The bushfires currently devastating Australia show no signs of letting up and when we received an email about an “author auction,” we thought it’d be beneficial to share it all with you, along with some other resources on where to donate and what you can do. But first, I asked Catherine to share a few words. Catherine is one of our wonderful new reviewers and lives in Australia. Catherine: Amanda asked me to write something about the bushfires, but I hardly know what to say. I live in Melbourne, Victoria, a large city in one of the coolest and wettest parts of Australia, and right now the air is full of smoke. I can smell it even inside the house – when I go outside, it’s strong enough to make my breath catch and my eyes sting. There are no fires near me – the closest they have ever come was the one in Bundoora last week, which scared the hell out of us because Bundoora is a suburb, and not even in the outskirts. So I don’t know where the smoke is coming from today. It probably isn’t the fires in East Gippsland, around 300 kilometres away – the wind direction is wrong and poor old New Zealand is copping their smoke. It might be the fires in northern Victoria, though. A couple of weeks ago, we were even getting smoke from the bushfires north of Sydney, a full one thousand kilometres away. Or it could be smoke from the fires in Kangaroo Island, 900km to our west. Basically, there are fires in every direction, every state of Australia. It’s hard to convey the scale of the devastation. Thousands of homes lost. Relatively few human deaths so far, though even one is enough to make this a tragedy. Millions of animals killed, though, and there is talk about species going extinct as a result of the fires. Koalas are at particular risk, as their numbers were already dangerously low, and some of the earliest fires were in areas with big koala populations. And more than 12 million acres of land have burned – we are told to expect food prices to go up, because a lot of that land is farmland – and the environmental impact is devastating. Rainforests are burning that have never burned before, and they cannot be restored. And this is just the start of January. In my state, the big bushfires don’t usually get going until February, so the fact that so much has already burned is pretty terrifying. There is a lot of dry weather ahead of us before we hit the rainy months. In New South Wales, the bushfires have been going since September – that’s the first month of spring for us. It really is beyond imagining. I feel very, very lucky that for me it really is just about the smoke and the air quality, and that I don’t have the kind of health issues that make this more than unpleasant. I do have family living in country Victoria- my brother in law is a volunteer firefighter with the CFA, as so many are- but ‘luckily’ those areas mostly burned in previous seasons, so they are presently safe. I wish we had a government that cared to do something about this. I wish we hadn’t been trained by the media and the government to view climate change as a political issue rather than a scientific one. So many people have been so generous and I wish there was no need for it. I fear for the future.
If you want to help, Catherine suggests this link of resources and, if you’re a crafter, here’s another way to get involved. For the author auction, there’s a detailed thread explaining how it’ll all work here:
The auction will be happening on Twitter, so if you don’t have an account, you may not be able to participate. The auction will last for about a week and will start/end on Australian time (AEST). A website was also created to explain how things work. After browsing the hashtag for the auction there are a variety of items to bid on: books, crochet projects, artwork, video editing services, etc. Have more suggestions? Link them below! The post Bushfire Relief & How to Help appeared first on NeedaBook. via Need a Book – NeedaBook https://ift.tt/2tDX1pl
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It’s Cover Awe time! For those who are new to the site, this is where we look at covers we think are intriguing, pretty, or just really dang neat! Cover design by Melissa Williams Design Sarah: All the Holmberg covers have been so visually striking. I love the papercut design. Amanda: Yes! I love a good theme that carries over to all of an author’s books. Don’t get me started on when a series changes cover styles halfway through. Sneezy: *Happy sigh* The colours, plus the defined edges, plus the soft fairy dust… CarrieS: The composition, with the birds at the top, lifts the whole thing and imparts a note of joy. Maya: I love the way all the different blues are used to create depth and to guide the eye around the cover. Catherine: I love the colours, and the slightly old-fashioned, silhouette feel. Shana: This is such a relaxing cover. You can almost feel the breeze in the air, and I love the stylized wheat. I live in a gluten-free household—beautiful wheat is a guaranteed way to make me want to read your book. Lara: I just started watching the new Dracula series on Netflix, so my first thought was – oooh, that is fancy blood! Perhaps a disservice to a beautiful cover, but the mind goes where it wants! Cover design by the Guter Punkt Design Agency Sarah: We could do an international cover awe edition! Look at the German cover of Honey Badger 1! I love the model they chose for Charlie! Amanda: They did a great job capturing both characters! I’d definitely watch that movie. Maya: So fun! I love the incorporation of the honey badger into the title. And I love that it makes it clear that it’s an interracial (and interspecies!) love story. Helpful for those of us currently putting stories with protagonists of color at the top of their TBR! Elyse: I love this so much more than the headless dude covers we get in contemporaries. CharlotteB: WOW, I soooo wish this was the US cover. I love the badger O. Lara: I’m probably one of the few people who’ve not read any books in this series, and this cover is pushing me towards that 1-click button in a visceral way. Cover design by Elena Giavaldi Amanda: I think this is FUCKING ADORABLE Sarah: I like the color scheme but the overall design is a shrug for me. Our tastes are so different! Amanda: Well it has millennial pink on it, so I am required by law to want it. Sarah: SNORT. And rose gold, too, it looks like. Sneezy: The whole thing looks almost pun-y to me, which is ALWAYS a win. (Plus her pen name is Darke!!! Get it? :P) Shana: This makes me think of Bewitched, which is never a bad thing. CharlotteB: This cover vibes “womens fiction I bought at an airport bookstore” to me rather than romance (although I like it). Lara: I WANTS IT! Cover design by Alessandra Morgan and Chelsea Cameron Cover model: Amani Marco Amanda: Holy abs, Batman! Carrie: LOVE HER. Non-sexualized, practical workout clothes, real muscle – the only thing I dislike is she’s looking down like she lost something in her pants. Also the yellow and white against the black background is wonderful! Amanda: I couldn’t blame her if she just wants to admire her abs for a bit. Carrie: True dat! Amanda: If I had abs like that, you’d have to wrestle me into a shirt. Carrie: And if you had abs like that, you’d win every match. Sneezy: With abs like that, she’ll have anyone she damn well WANTS. (Is it just me, or is her arm a different colour from the rest of her body?) Tara: I’ve read this one and the model is a perfect choice for Tuesday, since she’s a crossfit instructor. I rarely love f/f book covers but this is one is excellent. Maya: It’s wonderfully absent of an objectifying gaze–she’s partially naked, sure, but what’s being emphasized is her strength and not her secondary sexual characteristics. (But also, now I cannot stop looking at her arm, Sneezy!) Catherine: Oh, I *like* this. She feels so real and human in a way women often aren’t on book covers – there’s no fantasy about her. (Also, she just looks like a nice person, somehow. Which is part of the realness, perhaps – I don’t usually find myself contemplating conversation with cover models because they are drawn to be looked at, not interacted with.) Sneezy: She definitely looks like the kind of person who would help you out at the gym and share workout tips with you! (Maya, I haven’t been able to stop either!!!!) CharlotteB: “I know, I’m really, really cute, but I’m also kind of shy, so I’m just gonna look down and hope you can see past my rippling abs to the Real Me.” Lara: This cover has left me feeling like a stunned mullet. The post Cover Awe: Abs, Millennial Pink, & More appeared first on NeedaBook. via Need a Book – NeedaBook https://ift.tt/2ZU0Oem We’ve shared a version of this reading tracking spreadsheet for two years now, and I’ve received so many email messages and requests for more options from readers who absolutely adore it. Poorva C. wrote to me:
Aw, heck yeah, there are plans for a 2020 tracking spreadsheet. I’ve got it right here! I LOVE THIS SPREADSHEET SO MUCH. I’ve used it all year, I love it, and I’m so pleased I’m not alone in enjoying the process of tracking what I read and how I read, too. I’ve made a few updates to the 2020 version, but the great thing about this spreadsheet is that it’s so very easy to customize. Aarya has a version that she’s modified to track an extensive number of book characteristics, for example. So you can make it your own! Most Important!First, and most important, THANK YOU ANDREA. The original spreadsheet was created and shared by Andrea in the comments of podcast Episode 275 about Reading Habits. Thank you so, so very much, Andrea. We wish you the most excellent of reading for the rest of your waking life. Want to get started and not read any more about tracking your reading? I get it – here, you can go directly to the spreadsheet download link. If you’re curious about why and how we track our reading using this shared spreadsheet, read on! Tracking your reading?
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