Book Club Meet and Mingle

This is just a reminder for our first book club meeting on Saturday October 1, 2011 (4pm-6pm).  It will be a Meet and Mingle located at Zahra’s Books and Things 900 N. La Brea Ave Inglewood, Ca. (Map).

At the Meet and Mingle the book for October we will be reading will be announced and you will be able to purchase it there too.  10 copies of the book have been pre-ordered and will be there for purchase.  So with our 15% Mocha Girls Read discount it will cost only $21.00.  Please bring cash!

As of today, I have received 11 RSVP’s from Meetup.com and 4 Yes RSVP’s from Facebook and 8 maybe RSVP’s from Facebook.  We will have a full house!  (yippeee!!)  If you have not sent in your RSVP, please go to our Facebook page, Meetup.com page or just email me at mochagirl@email.com.  You only need to RSVP one time.

For parking, there is street parking in front of the bookstore and a large lot behind the bookstore that is free.

I’m so excited to see all of you Saturday and start the chit-chat about books n’ thangs. 🙂

♥Mocha Girl Alysia♥

New News!

Good morning ladies!  I just wanted to give you a few updates that are happening with Mocha Girls Read.  As you know we are having our first book club meeting this Saturday (from 4-6pm) where the book for the month of October will be introduced.  Please RSVP if you plan on coming so we have a seat and some eats for you.

We now have a bigger internet presents with the start of the Meetup.com group and the membership into Book Blogs group.  And this will be the first time we will be participating in a The Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-A-Thon.  There will be other reading challenges Mocha Girls Read will participate in as well.

Meetup is the world’s largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities.  Meetup‘s mission is to revitalize local community and help people around the world self-organize. Meetup believes that people can change their personal world, or the whole world, by organizing themselves into groups that are powerful enough to make a difference.

Book Blogs members read books, blog books, write books, and publicize books.  It is basically a forum of book related bloggers and writers come to together and help each other in promotion, advertising, tech issues and general cheering on.

During the read-a-thon we read books, post to our blogs about our reading, and visit other readers’ blogs.  We also participate in mini-challenges throughout the day (to win prizes).  It happens twice a year, in April and in October.  It was created by the beloved Dewey. The first one was held in October 2007.  Dewey died in late 2008.  The read-a-thon was renamed to honor its founder in 2009.  On October 22, 2011 the Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-A-Thon will start at 5am for Los Angeles.   If you want to learn more or sign up, click on the links or the button above.  You can check back here to get updates as it gets closer.

Feel free to check out the sites and join us there too.  You will always be able to access all sites via the buttons located in the right hand side menu.  I also wanted to let everyone know since our first day up and running a month ago (yes, we are one month old) we have had:

1,794 hits on the site

15 Website Subscribers

48 Facebook “Likes”

133 Twitter Followers

21 Good Reads Members

Wonderful job everyone!  I have to say, I’m completely thrilled and shocked everyday when I see the response Mocha Girls Read has received.  I am constantly encouraged to continue to get through the Mocha Girls Read To Do List when I see new Facebook Likes and members joining as well as all the emails from you ladies.  Thanks again for the love and support.  This is amazing!!

♥Mocha Girl Alysia♥  

Monday’s Memory for Sept. 26, 2011

Happy Monday everyone.  After spending Sunday at the Redondo Beach Lobster Festival eating too much, I completely forgot to post today’s Monday Memory.  Because it is hard to think when you wake from a food coma.

Thank you Mocha Girl Karen for sending the suggestion for today’s book.

So let’s take a minute to remember the good ol’ days before there was work.  Today we are talking about a book from wayyyy back in the day.  Check out Monday’s Memories and  give us your review, thoughts and memories on this Monday’s book.

If you have a recommendation for a Monday’s Memory feel free to contact us at mochagirl@email.com.

♥Happy Monday!♥

Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-A-Thon

It’s here! It’s here! Sign-ups are here!

If you input your email address, you will receive a reminder email on October 17th, the Monday before the Read-A-Thon. Your email will NOT be saved for future use. Your name linked to your blog/webpage will be published again to aid cheerleaders and mini-challenges, so please be sure to use a name or pseudonym that we can publish on 24hourreadathon.com.

The Read-A-Thon starts at Noon GMT, Saturday, October 22nd. See start time for your area of the world.

And while online participation is a huge part of the Read-A-Thon experience, it is not required. So this year, we’ll be placing forms for those who do not blog/tweet/Facebook to be able to participate in some mini-challenges and breaks, per requests from the April ’11 Read-A-Thon. These will be experimental, so please bear with us during our trials!

If there are any bloggers that are able, we would love it if you could post an announcement that you’re reading in the ‘thon with a link to this sign-up post, and encourage your readers to participate.

Thanks everyone! We’re really looking forward to the October ’11 Read-A-Thon!

Also, if you’re available to volunteer, we’d love to have your help. Check out the volunteer sign-ups if you’re interested with helping out with Co-hosting, Marketing, Prizes or Prize Angels, Mini-Challenges, or the ever-important Cheerleaders!

-From the Dewey 24 hour website.

Big Announcement!!

Today, all the pieces and parts have fallen into place and we are having our first book club meeting!!!

Our first meeting is going to be a LA: Meet and Mingle.  What is a Meet and Mingle?  Well we are going to meet and get to know each other.  The book club book for October will be announced as well as the follow-up meeting dates.  Go to the Book Club Meeting section for location, date and time information.  Members and non-members welcomed!

If you don’t live in Los Angeles, don’t worry, you can host a Mocha Girls Read Meet and Mingle as well.  Remember…where two or three are gathered…a good time can be had.  LOL!  🙂  Email me at mochagirl@email.com and we will assist you every step of the way.

Please RSVP via email (mochagirl@email.com), Facebook or GoodReads.  You only need to RSVP once.

The Innovative Toronto Public Library

Actor Jesse Martin *Sigh*

If you had a chance to check out a book by…let’s say…The Dali Lama for a few hours, would you get that much out of it?  What if you got the chance to check him out of the library?  YES!  What if you were doing a report for a research project about homelessness and poverty in your city?  Wouldn’t you get more information and first hand knowledge from a person that was or is homeless then pulling numbers off the internet.  What if you just wanted to learn how to juggle?  You might be able to learn it faster from a pro-juggler.

The Toronto Public Library held an event were you can not just check out Books, DVD’s, CD’s and computers but you can check out humans.  People.  Real ones!  Could you image?  (That is too cool for school!)  Just image all the different kinds of people you could check out.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to check out famous people too?  Check out Oprah on Monday to get you motivated for the week.  Check out Dr. Phil on Wednesday to give you some coping tools for that co-worker.  Then, check out Jesse Martin for some chit-chat on Friday. (I needed a reason to add his picture to one of these post.  LOL!!)

Too bad we can’t check out people who have gone on!  Like Ossie Davis, Harriet Tubman, and Josephine Baker.

"In our feedback from the Human Library event, we found that a good portion of users heard about it from social media," she says. "In the least personal, most mediated way, they found a way to have a very personal experience."

Take a look at this amazing article written by a young man who check out a human from the library.

Always innovative Toronto Public Library lets us check out humans as well as books.

Who would you check out?  Someone famous?  Someone who has gone on?

Everything On It!

On my drive into work today, I tuned to NPR (National Public Radio).  Yes, I listen to public radio.  When I am not interested in booty shaking music or jokes at 6:30am, I listen to NPR.  Anyways, this is not about NPR.  Today they did a 7 minute feature on the author, poet Shel Silverstein.

Silverstein was born into a Jewish family and had two children.  Later in life, Silverstein loved to spend time at his favorite places, such as Greenwich Village, Key West, Martha’s Vineyard and Sausalito, California. Silverstein continued to create plays, songs, poems, stories and drawings until his death in 1999. He died at his home in Key West, Florida on May 9, 1999,of a heart attack, and his body was found by two housekeepers the following Monday, May 10. It was reported that he could have died on either day that weekend.

Shel Silverstein—the late cartoonist, singer, songwriter, playwright, and mega-selling author of such classics as The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends—didn’t like children’s literature. Spoon-feeding kids sugar-sweet stories just wasn’t his style. Fortunately for generations of young readers, someone convinced him to do something about it—namely, break the mold himself. Using edgy humor, clever rhymes, and tripped-out drawings, Silverstein achieved the impossible. He bridged the worlds of adult and children’s art, while becoming wildly popular in the process.

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/31129#ixzz1YW3L1f1B –by mental_floss!

Shel Silverstein left behind a ton of unpublished poems and artwork.  In the past year his family has selected 145 of those unseen poems and drawings and have released the posthumous book  Every Thing On It by everyone’s favorite poet.

To hear the broadcast from today,  click on the NPR link where you will also hear a few poems read by his family.

NPR news broadcast about Everything On It!

NPR Blog about Everything On It!

Barnes and Nobles 30% off coupon for Everything On It!

Did you know:  His books were banned in many libraries

Shel Silverstein Book Cover

Monday’s Memory for Sept. 19, 2011

Happy Monday everyone.  Hope you all had a restful weekend and turned a lot of pages in great books.  I know it is hard getting back to work after the weekend.  So let’s take a minute to remember the good ol’ days before there was work.  Today we are talking about a book from wayyyy back in the day.  Check out Monday’s Memories and  give us your review, thoughts and memories on this Monday’s book.

If you have a recommendation for a Monday’s Memory feel free to contact us at mochagirl@email.com.

♥Happy Monday!♥