read. We’ve got ten copies to give away to the first ten readers who share their favorite fantasy or sci-fi titles with me so that I have some new titles to consider.

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Susan Coll combines the personal and the professional in writing Acceptance, her latest novel that is now out in paperback from Picador. In this interview, Coll discusses how she gathered material from her own experience as mother of children competing for admission to elite colleges and universities.

She also talks about how she came up with the idea of “Yates University,” the fictional institution that acts as her plot’s fulcrum — and how she learned about college admissions offices and officers through touring over 30 schools (whew!). She says at one point she actually knew a kid who could rattle off the famed U.S. News rankings list from memory…it’s all very daunting for those of us who haven’t gone through it, yet. “It just all becomes such a blur,” says Coll of the college admissions process.

Liar! Susan Coll is a liar…because she’s captured that “blur” perfectly in Acceptance.

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If you’re looking for a way to jump-start your summer reading, look no further. Not only do I suggest Susan Coll’s Acceptance as the perfect comic novel for your Memorial Day hammock time; we’ve got ten giveaway copies.

Acceptance is a sweetly serious satire about the college admissions process, set in the metro DC area. The three high-school senior protagonists, Maya, Taylor, and “AP” Harry, are all involved with fictional Yates University and its “interim head” of admissions, Olivia — to the inevitable slapstick scene at the end, which is nevertheless funny and satisfying. Even if you’ve never had a child who has gone through the increasingly complicated and convoluted college-admissions process (Coll has three college-age kids herself), you’ll find Acceptance rings true.

If you’d like to snag one of those copies, please leave a comment telling me about your favorite summer reading spot. Mine? I think I already mentioned hammocks…

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