Have I told you how awesome you are lately? You are. Every single one of you. I'm so grateful to you all for encouraging and supporting me.
I've celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with my family up north last month. Now I'm prepping for Thanksgiving with my American family and friends. And while I can't send pie over the internet, I can share with you free books.
To those celebrating, have a Happy Thanksgiving!
And for everyone, have a laugh and a bit of steaminess!
Some
cats need nine lives to make a difference. Avalon only needed one.
From
Amazon bestselling author Vanessa Morgan, Avalon is the heartwarming
and once-in-a-lifetime love story of a girl and her neurotic Turkish
Van cat.
With
humor, the author details how Avalon made other creatures cringe in
distress whenever he was around, how he threw her dates out by means
of special techniques, and how he rendered it almost impossible for
her to leave the house. Avalon was so incorrigible that even her
landlord ordered her to get rid of him. But beneath Avalon's demonic
boisterousness, Vanessa recognized her own flaws and insecurities,
and she understood that abandoning Avalon would be the worst she
could do to him. Thanks to her unswerving loyalty, Avalon transformed
into a tender feline, and even landed a major role in a horror movie.
In turn, Avalon made it his mission to be there for his human
companion.
By
turns jubilant and deeply moving, Avalon is a memoir for anyone who
has ever been obsessively in love with a pet.
Small
changes often caused major disturbances. When we removed a DVD from
the cupboard, or put a pen on the living room table that he wasn’t
used to seeing there, Avalon pitched himself near the problem area
and vocalized his complaints as if he was a muezzin calling to
prayer. He only stopped if the space returned back to normal.
Intelligent
and calculating as he was, Avalon had also developed a technique to
prevent Ballon and Tigris from using his
litter boxes. Each time he heard the scratch scratch scratch in the
litter, he settled into attack mode behind the bathroom wall, wiggled
his behind, and leapt onto the other cat as soon as it emerged,
making it jump. It worked every... single...
time. Proud, Avalon walked away from the crime scene with his nose
pointing airwards.
Borat,
our guinea pig, was initially the best one off, but ended up the most
miserable. What kept him safe at first was Avalon’s fear of
rodents. Cats may be considered deadly predators, killing a median of
2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year in the United
States alone, but whenever Borat had free range inside the apartment,
Avalon went in a large circle around him, avoiding him at all cost.
Eventually,
Avalon ferreted out a way to make Borat twinge in distress whenever
he approached. It
started
when I taught Avalon not to throw up on the bed and carpets. Those
lessons must have been meaningful, because Avalon didn’t
vomit
in those places anymore.
Instead he
aimed for the guinea pig's head. As soon as he felt a hairball
mounting, Avalon ran as fast as he could toward Borat's cage, leaned
in, and puked his heart out.
Author
bio
Vanessa
Morgan is an author, screenwriter, and blogger. Two of her works, The
Strangers Outside
and A
Good Man,
have been turned into films. Her short film script Next
to Her
is currently in pre-production. When she's
not working on her latest book, you can find her reading, watching
horror movies, digging through flea markets, or photographing felines
for her blog Traveling
Cats
(http://travelling-cats.blogspot.com).
Avalon has appeared in several of her books and films.
Blurb: Stiff is an oddly
compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our
bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers some willingly, some
unwittingly have been involved in science's boldest strides and
weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits
the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing
story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.
My review: I don't always read nonfiction, but when I do, it's the most odd stuff ever!
This
book is wonderfully humorous and dark, sometimes gruesome. Mary Roach
explores what happens to our bodies after death from the normal to the
extremely strange. Cadavers have all sorts of scientific uses and many
aren't what you might expect. It was educational and fascinating with a
dose of quirky humor.
Not recommended to those with weak stomachs! I have since picked up Mary Roach's Packing For Mars. Everything you didn't know about astronauts but always wanted to. Like astronauts throwing up in their spacesuits and space toilets.
Congratulations to the winners from the Loose Corset Goddess Fish tour! All the emails have been sent, and I'm packing up the prizes to be mailed this week. The Geeky Dice & Debauchery tour will continue this week.
Don't forget my first geeky giveaway is still going on!
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!
This is a book that has been on my TBR list for a while. I needed a good fun book that would indulge my inner geek and make me laugh. Cassie Mae's book has done that so far. It's so much fun!
Here's your teaser: Okay, so I lied. He's nothing like Peter Parker. He's a bajillion times sexier than Peter Parker. Spider-Man ain't got nothing on Zak Gibbons. (9% on my Kindle)
