Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception by Pamela Meyer

I have a fairly firm rule about reading the book before watching the movie.  Seriously, the book is usually SO much better I can't imagine wanting to start with the inferior product.  (Ask me some other time about the ex who told me I'd understand Sophie's Choice better if I watched the movie.  I suspect you know the ending of the story.)  And, in reading Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception by Pamela Meyer I didn't break the rule per se.  Because, well, no one's putting together "Liespotting: The Movie!" But . . . let's just say that Liespotting was ruined for me by this guy

Tim Roth was so much fun to watch in "Lie to Me".

and this guy.

Malcolm Gladwell covered microexpressions in Blink.

So in a way, I did see the movie first because I learned the material delivered in Liespotting in two very entertaining and accessible formats.

But let me back up.  Liespotting is a book about deceptive behavior and how to detect it.  It covers the basics of microexpressions--the little expressions we all make (and occasionally try to cover up) that depict our true, immediate responses to a situation.  It also covers the basics of other nonverbal behaviors that can be used to detect lies.  As an introduction to the detection of deceptive behavior it's very thorough, and on Amazon this is a really well reviewed book.  The topic of this book? The topic of this book I find fascinating.

I still didn't like it.  First, it's very basic.  As one of the Amazon reviews says if you've not ready anything on the topic before, this is a good place to start.  On the other hand, if you've read Blink or watched a handful of episodes of "Lie to Me".  (That part's my opinion, not the opinon of the reviewer.)  Second, lie detection is a very visual endeavor, and this book doesn't really do the visual aspect justice. So if you're interested in the topic, I suggest you get yourself a does of Tim Roth or Malcolm Gladwell and jump into the the entertaining and accessible versions of this information.

Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger

It's cold outside.  The thin layer of snow in my yard has iced over and I can see little blades of frozen grass poking through.  I ran some errands this morning and in order to open my car door I had to knock icicles off of the door handle.  A mixture of ice and slush littered the parking lot of the library making it downright messy to return our books.  What does all of this have to do with my review?  Nothing, really.  Except that it reminded me of the cold and aggressive winter conditions in Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger. Perfect timing really, since I had a review due today.  Oh, and it also made me thankful that I don't live in Minnesota.

See? Doesn't it look cold?

 Mr. Krueger was featured as Barnes and Noble's spotlight author for October 2011.  After reading a short question and answer about him, I decided to give Iron Lake (a first in a series, of course) a try.  You can read that question and answer here.  I polished this book off on my nook in under a week and have already downloaded the next in the series.  Before I continue, you need some background.  Cork (short for Corcoran) O'Connor is the ex-sheriff of a small town in Minnesota.  He's rough, he's no nonsense and has little patience for wrong doing.  None of that matters though, when he finds himself deep in the apparent suicide of a local judge.  Cork must balance his tattered home life and old grudges harbored by local residents while trying to piece together what really happened.

At first, I had a hard time following all of the characters and what they meant to the story.  Mr. Krueger detailed some seemingly insignificant ones at first, only to have them reappear and become central to the unique identity of the town of Aurora.  For example, the first chapter is about Paul, the town newspaper boy.  We learn of his work ethic, his determination and his sense of duty which characterize the spirit of Aurora and it's Native American residents.  It is Paul who hears a gunshot on his last delivery of the day and ultimately finds the judge dead.  The details in the first chapter laid the foundation for the kinds of people we encounter in the rest of the story.  I think I may even go back and reread some of the first few chapters again.

The other big winner for me was Cork himself.  I loved the strong mix of sensitive father and hard-nosed ex-sheriff.  Yes, I have a thing for men in uniform (military ones, that is), but Cork is more than just that.  He cares for the people he used to protect and does so at his own risk.  He also still cares deeply for his soon-to-be ex-wife.  Even though they have both moved on to other relationships he values his relationship with her and treats her with the respect the mother of his children deserve.  I also thought the cast of supporting characters was just as strong and exactly what was needed to compliment someone like Cork.  

I'm excited that this series continues.   Northwest Angle, the 11th book in the series was released last year.   That means there are ten more Cork O'Connor books for me to read.  And that makes ten more opportunities for me to root for the good guy in uniform.  I do so love the good guys in uniform.

Great American Short Stories (specifically The Yellow Wall-Paper)

This review is a little different, because I didn't read one book and instead read several short stories.  There are times when I don't have the mental energy or fortitude to commit to a novel.  There are times when I don't have the ability to commit any time to a novel.  There are times when I'm lazy.  This is one of those times.  And I haven't even finished them all!  That's what is great about a collection of stories; their easy to pick up and put down at a moment's notice.  That's what I've been doing - in the waiting room at speech therapy with one eye on my son, in the pick-up line at school with one eye on the door, in bed with one eye closed - and I'm pretty sure I haven't missed anything in the stories.

I read Great American Short Stories per Barnes and Noble's designation.  You can find it here and it's cheap! $3.99 cheap! I had a specific story in mind when I picked this collection up; The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  It was in one of my high school English books and I remember it being kind of creepy and awful....in a good(interesting) way.  I reread it first.  It didn't disappoint.  Then I went back and read a few others and now it's time for me to post a review.  So I'll tell you about the story that prompted me to buy this book.

The Yellow Wall-Paper
Even better than I remembered it.  Written from a female point-of-view, this story lets us in on one woman's depression and delusion (?) during a family's summer stay in a leased "ancestral home."  What we find out is that our narrator and her husband have moved in while their home is being renovated and to give our narrator a chance to "recover".  Her husband's a physician and wants her to rest and re-energize and not give herself over to her previous silly fancies and nervousness.  It's pretty clear she would be diagnosed with postpartum depression today, as being around her baby makes her too "nervous" and she is depressed in general.  I'm not positive, but I'm guessing that this is supposed to be turn-of-the-twentieth century time frame so the good doctor's advice is ridiculously patronizing.  So much so, I certainly would have gone crazy from having to listen to it at any length.

Regardless, the room the doctor has chosen for his wife's recuperation is on the top floor of the house (though she wanted a room on the bottom floor that opened onto a veranda, she was summarily dismissed because, you know, there's no way she could know her own mind) and seems to have quite the past.  It's large and is furnished with a big, heavy bed.  It is wall-papered though the paper has been torn off in some sections and around the gnawed-upon headboard of the nailed-to-the-ground bed.  Our narrator believed it must have been a nursery then a playroom and gymnasium because there are rings built into the wall.  I think she's kind.  If I walked into a room with a hideous wall-paper that's been torn, a bed that's been beat to heck nailed to the floor, and rings in the walls,oh! and a gate at the top of the stairs, I would think that someone was kept in that room.  And they weren't very happy about it.  Nothing will cure your depression like living in a homemade asylum.

The real problem with the room, as you may have guessed, is the yellow wall-paper.  It is distracting to our narrator.  Every time she tries, she can't make the pattern match up or repeat any kind of pattern in a reasonable way.  Over the weeks she becomes obsessed with following the lines until she can decipher any kind of reasonable pattern.  She gives us details about her days and nights, and it becomes apparent that she is not getting better and, in fact, is getting worse.  She stops leaving the room altogether and instead spends her days analyzing the wall-paper.  She becomes convinced that the wall-paper changes as the light through the windows changes.  And that is when she sees the woman; the woman "creeping" behind the pattern in the wall-paper.   Our narrator becomes convinced that the woman is trying mightily to escape her wall-paper prison by shaking the pattern at every opportunity.  Then one day, our narrator spies the wall-paper woman "creeping" around the grounds of the estate.  And it seems the wall-paper woman is everywhere at once, but always hiding from view (about which our narrator believes the hiding to be reasonable because creeping during the day is humiliating - she does all her day-creeping behind closed doors).  Our narrator is determined to strip the wall-paper from the wall before they leave the home, and so she locks herself in the room.  When her husband tries to get in the room, she tells him she threw the key out the window.  When he finally opens the door he sees his wife creeping along the wall (where there was already a "smooch" just where her shoulder would fit) and large section of wall-paper torn away.  He faints.  She continues to crawl, but now, over him.

And that's how it ends.  If you haven't read it, I didn't tell you anything that would ruin the story itself.  My synopsis doesn't do it justice.  It intrigues me.  I wonder if her depression would have worsened if they had rented a different home.  I wonder if they had slept in the room downstairs, if she would have slipped so far into this state.  I wonder if the wall-paper itself was the actual problem.  I wonder how many women had to suffer through postpartum depression at the hands of condescending and patronizing doctors.  I wonder why one of my longer reviews was about one of the shorter stories I've read.  Mostly, I wonder if any of you have a story from high school/junior high English class that you'd like to read again.  Tell us which one!

The Jefferson Allegiance by Bob Mayer

This was loud, and it shook my house.

There are days I know exactly why I’m not a novelist.  Like today, when the doorbell rang and the nice guy from the Decatur Department of Water told me there was break in the water main outside my house, my response was to take him at face value.  (Well, really at water’s face value.  I could see it burbling up at the curb right in front of my house.)  I didn’t think, for even a minute, of possible conspiracy connections, of attempts to thwart this blog post and any discussion of secret societies and shadow governments.  I just didn’t have it in me to see any more than what was right in front of me—a day where no laundry was getting done and I wasn’t going to get the shower that I really, really needed.

So when the pile driver pulled up in front of my house closely followed by a back hoe and a dump truck, my thoughts went something like “oh, my nephews would love to see this” and “damn, that’s loud” instead of “this would make a great cover for some covert operations.”  Bob Mayer has that ALL OVER me which, again, is why I’m not a novelist and he is.  When we last visited Mr. Mayer on The Family Addiction, Sarah reviewed a book (Agnes and the Hitman) he co-wrote with Jennifer Crusie.  (You can find that review here.)  This time Mr. Mayer is writing alone and spinning a tale of Presidential powers, Constitutional authority and military might in The Jefferson Allegiance. This story is the first in a new Presidential Thrillers series.

I know my nephews would love this.

 The Jefferson Allegiance has the fast pace and intricate puzzles of other stories I’ve devoured like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.  The heart of this puzzle began when the U.S. was founded and when men like Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson struggled to define the scope of Presidential powers and citizens’ rights.  Mayer tells a story of historical wheeling and dealing that culminates with present day conspiracy and adventure.  The historical pieces are, in effect, history with a twist—a new way to look at Presidential decisions and behaviors.  The present day adventure involves the FBI, two secret societies, the branches of the U.S. military, and five or six individuals struggling to define their place in the conspiracy. 

This was a fun read.  Like I said, the pace was fast, and the puzzles were interesting.  The main protagonists, Ducharme and Tolliver, were likable, and rooting for them to save their own lives, solve the puzzles, complete the Jefferson cipher, and restore order to the intricate balance of governmental power kept me madly reading to get to the end.  The villains were a little underdeveloped, but the pacing of the story kept me from picking at any weaknesses in the story.  I’m happy to report that Tolliver more than holds her own during the physical elements of the story and is much more than brainy damsel in distress.   So if you like thrillers with healthy dose of history, or if you ever look for hidden agendas in the ordinary events of your life, I recommend The Jefferson Allegiance.  I'll be looking forward to the next installments in the Presidential Thrillers series.

A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris

As promised, I read an actual Sookie Stackhouse novel for this review.  If you need some background as to what I am talking about, click here.  And please don't make fun...at least to my face.

I do, however, have one tiny confession to make.  I couldn't find any "firsts" of Ms. Harris's books at the library, so I decided to check out A Touch of Dead instead.  You see, I have this thing about reading books in a series IN ORDER.  I cannot stand to read a series out of order.  It is something of a familial trait, I guess.  I blame my mother.  I probably should have waited until I found a first in one of her Sookie Stackhouse series, but I am impatient. (Consequently, that is not a familial trait.  Can I blame my husband, instead?)  Reading the jacket, I found out that this is a collection of short stories about Sookie.  In fact, it is every short story about her all in one book!  Perfect.

As I mentioned in my last review, it seems like everyone has read at least one Sookie book.  When I talk about books (I have lots of nerdy book friends, you see) her character comes up a lot.  I could see the attraction to Sookie's character I have heard so much about almost immediately.  She's fun.  She's brave.  She's surrounded by some downright unique characters in her life and always manages to keep seeing the good in them, even when they drive her crazy.  I like her.  Oh and she is a human telepath.  That's just cool.
 
There are five short stories in this book and I have to say, I liked all five.   My favorites were "One Word Answer" and "Gift Wrap."   "One Word Answer"  follows Dead As a Doornail and is when Sookie finds out that her long-lost cousin Hadley is dead.  The entire short story takes place in Sookie's front yard and finds Sookie in the middle of a conversation with four vampires, including the Queen of Louisiana.  That' right, the vampires have queens.  I had no clue.

"Gift Wrap" takes place before Dead and Gone.  Sookie is alone for Christmas which made me sad.  Then, she found an attractive naked man in the woods behind her house, which made me intrigued (and a little jealous).  The end of the story was touching and sweet (there was a grandparent involved) and that made me happy.

I hope this review serves as some sort of redemption for me.  It might also serve as an apology to Ms. Harris (and Snooki, I guess) for my past character discrepancies.  I can't decide because it is late and I am getting tired. Staying up late is a familial trait, too.  Why do I have a feeling my daughter will be blaming ME for that someday?

Oh, the books, books, books, books!

Somebody's having a contest, and it's awesome.

Amazon.com is giving away a $1000 gift card.

Enter.

Please.

Sleepwalk With Me by Mike Birbiglia

This post should have been up yesterday but I was having issues with Blogger.  And I couldn't turn to my partners in crime because Carrie was pounding tequila and Amy was dealing with (coincidentally) a sleepwalker.  Therefore, I gave Blogger my angry eyes look and begged off til this morning.  Turns out I just needed to install some updates on my computer, so now I'm no longer angry at the nice people who make Blogger possible.  Now I just need to get Carrie and Amy some help with their problems.  OK, fine.  Carrie doesn't really have a drinking problem.  And "pounding tequila" may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but she was around alcohol and Amy was totally dealing with a sleepwalker.

Sleepwalk With Me is Mr. Birbiglia's account of his adventures with sleepwalking (hey! what a surprise!), and other stories from his youth and his career in stand-up comedy.  Bonus: I can count this as a non-fiction read.  It is funny.  It is sometimes sweet.  It is short.  It's the perfect book to have on an airplane; engaging enough that you want to continue reading, but not too complicated that you can't put it down to get your in-flight complimentary beverage and your pretzels.

The thing I liked most about this book, and honestly the comedy I have subsequently watched, is that Mr. Birbiglia is funny in a self-aware, self-deprecating manner without being mean to everyone else he has ever come in contact with.  That's not easy to do.  Many comedians are hilarious but at the expense of others.  This is not the case with Mr. Birbiglia.  Not that he doesn't point out some of the absurdities of, well, life in general, but for the most part he doesn't make himself out to be above all that absurdity.  It was nice to laugh but not feel guilty about it.

Two of my favorites chapters/stories:

Delusional - in which he discusses his childhood aspirations to be a rapper, a comedian, a poet, a professional basketball player, a country singer, a break-dancer, or the owner of a pizza restaurant (where third graders could hang out).  That's a lot of aspiring.

Please Stop the Ride - the telling of his attempts at romance and eventually hanging out with his first real girlfriend......and her real boyfriend.  Nothing says "first love" like meeting your girlfriend's other boyfriend's parents.

Sleepwalk with Me was also an off-Broadway show (presented by Nathan Lane!) and a motion picture (accepted into Sundance!).  The title is not metaphoric; he does have a serious issue with sleepwalking that required medical attention.  Those stories are also very funny, but sometimes in the "This is only funny because you're writing about it now and I know you're fine, so we can chuckle about this now." kind of way.  During my YouTube search for Mr. Birbiglia's stand-up act, I came upon a series of videos featuring him and some random people who had purchased his book.  He would video chat with these, I'm assuming, strangers to thank them for buying his book.  Now that's an awesome idea.  And we be thrilled to let him comment/video chat/personalize a song for our little book blog if he feels so inclined after Google alerts makes him aware of us.  I thought about putting one of those thank-you videos here, but then I found this one and it made me snort.  Happy Friday!

Making Waves by Tawna Fenske

Wheezy, from Toy Story

I sound like this right now; thanks to a probable case of viral bronchitis.   Instead of depending on Woody to fix me, I've got steroids, antibiotics and an inhaler.

I think Woody works faster.

Mostly, though, I feel fine, except, for when I cough.  Horror of all horrors, laughing makes me cough, so it's a good thing that I finished reading Tawna Fenske's debut novel, Making Waves, several days ago.  This laugh-out-loud romantic comedy would have me coughing all night.

I first learned of Tawna's book at Lucy March's blog, and I started to follow Tawna's own blog, Don't Pet Me, I'm Writing.  I followed her blog, enjoyed it, and then felt honor-bound to buy and read her book.  My expectations were low to middlin'. I've read other books by Lucy March-following authors, and the results have been uneven. (What can I say?  I want every book to be as good as Garden Spells or Dandelion Wine or Welcome to Temptation.) However, people smarter than I were giving Making Waves some NICE reviews, so I set aside my trepidation and read it.

Squeee!!!

It was fun.

It was hot.

It was silly.

It was sweet.

To steal a line from another Disney character (Kim Possible) here' the sitch:  Juli needs to travel to the Virgin Islands to scatter her dear, departed uncle's ashes. Alex is in the area because he has decided to go to some extraordinary means to recoup his lost pension.  Their first encounter involves a bar, the Newlywed Game, and really goooooood kiss goodnight.

That's the relative sane part of the story.  After that, Juli's bad reaction to sea sickness medication lands her on the Alex's modern-day pirate ship.  Here's where you encounter pirates and more pirates, size 15 Prada boots, a gourmand who is former NFL tight end, purple vibrators, diamonds, and Battleship played like you've never seen it played before.  Let's just say that everything after that first night is a bit madcap and requires some suspension of disbelief, but Tawna balances on the fine line separating madcap from manic.  The silliness propels the story line instead of distracting the reader from the developing relationship.

Again, it's fun, hot, silly and sweet.  It's the perfect beach read.

Now if only my bronchitis and I were on the beach . . .

Real Murders by Charlaine Harris

I vividly remember my granparents picking me up from high school one day (my parents were on vacation without us and kid duty fell to them) and them commenting on a Grateful Dead bumper sticker they saw on a car in the parking lot.  "Amy, what does that mean??  Who in the world would EVER be grateful that they are dead?"  It was then that I asked myself, at what age do we stop keeping up with popular culture?  Will that actually happen to me? 

Sadly, the answer is yes.  And sadly, that age for me is 37.  How do I know this?  I know this because I picked up this book.  I saw the author's name and I thought it rang a bell.  My internal dialogue went something like this:  "This is the Charlaine Harris that writes a series of very popular books whose main character is Sookie Sackhouse.  It seems like everyone has read them but me.  The TV show is wildly popular and heck, they even spoof the main character on SNL.  Late night hosts are always making fun of her and her big hair, tacky clothes and horrible Jersey accent.  I'll read this and then review it and maybe post it with a cool You Tube video from the show.  Yes, this is perfect." 

Um, no.  Not so much.  That would be Snooki from the Jersey Shore.  Sookie Sackhouse is actually a vampire (I had NO clue) and there actually IS a tv series about it (True Blood), except that it is not fodder for late night hosts (or at least I don't think it is). I had Snooki and Sookie all sorts of mixed up and I can't even tell you why.  My only excuse is that I am finally at the age where keeping up with pop culture has become less of a priority than doing laundry and paying bills.  So, imagine my surprise when I started reading this book and not only was it NOT a Sookie Sackhouse novel, it was an entire different series (Aurora Teagarden to be exact)! 

If I liked this book, maybe this story would have a happy (and less embarrassing) ending.  But I didn't and it doesn't.  The book tells the story of Aurora "Roe" Teagarden, a young, small town girl turned librarian in her hometown of Lawrenceton, Georgia.  A suburb of Atlanta, Lawrenceton rarely sees any excitement, let alone a murder.  But in this case, there are a series of murders all revolving around Roe and her after work club, The Real Murders Club.  Roe and her fellow crime buffs meet each month to analyze famous murder cases which is a seemingly harmless pasttime, right?  Unfortunately, someone has targeted the club and is killing them off one by one and patterning the murders after real-life cases they have studied.  Sure to be the next target, Roe races to find the killer before she is killed herself.

My first problem was with the club.  Couldn't she have belonged to something a bit more hip?  The poor girl is stuck in a boring town in Georgia.  Of course a murderer is going to target them...they like to sit around and talk about murder!  It was a little too convenient, in my opinion.  The least Ms. Harris could have done was make her a consenting member of a cool club. (This from the girl that was on the Quiz Bowl team in high school...but still)! 

Other problems for me included dull supporting characters, Aurora half-heartedly falling for two men (my literary pet peeve) instead of plunging in all crazy for just one guy and trying to spice up the ending by endangering a child.  No thanks.   A weak attempt was made at developing Aurora's mom in the book, but it just didn't pan out.  Their mother/daughter relationship could have been more utilized which would have added the pizazz that I think the book desperately needed.

To be fair, I think I will read an actual Sookie Sackhouse novel next.  It seems like the right thing to do.  Afterall, I thought I was picking up a book about someone from Jersey with a fake tan and an AquaNet addiction.  It can't be worse than that, can it?

New Year; new ways to feed your addiction

So we've all discussed how we kind of hoard books in all forms.  We read compulsively.  We like to talk to people about reading, particularly about books we have in common.  Or books we should have in common.  Talking about books feeds our reading addiction.  We talk about books to you and then you tell us about books you've read and then we have MORE books we want to read!  It's a wonderful, vicious cycle. 

Just to make sure this wonderful, vicious cycle continues, we're going to start giving books away.  (And if this makes us seem even more awesome than we already were, so be it.  We can handle it.)  We have books we want to give you.  Yes, yes, we're amazingly generous, it's true.  I mean, who doesn't want free books?!  OK, fine.  We might get a little something out of it......I guess it helps feed our addiction if you have books to talk about with us.  But really, we came up with the idea because we're awesome and we think you're awesome too.

Here's the deal
Once a month, one of us will write a review and then we'll run a give-away for that book or a related book.  For example, one month we might review a cookbook and give away the cookbook author's biography.  Or we might give away the actual cookbook.  We're crazy like that.  These are all books purchased by one of us (Amy, Carrie, or Sarah).  And in order to garner the free book you'll need to follow the guidelines in the review of the giveaway.  It's that simple.  Our first give-away starts now incidentally.  Just look below for Sarah's review of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and enter! We're that awesome.  And so are you.  But we have to warn you, this reading thing is addictive.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

The last one in the trilogy, and it was good enough that I found myself brainstorming about who I would like to have ghost write more books for this series.  It's not short and it's not short on characters, but it's still good.  Good enough to give away as a matter of fact!  More on that later....

Lisbeth Salander was left in a very precarious situation at the end of The Girl Who Played with Fire.  Seriously injured and in a huge legal mess, she wakes up in a hospital.  Though she's under arrest and guarded, she is unable to flee due to the severity of the injuries she sustained.  Even worse, the reason she's injured and in a legal mess - her father - is a few doors down recovering and plotting his revenge on her.  It's not a good place to be.  But things have been set in motion that are above and way beyond just Lisbeth and our intrepid journalist Michael Blomkvist.

Blomkvist is still digging up as much information as he can about Lisbeth's life and the circumstances surrounding the death of two of his friends.  He's being followed, as well as the rest of the staff at the Millenium, and his sister (acting as Lisbeth's attorney) is also being followed and is mugged.  His apartment has been broken into, his cell phone is tapped, and people are doing their best to undermine his investigation which happens to include an attempt on his life.  His life is also not a great place to be at the time.

However, through a long and ever-expanding list of characters, Blomkvist and Lisbeth manage to bring the truth to light.  I'm being intentionally vague because I don't want to ruin any of the suspense for anyone who hasn't read the book yet.  I really liked this whole series and that's due in part to the fact that I couldn't easily predict what was going to happen next.  I don't want to ruin that for anyone else.  My only complaint about the final installment of this series is that I felt like I needed to get a whiteboard and start charting the characters so I could keep track of everyone.  There are A LOT of people running around in the second and third books.  A LOT.  And in my expert opinion (I'm an expert at having opinions, not necessarily an expert about which I'm opining.), I'm not sure we needed all of the characters.  But overall, I was sad to finish this book.  I want there to be more, and not just because I want Daniel Craig to have more work.  Though that's certainly not a bad thing....

I'm giving this book away! I loved all three in this series.  The first one is currently in theaters if you somehow missed all the blathering on I've done about Daniel Craig.  And the third one can be in your hands if you get randomly selected.  How do you make this possible?  It's as simple as a few clicks of the mouse.
1.  Follow our blog.  You'll see the word "Followers" on the upper right of the blog, and if you haven't followed yet that's where you can get started.  Once you have become an official follower, or if you already were a follower, leave a comment on this post saying you follow The Family Addiction.  Please leave your email address in the comment as well so we can contact you if you win.  To reduce the likelihood of spam or scams, use this format: youremailaddress(at)youremailservice(dot)com.  As an example, luvrbooks(at)gmail(dot)com.
2.  Doing that is one entry.  For another entry, Like our facebook page.  You can find it here.  Then leave a comment that you're an official Liker along with your email address.
3.  That's two entries if you did all that by Wednesday, January 4, midnight CST!  We'll randomly select from the entries that are there by Wednesday, January 4, midnight CST and notify a lucky Follower/Liker/Commenter by email.
Any questions?  Leave a comment or email us and we'll get right back to you.  Promise.  We're addicts but we take our addiction seriously.  And just to prove it, here's some more Daniel Craig.