Update: I am extending the deadline for entry until January 31st. I came across a copy of The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett so I'm adding it to the giveaway. I'll need all entrants to indicate if they have read Pillars or World Without End. If you have already entered, just add another comment. If the entrant I draw (that has not indicated a preference for the Catherine the Great book) has not read both books, then that entrant will win BOTH books!
After much thought and soul searching, I have decided to take The True Book Addict in a (slight) new direction. I have noticed that I have many historical fiction books in my personal library which isn't really surprising. History is one of my passions. I love history so much that when I decided to go back to college in 2003 (at age 34, with a 7 month old and 21 month old at home!), I chose history as my major...later adding English as a double major. To make a long story short, I'm going to shift the focus of my blog slightly toward historical fiction and non-fiction. What this will entail will be more reading and reviewing of historical books...mostly fiction, but also some non-fiction. Since I will be participating in 2 historical fiction challenges next year, I will be reading a lot of these types of books. I will also feature a weekly event titled
"Addicted to the Past"--inspired by Ryan's (
Wordsmithonia) Favorite Fictional Character and with some great advice from Lucy (
Enchanted by Josephine)--which will highlight a favorite historical figure, place or event. I think this will be a great way to expose people to the wonder of history and also a way to further my learning of history. Now this change doesn't mean that I will only be reading historical fiction...I will still read horror, fantasy, etc....whatever strikes my fancy. But I will have a more general focus on historical fiction and non-fiction. Please let me know what you think? I'm hoping this is a good step for me and for my readers!
And now for the giveaway!
In honor of reaching 100+ followers (and to thank you!) and of my new direction, I'm giving away two books that fit nicely with my changes.
There will be two winners:
First
the sequel (sort of) to one of my favorite books,
The Pillars of the Earth:
World Without End by Ken Follett (also one of my favorites)
Here is what the author had to say about his book:
Ever since The Pillars of the Earth was published in 1989, readers have been asking me to write a sequel. The book is so popular that I’ve been nervous about trying to repeat its success. But at last I screwed up my courage, and wrote World Without End.
I couldn’t write another book about building a cathedral, because that would be the same book. And I couldn’t write another story about the same characters, because by the end of 'Pillars' they are all very old or dead. 'World Without End' takes place in the same town, Kingsbridge, and features the descendants of the 'Pillars' characters two centuries later.
The cathedral and the priory are again at the centre of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge. But at the heart of the story is the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race: the plague known as the Black Death, which killed something like half the population of Europe in the fourteenth century. The people of the Middle Ages battled this lethal pestilence and survived – and, in doing so, laid the foundations of modern medicine.
Synopsis:
On the day after Halloween, in the year 1327, four children slip away from the cathedral city of Kingsbridge. They are a thief, a bully, a boy genius and a girl who wants to be a doctor. In the forest they see two men killed.
As adults, their lives will be braided together by ambition, love, greed and revenge. They will see prosperity and famine, plague and war. One boy will travel the world but come home in the end; the other will be a powerful, corrupt nobleman. One girl will defy the might of the medieval church; the other will pursue an impossible love. And always they will live under the long shadow of the unexplained killing they witnessed on that fateful childhood day.
World Without End is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth. However, it doesn’t matter which you read first. The second book is set in the same town, Kingsbridge, but takes place two hundred years later, and features the descendants of the original characters.
(all of the above from Ken Follett's
website)
Second
Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, And Power by Virginia Rounding (non-fiction)
From the acclaimed author of Grandes Horizontales comes a book that the Washington Post calls “a vivid portrait of a sensual and intellectual woman.”
Dutiful daughter, passionate lover, doting grandmother, tireless legislator, generous patron of artists and philosophers---Empress Catherine II was all these things, and more. Her reign, the longest in Russian imperial history, lasted from 1762 until her death in 1796; during these years she realized Peter the Great’s ambition to establish Russia as a major European power and to transform its new capital, St. Petersburg, into a city to rival Paris and London. (from
Amazon)
Both books are hardcover and gently used (
World Without End is a discarded library book).
Rules, Rules, Rules!
- U.S. and Canada only...sorry overseas...someday, I promise!
- There will be TWO winners
- You MUST leave a comment with your email address and which book you want to win.
- +2 old follower
- +1 new follower
- +1 for each place you spread the word: Twitter, Facebook, blog (sidebar or post)--MUST leave links
- +1 for following me on Twitter @truebookaddict
- +5 for every person you refer, if they mention your name/blog name (they will get +5 too!)
This giveaway ends on January 15, 2010 at 12:00 am CT
Good Luck and Happy Reading!
