I currently have signed copies of:

Twilight hardcover 1st ed. – Stephenie Meyer
The Life of Pi paperback – Yann Martel
Unaccustomed Earth hardcover 1st ed – Jhumpa Lahiri
Forever Princess hardcover 1st ed – Meg Cabot
Leviathan hardcover 1st ed – Scott Westerfield

Though most of my signed editions are personalized, only copies of Eclipse were personalized during the Stephenie Meyer event, so my copy of Twilight is collectibly impersonal.

Book Drum’s mission is to bring great books to life by going beyond the page. As a first step, we’re building Profiles for more than 500 classic fiction and non-fiction titles.  If you’d like to help with these or any other favourites, enter our Tournament and you could win a cash prize and a job interview!

If you really love a book, be the person who defines it for the world.

I added Fire by Kristin Cashore because I was surprised to find that no one had added it yet. I think Kristin Cashore’s heroines are some of the strongest female characters in YA literature, so she deserved to be added to the list.

The list is editable so go add your best books!

Contest: Because Angels are HOT.

Just minutes ago, the Pennsylvania State senate passed bill 1828 by a vote of 32 to 17. For all of you who have been following the saga over the city’s budget crisis, this is indeed the legislation that was needed for the City of Philadelphia to avoid the “Doomsday” Plan C budget scenario, which would have resulted in the layoff of 3,000 city employees and forced the closing of all libraries. We are enormously grateful to everyone who advocated on our behalf. More than 2,000 letters to state legislators were collected from our libraries, and countless others made calls and sent emails underscoring how important public libraries are to the economic, educational and social life of our city. We also thank our incredible library staff, who despite the threat of imminent layoffs continued to provide excellent service to the thousands of people who use one of the 54 libraries in our system.

Support your libraries! There is more to your local library than books (I’m talking to you naysayers who think no one visits the library because there are Kindles to be had).

Philadelphia Free Library System is shutting down via Boing
Boing by Cory Doctorow on 9/13/09

The Philadelphia Free Library system is broke, and they’re
shutting it down, including cancelling “all branch and regional
library programs, programs for children and teens, after school
programs, computer classes, and programs for adults” and “all
children programs, programs to support small businesses and job
seekers, computer classes and after school programs” and “all
library visits to schools, day care centers, senior centers and
other community centers” and “all community meetings” and “all
GED, ABE and ESL program.”

Just look at that list of all the things libraries do for our
communities, all the ways they help the least among us, the
vulnerable, the children, the elderly. Think of every wonderful
thing that happened to you among the shelves of a library. Think
of the millions of lifelong love-affairs with literacy sparked in the
collections of those libraries. Think of every person whose life
was forever changed for the better in those buildings.

Think of the nobility of libraries and librarianship, the great scar
that the Burning of Alexandria gouged in human history. Think of
the archivists who barricaded themselves in the Hermitage during
the Siege of Leningrad, slowly starving and freezing to death but
refusing to desert their posts for fear that the collections they
guarded would become firewood.

Think of the librarians who took a stand during the darkest years
of the  PATRIOT Act and refused to turn over patron records.
Think of the moral unimpeachability of those whose trade is
universal access to all human knowledge.

Picture an entire city, a modern, wealthy place, in the richest
country
in the world, in which the vital services provided by libraries are
withdrawn due to political brinksmanship and an unwillingness to
spare one banker’s bonus worth of tax-dollars to sustain an entire
region’s connection with human culture and knowledge and
community.

Think of it and ask yourself what the hell has happened to us.
All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central
Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009

I want:

• a strong female protagonist
• a magical element featuring Fae/Sidhe, but not vampires/werewolves. I am not looking for another Twilight
• High fantasy or urban dark fantasy
• a love story is fine but I do not want a romance novel
• general fantasy fiction or YA

I’m thinking something similar to Holly Black’s Tithe or the kind of strong female characters found in Robin McKinley and Tamora Pierce’s novels.

I will gladly take all recommendations

#1 Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.

#2 Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (thanks to Krystal)

and my only ‘rare’ first edition:

a 1949 copy of Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle in great condition (and only $6 on ebay)