Badges, we have badges!

Thanks to Eva at http://astripedarmchair.wordpress.com/ and Care at http://bkclubcare.wordpress.com/ the NZ Book Month challenge has BADGES!!!! LOOK at the PRETTIES .... choose your favourite. Play along! Celebrate the Kiwi awesomeness! :D

Business Time

OR ... the NZ Book Month challenge, if you want to be all formal and stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOohBytKTU

Edited to add ... and LOOK at this awesome button that Care made for it. How can you say no to jaffas? NO ONE can say no to jaffas:

October 1 marks the start of NZ Book month: http://nzbookmonth.co.nz/ Chatting with Care - http://bkclubcare.wordpress.com/ - on Twitter yesterday, I happened to mention this, and idly suggest I might run a mini-challenge for October. She offered to help, and automatically gets jaffas just for that (see near bottom of post).

And so, here we are. :) Um. This is pretty much on the fly, but here's the plan:

During October, read one (1) book by a Kiwi author (there's a very helpful post about that right here: http://justaddbooks.blogspot.com/2009/07/care-package.html) and I believe the origins of this was borne out of a Weekly Geeks.

Anyway.

Part the second (2nd): Watch a Kiwi film, or a film by a Kiwi writer/director. Therefore, the LOTR movies count. (Anything from Peter Jackson ALWAYS counts.) As does The Truman Show ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/ - the screenplay writer is a Kiwi); the Shrek films (the co-director is a Kiwi); the Narnia films ... OR, really go Kiwi and try and dig up something like Goodbye Pork Pie ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082464/ - my hometown is featured at the end) or Once Were Warriors ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110729/)

Part the third (3rd): Listen to some Kiwi music. Once again, I have a blog post featuring said Kiwi music: http://justaddbooks.blogspot.com/2009/05/music-munday.html although I'm sadly lacking in this area. However, go forth, and google. Kiwi musos are AWESOME. Seriously. Try Midnight Youth, or Kids of 88 (their song My House is really catchy) or Gin Wigmore. Or Steriogram. Or Computers Want Me Dead.

Choose one, two, or all of the above. Or, hell, watch the first series of Flight of the Conchords.

I'm offering options because although it's New Zealand Book Month, we Kiwis are a diverse lot.

Um. There'll be a giveaway at the end of the month. I'll send out ... jaffas, or something. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffas_%28candy) Yeah. I'll send everyone who joins (pleasedontlettherebehundreds) a packet of jaffas at the end of October.

Kiwi as. "You're not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata!"

Plus also, if some creative person could make me a badge of some kind using the above picture - I'd be really grateful.

AND ... play. You know you want to ... one month. A little slice of Kiwi life ... go ooooooooooooooonnnnn.

To play, sign up in the comments. Or smack me in the face on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/home

New Zealand Book Month

I meant to blog about this earlier in the week but ... I had a skydiving accident. (Not really but it sounds better than ''I forgot'').
So. September is New Zealand Book Month. To celebrate, I'm reading a couple of mysteries by Ngaio Marsh, beginning with Artists in Crime, which I started today.
I'm also planning to re-read Dreamhunter, by Elizabeth Knox, and then read the sequel, Dreamquake.
That may be all I get through, but I'm hoping for more, as always.

If you feel like hugging your Kiwi authors, try Janet Frame, or Lloyd Jones. Or any of Maurice Gee's books _ I can particularly recommend Under the Mountain and The Halfmen of O trilogy _ all YA fiction, and all on my September list.

Or Witi Ihimaera, who writes prose like its poetry _ he's one of my personal favourites.
Or ... I could go on. Visit www.nzbookmonth.co.nz and hug a Kiwi today. :)