Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!??

“History is a Rorschach test, people,” she said. “What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.”

~ p. 300, Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

The 2009 Debs are celebrating L.K. Madigan’s wonderful books to support her fight against cancer. This past week Lisa shared her very difficult news on her blog.

To show our love and support for her, we’re giving away 40 sets of her two novels over on the 2009 Debs website. Each winner will receive both Flash Burnout and The Mermaid’s Mirror. To enter, simply help spread the love.

Lisa’s first novel, FLASH BURNOUT, won the Morris Award in 2009. Her second novel, THE MERMAID’S MIRROR received a starred review from Booklist.

The contest runs through Monday, January 31^st. Click through to the 2009 Debs website for all the information.

The other day, this landed in my inbox:

Win Cash and Prizes with you best writing!

The best part? It came from Writer’s Digest.

I really think the fine folks at Writer’s Digest should use this to their advantage with a funny, follow-up email about how a typo isn’t the end of the world (or even your chances in a contest), but that proofreading can help.

Still, my personal best for typos is the time I wrote:

It’s doe’s snot.

I wrote this particular phrase in a software installation manual. Our software does many things, but it doesn’t need doe’s snot to do them.

The best part? A straight-faced software engineer placed the marked up hardcopy guide on my desk without a word.

So while I don’t want to read novels riddled with typographical errors, I try to keep perspective (especially for blog posts and email).

Typos, like doe’s snot, sometimes happen.

Well, now that you’ve made your reading resolutions, dust off one of your favorite books and, if you’re in 11th or 12th grade, give this essay contest a try:

The Sylvia K. Burack Writing Award is a writing contest for high school students in grades 11 and 12 in the U.S. and Canada. The award is made in memory of Sylvia K. Burack, longtime editor and publisher of The Writer magazine. Burack was known for her dedication to helping writers and editors.

Contest

Submit a previously unpublished 600- to 800-word personal essay in English on the following topic: “Select a work of fiction, poem or play that has influenced you. Discuss the work and explain how it affected you.” No song lyrics.

Eligibility

You must be a student in grade 11 or 12 attending a U.S. or Canadian high school at the time you submit the essay. The winner will be asked to provide proof of enrollment in grade 11 or 12 in a U.S. or Canadian high school. Employees of The Writer, Kalmbach Publishing Co. and Gotham Writers’ Workshop and their families are not eligible to participate.

Prizes

• $500
• Publication in The Writer magazine and on WriterMag.com
• A one-year subscription to The Writer
• A copy of the Gotham Writers’ Workshop anthology Fiction Gallery

For the complete rules, hop on over to The Writer website.

From Booking Through Thursday this week:

Any New Year’s reading resolutions?

I would like to up my reading again this year. I read 60 books last year (this includes audio books). This year, I want to read one print/e-book per week, for 52 books, plus whatever I listen to in the car during the commute.

Rough goal: 75 books this year. Can I do it? We’ll see.

I’m going to participate in a reading challenge this year. I didn’t last year and I missed that. War Through the Generations is doing a Civil War reading challenge. And hey, I’m one book in already. My goal is three to five, but I hope to read more than that.

What I plan to read:

• Two Girls of Gettysburg (halfway done and I’m enjoying it)
• Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War (All her Civil War writings in one volume—I’m on a LMA kick)

Possible Re-reads:

• Little Women (see above re: LMA)
• The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (read, more than once, back in the day as officer professional development)

How about you? Any reading plans? A challenge or two? Tackling the TBR pile?

From Should Be Reading:

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading:

• Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly (in the car)
• Two Girls of Gettysburg by Lisa Klein (print)

Recently Finished:

• The Driving Force by Michel Tremblay (still need to write the evaluation)
• The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander (yeah, I’ve been craving historical fiction lately)

Up Next?

Not sure … there’s a box of Rita books heading my way soon. I may go for something short, just so I don’t get caught reading too many things at once.

Targetful:

Forgetful + Target = the act of going to Target and buying everything but the one item you originally needed in the first place.

It really is, at least here. It’s all of one miserly degree, plus it’s snowing. Not big, pretty snowflakes, but small, sharp, mean-spirited ones–and the wind is blowing them all around for good measure.

Yeah. It’s a good day to stay inside. In fact, I’m glad it’s a federal holiday. That way, I don’t have to traipse out to the mailbox this afternoon to get the mail–although I do have to venture out in a bit to pick up my daughter from a New Year’s Eve sleepover. I will make my first prediction of 2011. I predict a nap is in someone’s future.

In any case, it’s a good day to curl up in a chair, make plans for 2011, maybe do some reading, or perhaps a little writing. One activity I started last year that I want to carry into this year is volunteer script reading for one of our local theaters, Park Square Theatre.

Essentially, they send me a script, I read it, fill out an evaluation, then mail that (and the script) back to them. Not only is it fun, but from a writer’s perspective, it’s a great exercise for studying character, plot, and structure.

Speaking of which, I’ll be reading this today:

He’s a Canadian playwright, but that really matches our weather today. I don’t know if maybe I should be reading something more tropical on a day like today, but I’m going to brew a big pot of tea and dive in.