Jessica Hosts Insta-Utah Mini Challenge and Giveaway

Today's featured Utah Books post: Jessica from The Bluestocking Society hosts Insta-Utah Mini Challenge along with a giveaway. Be sure to check it out and play along!

Suey Lists Utah Books

Today's featured Utah Book Month post: Suey from It's All About Books lists all the Utah books she's read since last August's Utah Book celebration. Be sure to click on over and get some ideas for Utah books you can read this month!

Krista Spotlights Richard Paul Evans

Today's featured Utah Book Month post: Krista from Cubicle Blindness spotlights Utah author Richard Paul Evans. Be sure to click over and check it out!

Welcome to Utah Book Month 2014 and Our Read a Utah Book Challenge!

We're so excited to bring back Utah Book Month for the third year in a row! This month we hope you'll join us for special features, author and blogger interviews, mini challenges, giveaways, and many many reviews for Utah books. Be sure to check back often to see what's happening and to click over to the posts being featured each day. You can see the whole list of our planned posts here.

Today we are staring things off with our Read a Utah Book Challenge. We challenge you to read at least TWO books this month by Utah authors. We have a list here on the blog of authors to get you started. Or you can check out this Goodreads list, which, I must warn you, is not comprehensive at all! (Feel free to add to it if you wish!)

If you do read and review a book, we'd love for you to come back here and link up your review so we can all see the books being read this month! See the linky below. Sign up with your name and blog name and the book you're reviewing in parenthesis.

Also, be sure to follow @UtahBooks on Twitter for updates and conversation. At this point, we haven't planned a Twitter chat, but we can if there's interest.

Our annual blogger bash get together is also in the works. We plan to meet on Saturday, August 30 at the same park in Lehi (Wines Park) where we've been the past two years. More details to come, but for now, add it to your calendar!

Thanks for participating!

Utah Book Month 2014 Sign Up

It’s time to start planning our Utah Book Month event for August!

Sign-Up
This year we wanted to simplify things in a big way. We’ve decided to have you “choose your own Utah Book Month Adventure”! To start, we’ve made a list of ways you can participate. Look them over:

• spotlight a Utah author
• spotlight a Utah book blogger
• interview a Utah author
• interview a Utah book blogger
• host a giveaway 
• host a mini-challenge
• write a guest post for Utah Books blog
• spotlight a Utah bookstore or library
• spotlight another aspect of Utah book culture
• review a Utah book or two or more!

If any or all of these look like something you’d like to do, fill out the sign-up form letting us know your information, the things you’d like to do, and the dates in August you’d like to post. We’ll create a calendar from all the responses we get. If we need to shuffle posts around a bit, we’ll let you know. (To see what spots are available, click to see this spreadsheet. We’ll update it as people sign up.)

Calendar of Events 
As things take shape, we’ll share the calendar here on the site and also a list of participants. Then everyone can be sure to hop around and visit each other during the month. We’ll also create a review link up like we did last year.

Utah Author and Utah Blogger Lists 
We’d love to update our author and blogger lists. If you see someone missing, let us know and we’ll get them added.

Twitter Parties 
We’ve become a fan of the Twitter party, so we’ll schedule a couple of those during the month and talk up and promote our authors to each other then.

Utah Books Social 
Also, we’d like to plan a “in real life” get together as we’ve done in years past. We are looking at August 30th as a possible date. Does this work for those of you interested? Do you know of any bookish events that will conflict with this date?

 We’d love for you all to participate in our celebration of all things bookish in Utah this August!

January 2014 Utah Book Events

There's so much happening! I thought I'd make a list.


At The King's English:

Jan. 2 at 7:00 p.m.: Natalie Whipple... launch for Blindsided
Jan 7 at 7:00 p.m.: Sara Larson... launch for Defy
Jan. 10 at 7:00 p.m.: Jamie Ford... tour for Songs of Willow Frost
Jan. 14 at 7:00 p.m.: Local author showcase
Jan. 15 at 7:00 p.m.: Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando...tour for Roomies
Jan. 18 at 7:00 p.m.: Sarah Anderson... launch for Copied
Jan. 21 at 7:00 p.m.: Brodi Ashton...launch for Evertrue
Jan. 23 at 7:00 p.m.: Marion Jensen...launch for Almost Super
Jan. 28 at 7:00 p.m.: Matthew Kirby... launch for The Quantum League #1: Spell Robbers

At the Provo Library:

Jan. 11 noon to 4: Family Literacy Event with Jamie Ford
Jan. 16 at 7:00 p.m.: Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando...tour for Roomies

Anything else you know that should be on this list? Let me know!

Hopefully we'll all be able to go to at least some of these events! Here's to 2014 and supporting our authors!

Orem Library's Author Extravaganza 2013

It's time the annual Holiday Author Extravaganza at the Orem Library!

Come on over Saturday (the 14th) for the panel (at 10) and the signing (at 11). You can buy the authors' books there, or bring them in if you already have them. But do come and say hi and hang out for a while. It'll be fun!

The authors are:

Ally Condie: Matched series

Brodi Ashton: Everneath series

Cameron Wright: Letters for Emily, The Rent Collector

Jess Smiley: Upside Down, a Vampire Tale

Nathan Hale: Hazardous Tales series, and various other picture books

Chad Morris: The Inventor's Secret

Lisa Mangum: Hourglass Door series, After Hello

Giving a signed book for Christmas is awesome.