Book Expo 2011 Book Haul

And now... the list you've all been waiting for...

BEA SWAG!

Select ARCs will be available at the vendor table at TGTSNBN events and Madam Pince shows.  Stay tuned for advanced book reviews and a chance to win your own swag bag!

Madam Pince's Big Announcement

Madam Pince and the Librarians 

will be playing at 

WROCKSTOCK V

Hallowe'en Weekend 2011!

Madam Pince and the Librarians will be joining Draco and the Malfoys, The Whomping Willows, Diagon Alley, The Blibbering Humdingers, KwikSpell, JFF, Lauren Fairweather, Snidget, Tonks and the Aurors, Weasel King, MC Kreacher, Dreary Inferi, and more at Trout Lodge YMCA in Potosi, Missouri for what promises to be the best weekend ever!

For two years running Madam Pince has wrocked the Willow side stage, and now, for the first time, will be bringing their nerdy angry librarian music to the main stage.

Things to do this Summer in the City!

Today marks the start of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer. I've got a long flowy skirt, a flower in my hair, a pile of new books to read, and a whole lot of (nerdy) stuff to do! It's gonna be a great season!

Here are some things we have to look forward to this summer. Maybe I will see you there!

Books: Book Expo America 2011

Book Expo America is my happy place. This year I had the opportunity to attend two full days of programming. That means that I walked more than fifteen miles within the Javits Center, schlepped more than twenty books at any given time, met a fair share of famous authors and celebrities, and, oh yeah, went to business meetings. Here is a not-so-brief, chronologically ordered, list of the daily highlights.

Towel Day

Happy Towel Day, everyone! For those of you who don't know, today, May 25th is Towel Day. Towel Day is celebrated every year as a tribute to amazing author Douglas Adams. On this day, we carry a towel with us at all times to demonstrate our love and respect for him. If you are at all confused, please read this.

In honor of this wonderful and nerdy day, I give you:

Nerdy Stuff You can Buy!

and

Related YouTube Videos That Makes Me Laugh. 

Fireside Chat: Episode 8

Good morning, everyone. It is 6am here on the east coast. I am unfortunately awake a mere seven hours after CINNAWATCH2011 ended last night. This would have been OK if I had gone to bed right after the Fireside Chat. Of course, I did not.

So, for those of you who don't know (which is proably no one, because everyone and his dog within a 100 mile radius probably heard my shrieking last night), Lenny Kravitz was cast as Cinna in the Hunger Games movie. Lionsgate announced this during the podcast! Our reaction is live and unscripted.So is the rest of the show, but it sounded cool.

10 Nerdiest Things I Found on the Interwebs

Good day, everyone! It seems that the other day you really appreciated my top twelve nerdy commandments, so I've decided to keep the nerdy thing going. Today I bring you:

10 Nerdiest Things I Found on the Interwebs

The Nerd Commandments

Thanks to Rob Bricken of Topless Robot there exists a nerd-compiled list of the twenty nerd commandments. I have selected my favorite ones. How many of these sacred laws do you uphold?

Read after the jump for my revised list of the eleven commandments, and my responses. Add your own responses, or commandments in the comments!

Doctor Who: The Classic Episodes

I had not really planned on watching anything other than the latest Matt Smith episodes of Doctor Who. As it turns out, however, that is not enough Who in my life.

About a week ago I embarked on a Tom Baker kick involving Romana and the Key to Time. I loved Baker and so added all his stories to my Netflix queue.

Nerdy: New Blog Design

As I am sure you've noticed, I've altered the design of my blog. While it's a similar pallete of colors, and the background is familiar, there have been a few changes made. The most notable change is the fact that the background is no longer an illustration of a generic bookshelf. The bookshelf pictured is my personal young adult bookshelf. A slight variation of the picture below which appears on the voyeuristic literary blog: Lookshelves.

Fireside Chat: Episode 7

Episode 7 of The Hunger Games Fireside Chat was a busy and eventful podcast. In addition to the regular panel, we were joined by Picktainment.com founder Phil Wallace and Xavier Austrone, Executive Director of Wizarding Life Networks. The special guests included Crystal Watanabe, author of FictionalFood.net, Hunger Games superfan Lucas Strong (and his cousins), and Delly Cartwright herself, straight from District 12. We spoke about fans, cons, food, theories, casting and more. 

During the course of the evening, several topics were raised, and I would like to delve into them a bit more.

Fireside Chat: Podcast is Catching Fire

The live weekly Hunger Games Fireside Chat Podcast on which I am a frequent guest has been ranked #1 on iTunes New & Noteworthy podcast in Literature, #63 on iTunes Literature overall, is featured on the iTunes Podcast New Releases page, and is #1 in its category on Blog Talk Radio.  Check out the official article on Picktainment.com for more details.

Tune in tonight for episode 7 of the Hunger Games Fireside Chat.

Wrock: Madam Pince's Big Announcement - Coming Soon!

Very soon there will be a big announcement. Probably the biggest announcement Madam Pince will ever make.

I'll give you a hint:

It involves awesome.

Whoniverse Episode List

 Lost in the "Whoniverse"

Recently I published an article on Picktainment.com about my experience with Doctor Who. You can read the full article here.

While there are several sites that list episodes and have articles about the order in which to watch Doctor Who and its spin-offs, there was no one complete list that did not contain spoilers. Therefore, I’ve gone ahead and made one myself. This list includes Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures. It also includes mini episodes and radio plays.

Enjoy.

Nerdy: Douglas Adams Death Day Party

In honor of the 10th anniversary of Douglas Adams' death, I thought I would share with you my favorite quotes from his work. If you have other favorites, please feel free to comment with them.

Fireside Chat: Episode 6

For those of you who were listening to last night's Fireside Chat, you know that we discussed several topics including film genre, costuming and art, video games, and prequels. Unfortunately there is only so much we can cover in one hour, so I want to go into a bit more detail on here.

Hunger Games: Team Katniss

When hostilely confronted by angsty teenagers with the loaded question: “Peeta or Gale”, I always puffed out my chest and responded boldly and with a smug grin: “Team Katniss”! Why, I would wonder, did every young adult author feel need to marry off their heroines to their high school boyfriends. While that may work for one in a million real-life couples, how many women cringe at the thought of their first boyfriends being their future husbands? What was Suzanne Collins’ reasoning for the "married-with-children" epilogue? Was Collins perhaps suggesting that women are that needy and require romance to exist? That Katniss, one of the strongest young women in literary history, who saved a nation, required a man to complete her? In a way, yes.  Now before you grab your torches and pitchforks and hunt me down, hear me out.

Poetry: Introduction

As some of you may already know, when I was in college I majored in English with a concentration in writing. To pick apart my BA even further, what I was really interested in was poetry. I am pretty sure I took every class in poetry that Muhlenberg offered.  Unfortunately, in the five plus years since I graduated, I have not written nearly enough. Poetry used to be daily for me. My tin-covered notebook was filled with blank verse scribbles, failed sestinas,  angsty free verse, and humorous pastiches.  I had Silverstein, Milton, Nash, cummings, and Ginsberg pouring out of my hand made duct tape messenger bag. Poetry became one of the biggest parts of my life. Every day I strove to write something of which I could be proud. Something that could possibly be considered for publication.

Fireside Chat: Introduction

Several weeks ago I was approached by my good friend Adam Spunberg about his new project: Hunger Games Fireside Chat. As I am sure most of you know, Hunger Games is a popular young adult dystopic trilogy by Suzanne Collins. If you haven't read it, you should. You're welcome.

Wrock: Introduction

Once upon a time, Ariel wanted to start her own wizard rock band called Madam Pince and the Librarians. So she did. The end.

Seriously though, Madam Pince had been a dream of mine ever since I first heard the term "wrock". I loved writing poetry, and singing, but had never written song lyrics, nor been classically trained. I used these as convenient excuses for about a year, until I attended Wrockstock 2008. It was there that my new friends (during a drunken game of Apples to Apples) demanded a better reason. I could not come up with one.

Crafts: House Color Hair Bows

Well, I've got a new craft project.
 
I was at Aeternitas last weekend in Laconia, New Hampshire. Aeternitas was a small fan conference run by Amanda Burke of HPMA and Jonathon Rosenthal of TGTSNBN. It took place at the Margate Resort on Lake Winnepesauke. While participating in the festivities of the weekend, I saw a huge amount of great costumes. I myself made several wardrobe changes each day. On day two, however, I decided to go sans costume and wear sweats and a t-shirt. Of course this was a bit too normal for me, so I went ahead and plunked my new hand-made army-green hello-kitty-style bow on top of my head.

Crafts: Introduction

I love to craft. A lot. I take what I find, and I craft what I take. If it sits still long enough, it may be glued, stapled, sewn, strung, or beaded before the day is through.

I've designed house color earrings, golden snitch necklaces, Doctor Who beaded bowties, (bowties are cool), paper fezzes, knit bookmarks, scarves, dishcloths, (John Green has one!) TARDI, (tardises?) cross stitched mockingjays, and more. I am pretty sure I suffer from Crafters A.D.D. (CADD?). I love quick projects that satisfy instantly. Forget anything that comes in pairs. Socks? No thanks. I still have one leg warmer left over from my first year of knitting... four years ago.

Right, so one of the parts of this blog will be my current crafts. Whether for personal use, gifts, or sale, they're my crafts and I love making and sharing them.

Enjoy!

Introduction

Wrocker, crafter, and Fireside Chatter. My name is Ariel Birdoff and over the past several years, I have delved deeper into the world of nerd than ever before. Starting with the surge of social networking, and my first facebook post in 2007, I have been hurled healong into the torrential storm of the Interwebs. What started as a small profile, a short podcast listen, and a brief visit to a fan site, became the tiny start of the rushing Mississippi of online fandom.


Four years later, I am beginning this blog as a seasoned veteran of the online nerd community. Having attended more than five Harry Potter fan conventions, at least 50 wizard rock festivals, and started my own wizard rock band, I have gained a lot of life experience as an active member of the online fan community.


Being as busy as I am with a full time job and a part time graduate program, not to mention the management of a Wizard Rock band, and the travel bug from which I suffer, I thought that adding a blog to my weekly routine would be a terrible idea. Of course, those sorts of ideas can usually be quite fun.


And so, without further ado, Nerdy, Wordy, and Almost Thirty. A blog about this not so young adult who jumped into the world of online nerdom head first and has yet to come up for air.