First, I wanted to let everyone know that the schedule for the Winter Blog Blast Tour will be posted here tomorrow. I'll update it all next week with the direct urls to posts at the various participating blogs so the schedule is easy to use and refer to in the future. We have over thirty interviews set for the week, with a few more possibly skidding in between now and the weekend. As in the past, there are authors of picture books, poetry, middle grade and YA titles. There are also some adult authors and a few surprises, such as longtime SFF and Horror editor Ellen Daltow who kindly answered several questions from me. All in all it should be a great week and I hope all the blogs will get many readers and the authors some new fans.

Looking down the line, I've been reading the annual end of year lists for best books in a slew of categories and thinking about ways in which the lit blogosphere could do a better job of letting shoppers know about titles they should look for this holiday season. I get frustrated by the lists for basically two reasons: 1. They are very repetitive and will often include many of the same books and 2. They are often include just the author and title with no other information or have only a bland line of two from the pub's description. Shoppers and prospective readers are left knowing only enough about a book to look for it but not knowing why they should look for it or if it is really a decent fit for the person they are shopping for. With people trying to be far smarter about their purchases this year I think those of us who read and review dozens of a books a year should put our collective knowledge to work and help people find truly exceptional books for every interest and age group this season.

In other words, I'm introducing the 2008 Holiday Season Book Recommendation Event.

Here's what I'm thinking. For the past couple of years I have done book recommendations in all sorts of categories over the first 12 days of December. My idea was to let folks know about great books, old and new, that they might have missed. Taking that small individual idea, I'd like to expand it and open it up to everyone, starting the Monday after Thanksgiving and running for twelve days. There are no hard and fast rules about what to post on but the general idea should involve writing about books in a way that will let folks know if the title is a good fit for someone else. In other words, is it for girl detective wannabes, aspiring chefs with little cooking experience, western lovers, budding (or adult) environmentalists, fans of cozy mysteries, etc. etc. You could post on several books at once - four or five books for artists or for young love or for those who seek to defeat zombies. Another idea (which comes from Mother Reader) is to suggest a gift and book combo, like a magnifying glass and copy of Harriet the Spy. Or you could do books and movies (Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, a whole host of Shakespeare, etc.) or books and tv like an archaeology book and the first season of Young Indiana Jones.

I mean really, the possibilities are endless.

The way we link it all together is pretty simple. If you want to join in then you send me the exact url of your first Holiday Book Recs post. I'll link to that on a master list and then from there, if you want to keep posting for however many days of the 12 (all or part or whatever), then you need to update your own first day post to reflect that. In other words, I'm not going to run links to every single post you do, only to your first post. If you want to run five posts in a row then on that first post, you just keep linking to the subsequent days at your site. My job is just to let folks know the sites who will be recommending books (and run a teaser quote or two of course); your job is to let them know where to keep reading once they get to your site. (And I will be sure to mention if there are multiple posts at your site.)

Sound simple? I think this could be yet another way to show what the internet can do that nothing else can. We have all read books this year that we want to let everyone know about, and here is our chance to do that (and write about older favs as well). Feel free to copy earlier posts or reference them or combine many earlier posts, whatever. Just be ready to let readers know what books they should be considering while shopping this December.

WBBT starts Monday and the Holiday Season Book Recommendation Event goes live on December 1st!