10 Bookstores with Cats as Mascots!!

Gotta love independent bookstores with cats as mascots! Checkout Miss Cellania's post on Mental Floss titled 10 Excellent Bookstore Cats to see which cats made the shortlist!

Incidentally, Spike, cat number six on Miss Cellania's list of 10 Excellent Bookstore Cats, was recently named 'Cat of the Year' at Book Expo America. See my previous post for more details.

Bookstore Cat Wins 'Cat of the Year" Award

Cats Rule! In an article for KPLR in St. Louis titled,  Bookstore Cat is Given Top Honors by Patrick Clark, Mr. Clark writes the following:

It’s not the year of the cat, but this is the cat of the year. Left Bank Books mascot mouser Spike is heads and tails above the competition.   He was recently named bookstore cat of the year at Book Expo America.

Gotta love bookstore mascots!! I've seen a cat or two as mascots in my day and I love them. Cats, or any cute animal for that matter, makes visiting bookstores that much more fun. 

Click on above link to read the full story and view a brief video news clip about Spike!

Latte 101 Coffee House & Official Bookcrossing Zone!

Latte 101 Coffee House in Ventura, California!

I've been visiting the Latte 101 Coffee House in Ventura, California off and on since the summer of 2008. 

It's a charming coffee house located in your typical strip mall. The ambiance is warm and friendly. The staff is also friendly and they make awesome beverages... Everything from smoothies, iced blended drinks and your run of the mill espresso beverages. Latte 101 even has pastries for your eating pleasure. Plus, I enjoy the board games they have on hand to play during one's visit and free wifi!

Best of all, Latte 101 is also the location of an Official Bookcrossing Zone (OBCZ)!! There is a tall, black unit lined with several bookshelves inside Latte 101. Just turn right after you enter Latte 101 and you'll see plenty of books lining the bookshelves, making this a well stocked OBCZ. 

There use to be regular Bookcrossing monthly meet-ups at Latte 101, but I haven't seen one there in a while. So, I wonder if they're still going on? Bookcrossing meet-ups are a great way to meet other avid readers to discuss the books you've read or would like to read and also exchange books!

Last weekend, I left thirteen books registered on Bookcrossing on the bookshelves at Latte 101 and came home with three cozy mystery novels. 

Before I left Latte 101, I ordered a hot, spicy chai tea latte, which is one of my favorite drinks to enjoy at Latte 101.

Until my next post, happy reading!

My Latest Book Adventure!!

Little Free Library

This past weekend, I visited my very first Little Free Library in Ventura, California with my hubby!! It was a fun and awesome experience to find this cute Little Free Library in a charming Ventura neighborhood. 

I'm posting two photographs of this extremely cute, little free library box, that I discovered planted at the edge of someone's residential property. 

This particular little free library is well maintained and nicely decorated. It was also filled with a nice selection of paperback books in almost new condition. Most of the books were children's books, but there were some books for adults. I ended up leaving two books registered on Bookcrossing inside the little free library and taking two books to read at my leisure. 

Little Free Library

I'm hoping that whomever finds and reads the two books I left inside the little free library will also become a member of Bookcrossing and make a journal entry for both books. It'll be exciting to see where these books travel.

For more information about the Little Free Library, please click on the above link. Until my next blog post, happy reading!!

Anne Rice Re-Releases Her "Sleeping Beauty" Erotica Trilogy

Thirty years before the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy made it big, Anne Rice had published her own erotica trilogy under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure. Now Rice's Sleeping Beauty trilogy --- The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment and Beauty’s Release is being re-released.

CBC News has published an article titled Anne Rice re-releases her erotic trilogy. In the CBC News article, it states the following:

Rice said she’d begun reading the Fifty Shades of Grey novels and speculated they are seeing a such popularity because women feel more comfortable expressing a wider range of sexuality now than they did 30 years ago.

“I think people are much more open and frank about this kind of fiction because they feel empowered,” she said.

Click on the above link to read the full story and listen to a 17 minute and 42 second audio interview of Anne Rice talking about her erotica trilogy.

I've not read either the Sleeping Beauty trilogy or the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. Has anyone else read either trilogy and if so, what did you think about the trilogy? 

Frankly, I didn't even know Anne Rice wrote an erotica trilogy!!

35 Words Recently Added to the Dictionary

I rarely visit the Mental Floss website, but I am glad that I recently did as I came across a good article by Lucas Reilly titled 35 Modern Words Recently Added to the Dictionary. I was familiar with most of the newly added words to dictionary. Although, I hadn't heard of Crunk (adj): Very excited or full of energy, until I'd read the above mentioned article.

Bookish Quote of the Day!!

“Books may well be the only true magic.” Alice Hoffman

Will These 10 Pickup Lines For Flirting At The Bookstore Work For You?

I came across the following article, 10 Pickup Lines For Flirting At The Bookstore by Chelsea Aaron, on The Date Report website.

I'm married (happily --- by the way), but I wonder if the pick up lines in Chelsea Aaron's article would really work? If I was single, I can't imagine the following pick up line, “I see that you can read. That shit’s hot.”, working on me. 

What's the best pick up line you've ever been told? Have you ever been hit on at a bookstore? All the pick up lines I've been told over the years were completely cheesy..... I've never been hit on in a bookstore before.

I've Been Decluttering My Reading List!!

It's been a week since I've read and posted an article here on my blog titled Declutter the Reading List. This article really struck a cord with me. Since then, I've gone through my Mount Everest sized stack of books to be read and downsized my reading list! I passed along 33 books last month and have another 17 books set aside to be passed along shortly. It feels good to have scaled down my reading list as I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of books I had waiting to be read.  

Don't get me wrong, I love being surrounded by books. However, there were plenty of books I had been given that I didn't have the desire/interest to read. Or books I had picked up for myself that I was no longer interested in reading as tastes change over time. So, it was time to move these books along and keep only those I want to read. 

I still have a boat load of books to read, so I'll be focusing on reading more of these books first before buying anymore books for myself. It's been easy to buy books for 50 cents to 2 dollars at our local Friends of the Library Used Bookstore in town as the books are inexpensive and the money helps support local libraries... But, I need to be more selective about my reading choices to avoid an out of control reading list!

Reading in Bed

I came across an article in the Los Angeles Times titled Reading in bed: a duvet cover as bedtime story by Carolyn Kellogg, which put a whole new spin on reading in bed! Ms. Kellogg writes the following in her article:

It started as a design project. Tiago da Fonseca, whose work can be found at Moss, has created a duvet cover called Bedtime Stories. It's bedding, printed with a story. Which makes so much sense.

This is a particularly sophisticated duvet cover. Layered like the pages of a book, it can be turned as it is read -- or for warmth. On his website, da Fonseca explains it this way: "'Bedtime Stories' completely involves the reader in the story and each page adds or removes a layer of comfort to each side of the bed – more pages makes you warmer and comfier, hopefully guiding you and your partner into a pleasant night’s sleep.... It is even possible to remove pages, just like you would do in a book (if you dare!)."

But what kind of story will you fall asleep under? How about a fairy tale.

I'm not sure I'd want this duvet cover on my bed, but it is an interesting concept for sure!