I don’t normally do a separate post to announce winners, but I was pretty excited about both the Pope Joan  and the Catching Fire  contests. So here we are.

On a random note, why do I insist on pounding a key on my keyboard multiple times when I know the key won’t work like I want?

Okay, back to the giveaway winners.

For Pope Joan, I had two copies to give away. The winnners are:

Debbie from Suburban Sanity (who has a fantastic header, by the way…not that I’m biased or anything)

and

bridget3420

Don’t forget, you need to buy the book and mail the author your receipt to be entered into the red carpet drawing! Why do you think I bought an extra copy to give away?

For the Catching Fire  giveaway, I’m especially excited. In fact, I’ve been able to find a SECOND copy of Catching Fire  to give away because I pretty much want everyone to READ THIS BOOK NOW. If I could be a bully, I wouldn’t hesitate to bully people into reading books. Kidding! Bullying isn’t funny. Even when it’s about books.

Okay, so the winners are…

Wendy Cleveland

and

Chloe

Congratulations everyone! I am/will be emailing everyone for their mailing address.

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross has been on my Favorite Books of All-Time since…well, since I read it. I read it long before I had a blog, so I have no review for you. You’ll just have to take my word for it. What’s it about? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Pope Joan takes a very small piece of unknown Catholic history and imagines how the story actually happened. According to the author, for hundreds of years (up until the middle of the 17th century), this woman’s papacy was believed and taught as truth. Why is that interesting? Because Pope Joan is a WOMAN. The Catholic Church would have never knowingly installed a female pope, so how did it happen? This is the story that the author tells and imagines.

Do I have you intrigued yet?

There’s some great questions and answers on the author’s website, such as “How would it have been possible for a woman to pass herself off as a man for so long and under such circumstances?” These Q&As are really fascinating; you should go check them out!

Pope Joan has been made into a movie (though there’s no release date for the United States, yet)! To celebrate this, the author is having a fantastic contest! You can join the author and her family as they walk the red carpet on the night of the Pope Joan movie premiere! Get all the details from the author’s website, but here’s how you can enter:

Simply buy a new, Three Rivers Press/Crown Publishing paperback edition of Pope Joan by August 9 and send me the original receipt. In August, I’ll pick randomly from the pile of receipts to select someone and their guest to join me at the U.S. movie premiere in the fall (exact date still to be determined).

The author has graciously offered a book to give away here, and I have decided to match her offer. That means I have TWO copies of Pope Joan to give away. Unfortunately, neither copies will get you entered to possibly go to the movie premiere, so I suggest you buy a copy and THEN enter for the giveaway, because surely you’ll be able to find someone to pass along your extra copy to.

(for you lazy bums, you can buy Pope Joan from Powell’s, Amazon, or any local independent bookstore)

To enter the contest, simply answer this question: What’s one book you’ve read that you think is great but no one seems to have even heard about? If you don’t answer this question, your entry will be removed.

Extra entries:

+1 for Twittering, Stumbling, or otherwise doing whatever you can to let others know about this fantastic giveaway (blog posts, sidebars, emails to friends with me cc’d, etc). Please leave a comment for each additional entry. You should know I check each additional entry and read each and every comment, so no cheating!

This contest will be open through August 1, 2009 and is open internationally.

Rules strictly enforced under the threat of tickling.

This week’s Booking Through Thursday question:

What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”

Now this is a great question. Recently I’ve been reading fairly mainstream stuff (Harry Potter (okay, that’s totally mainstream), Stones From the River, etc). But I do have a few books (I’ve picked four) that most people I know haven’t read. Here they are:

Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis. On the front of the book it says, “Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players.” I have to warn you: I was obsessed with Scrabble after I finished this book. Fatsis manages to make his story almost a mystery, because he interweaves his own progression in the competive Scrabble world with snapshots of world champions, explaining the history of Scrabble, describing how excellent players stay competitive. This is definitely on my Top 10 List, if not my Top 5. Seriously, go read this book now. Rating: 95 out of 100

A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers. I read this for a book group that I started (that eventually fizzled out). I did not want to touch this with a 10 foot pole. A Christian novel? How good can that be? Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand romance novels, I’m just saying I don’t want someone preaching to me when I read a book. It’s a good thing that I was “forced” to read it. This book is excellent. It’s the first book in a trilogy. This book is about a Jewish girl who converts to Christianity and is living in Jerusalem when it is overtaken by the Romans in (70?) C.E. She is taken captive and is forced to work for a Roman family. The book has even more of a jaw dropping ending than We Need to Talk About Kevin. Really, I can’t recommend this book highly enough. But be forewarned: if you read this book, you will want to read the sequel. Rating: 92 out of 100

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber. This book is about “Sugar, a nineteen-year-old prostitute in Victorian London who years for escape to a better life. From the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, she begins her ascent through society. Beginning with William Rackham, a perfume magnate whose lust for Sugar soon begins to smell like love, she meets a host of lovable, maddening, unforgettable characters as her social rise is overseen by assorted preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthy servants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all kinds.” I love this book because Sugar does something at the end that I should have been horrified at, yet I felt she was justified in a way. I enjoyed how the book probed moral boundaries and really made me think about why something that should be so wrong, was okay. Rating: 92 out of 100

And finally:

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross. This book is based on what is thought may have happened at some point: a woman (disguised as a man) made it all the way to being Pope. Of course, whether this happened or not, we’ll never know, but it’s an interesting idea (not that a woman was Pope, but how she ended up there). Joan is a girl who loves to learn, but women are not permitted knowledge in her time (814 C.E.). When her brother dies, she assumes his identity to learn, not to necessarily become Pope. It’s a very interesting book on a very interesting premise. I highly recommend it. Rating: 92 out of 100

Sooo…what books do you know about that I should read? Hm?