Meet the New Booksluts!

26 August 2012 by 48 Comments

Do you remember, some time ago, when I put forth the call for new contributors? Well. The time to announce the new folks has finally arrived. Are you the most excited?!?!

I have been working with everyone to create a monthly feature, and I’m really excited about what’s to come. For now, I have a little get-to-know-you survey that I’d like to post from each of the new contributors; plus, I’m going to reveal their shiny contributor banners. (Except, I don’t have Mandy’s done yet? So hers will have to be a surprise. Sorry, Mandy!)

Please say hi, talk to ’em on Twitter, and make them feel at home! (Which, erm, they probably already do because they totally all read this blog on a regular basis.) Without further ado, I present you with the new booksluts!

Name: sj

Website/blog: Snobbery http://booksnobbery.wordpress.com

Twitter handle (if you have one): @popqueenie

Favorite book(s): Erm, there are too many to list. At the moment, I’m most passionate about Lord of the Rings and A Scanner Darkly

One book that you’d recommend to anybody, and why: The Collected Stories of Philip K Dick, Vol. I: The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford – I think there’s something in here for everyone. It doesn’t matter if sf isn’t normally your thing, this was before PKD started doing all the drugs, and there’s nothing TOO terribly weird in this volume, but it’s a nice place to start if you’re at all interested in reading his work.

Book character you’d most like to punch in the face, and why: Severus Snape. That’s why Meg and I use his name as an expletive. I still don’t buy his whole “Oh, I did it for Johnny!” line. Blergh.

Any hobbies that aren’t reading: Listening to/collecting music.

One thing you’d like for us know about you: I like red wine.

Name: Tony Bird

Website/blog: Your Friend Tony (yourfriendtony.wordpress.com)

Twitter handle (if you have one): @TheRealTonyBird

Favorite book(s): Oh, this is a tough one! It’s a toss-up between The Lord of the Rings, The Dark Tower series, and Harry Potter. A Song of Ice and Fire might get thrown in there too if the ending ever gets written and it doesn’t suck.

One book that you’d recommend to anybody, and why: The Old Man and the Sea. It’s short, it’s epic, and it’s brilliantly written.

Book character you’d most like to punch in the face, and why: I recently read Serpent’s Bite and the character Courtney pissed me off so much that I wanted to choke-slam her. She was such a heinous bitch, and all she cared about was getting her inheritance.

Any hobbies that aren’t reading: Aside from reading, writing, and blogging, I have a slew of unusual hobbies (http://yourfriendtony.wordpress.com/category/miscellaneous/unusual-hobbies/), some of which include community theater, foreign languages, and ukuleles.

One thing you’d like for us know about you: I’ve got a lot of kids.

Name: Laura Confer

Website/blog: The Two R’s http://www.thetwors.com

Twitter handle (if you have one): @_thetwors

Favorite book(s): Because I have so many, I do this High Fidelity style and make up lists. So I have a Best Books to read in the Car list (all the Xanth books by Piers Anthony), Books I Took to the Hospital When I Had a Baby (Little Earthquakes by Weiner, Up Island by Siddons), Books That Make Me Feel Good (No One Belongs Here More Than You by July, My Life in France by Child, O Pioneers! by Cather), and Books I Like to Read Again Every Year (Jane Eyre by Brontë, The Handmaid’s Tale by Atwood, The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by, um, Hemingway). The lists go on and on and are ridiculously complicated, but that’s the only way I can ever keep these things straight!

One book that you’d recommend to anybody, and why: Beloved by Toni Morrison is almost the perfect book; it’s literary in the sense that Morrison’s writing is tight, inventive, and skillful, but it also provides that kind of sensational emotional journey that formula book readers seek. That book just grabs on and demands you finish it immediately.

Book character you’d most like to punch in the face, and why: Victor Frankenstein gets me all riled up in Frankenstein. He is so self-obsessed that he totally ignores the Creature and THEN wonders why the hell the Creature with severe daddy issues is on a killing spree. His inattention makes the story happen, but there still would have been a story there without Victor’s self-centered tunnel vision.

Any hobbies that aren’t reading: On the side I photograph, knit cozy little things, write, cook, and ride my bike all over town.

One thing you’d like for us know about you: I have monkey feet. Seriously. I can pick up all kinds of stuff with my toes. It really should be on my resumé.

Name: Neal Call

Website/blogs: English Major versus the World: http://englishmajorversustheworld.blogspot.com/
Raised by my daughter: http://raisedbymydaughter.blogspot.com/

Twitter handle (if you have one): don’t have one

Favorite book(s): All the Pretty Horses, The Road, Moby-Dick, Never Let Me Go, Maniac Magee, The Giver, The Corrections

One book that you’d recommend to anybody, and why: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. It’s perhaps not the most current, but it really opened my eyes to the realities of opinion and compromise and idiosyncrasy and damn stubbornness within scientific paradigms.

Book character you’d most like to punch in the face, and why: Katniss Everdeen. Because her endless inane internal monologues turned a passable story into an obnoxious chore. Also, maybe Howard Roark from The Fountainhead. Arrogant prick.

Any hobbies that aren’t reading: Hiking, art, obstacle courses, pranking my toddler

One thing you’d like for us know about you: I’ve never had a cavity

Mandy (Banner coming soon)

Name: Mandy

Website/blog: Adventures in Borkdom  http://borkadventures.com/

Twitter handle (if you have one): @borkadventures

Favorite book(s): IT by Stephen King, A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin, and Bleak House by Charles Dickens

One book that you’d recommend to anybody, and why: 1984 by George Orwell: I’ve come to realize that this book has really shaped my thinking and has shown me how to look critically at society and the information/facts presented to me. I think it is hugely important to gain mastery of critical thinking, and this book is an important textbook in that kind of education. It also happens to be one of the best (if not the best) examples of Dystopian fiction, so any fans of The Hunger Games and/or Divergent should really check it out.

Book character you’d most like to punch in the face, and why: Daisy Buchanan. I hate her, I hate her friends, and The Great Gatsby is probably one of my least favorite books of all time (next to the works of Dan Brown and Dean Koontz). Daisy is a destructive twit, and I’d love to elbow her in the temple.

Any hobbies that aren’t reading: I also enjoy playing RPGs, fishing, hiking, camping, and watching really bad movies.

One thing you’d like for us know about you: I prefer the company of my 12-year-old students and their immaturity, over the politics and drama of my adult co-workers. What I mean to say is that I’m a very silly and immature girl-woman.

 

The new booksluts’ posts will start going up in September (mostly). Look for literary playlists, new book reviews and op-eds, posts about the classics, bookish comics (!), and other fun stuff! WOO!

Don’t forget to say hi in the comments!

Susie

Susie is the Bitch-in-Chief at IB and is also a contributor at Book Riot. She's an ice cream connoisseur, an art fanatic, a cat-mommy of three, and a wife. She runs the @thebooksluts Twitter account and may be slightly addicted.

48 thoughts on “Meet the New Booksluts!

  1. Hello new booksluts! This is most exciting. I love the variety of perspectives we’re going to be getting here. When can we start bugging Neal about getting a twitter account?

    • As far as I’m concerned, you can start more or less immediately. I don’t know how Neal feels about Twitter, but I guess we can find out :D

    • I did! Sorta. WordPress upgraded the Jetpack plugin (it’s how we self-hosted types get to have the WordPress.com functionality) and it gave us a new commenting system. I kind of don’t know if I like it! It seems like it’s taking awhile to load.

  2. Oh, what a GREAT lineup! I can’t wait to read everyone’s reviews, and to start pestering the living crap – er, getting to know, yeah, that’s it, “getting to know” – everyone that I haven’t already started twitterstalking!

  3. Wow! All the banners look awesome! I’d only seen mine before this. I’m way excited to see all the other contributors’ booksluttery, and I’m naturally very excited that these poor suckers are letting me write for my favorite blog!

  4. Hahahaaahahhahahahah I do NOT have four kids! I just had a heart attack, though ;)
    I have two little girls, 4 and 16 months. I know how Susie got there though, and it’s legit; see, I was all bragging on my kids’ names, and I put all four – their first and middles names. Major, major LOLing at the thought of my brain on four kids! I don’t know how you guys do it!

  5. It’s exciting to see all the new faces! Although I strongly encourage you to develop a no Snape-hating policy on your blog. Hate hurts. And he’s a hero. Stop hating on The Snape, sj! I die a little every time.

  6. Pingback: Justification » The Two R's

  7. Pingback: Ch-ch-changes: Insatiable Booksluts now accepts guest posts, no longer accepts self-published books for review. | Insatiable Booksluts

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