Update: J R Crook has graciously offered to provide a signed paperback of his book for the giveaway, please read the amended details below.

Tomorrow marks 3 years of my writing this blog. I’d thought of changing my schedule to Thursday this week, to post on the day, but then I realised a lot of you might end up reading it on Thursday anyway, and changing schedules is always confusing.

To look at the date as that number, 3, makes it longer ago than it feels otherwise. I’m happy to be here and don’t intend to stop blogging any time yet. I love being a part of this community and have gained so much from knowing you all. Reading by itself enriches a life, blogging about reading magnifies that to limitless levels.

Some statistics because it’s always fun to look at them on these days:

• 385 posts have been published on The Worm Hole
• My very first post can be viewed here.
• At the time of writing this there were 1174 comments on the site.
• The most books I’ve reviewed by one author is 6, books by Elizabeth Chadwick.

The most viewed page, besides the home page, is my review for J R Crook’s Sleeping Patterns. Quite a feat for a post published only last September, and ironic considering I spoke to Crook only last week. In honour of my blog’s birthday, I am offering an ebook version of this book for giveaway, open internationally. In addition to this there is also a signed paperback copy of the book to win, too. There will therefore be two winners – the first will receive the paperback, the second an ebook. The winner of the ebook will be able to choose from Kindle, Nook or Kobo.

This is the sort of book that messes with your head in the best of ways. It stays with you for a while as you continue to work out exactly what happened and sort through the complexities. Hosting a story within a story within a story, perhaps the best aspect to use as a recommendation is to tell you that it is dedicated to the memory of the author – who, as just implied, is alive and well.

In order to be entered for the giveaway, simply leave a comment with your email address added to the comment itself. This giveaway is open until 11pm on Sunday 7th April BST. The winners will be chosen by a randomiser.

Please note that due to the amount of spam I’ve been getting I’ve set every comment that contains a link to moderation; if your comment with your email added doesn’t show up on the page for a while, don’t worry, I’ve received your entry :)

I’m typing this out a week before the week before Christmas because I just looked at the calender and can’t believe that there is less than a fortnight to go until Christmas day. I’ve all these reviews to post and didn’t think for a moment that they would have to wait until January.

Anyway, I’ll start in reverse, letting you know about the “blog-related things” first. Several days ago Trish tweeted me to ask if I’d ever considered adding a subscription for comments to this blog, and Bookworm joined in to second the request. I’ve seen the feature on blogs before but it had never occurred to me to use it here. So I did some research and, as you may have noticed, this feature has now been added. Adding it has made me realise that it’s a popular feature, as the plugin allows me to see how many people sign up and so far a fair few of you have. So I have to thank Trish and Bookworm for this as I feel it’s added something very positive to the blog, aiding discussion.

Regarding my blog’s design – the structure of it – I’ve been thinking for a while now that I need to get an archive list and search function to make the site easier to navigate. The reason I don’t have one is because I used a blank theme when creating the site and the coding for those features didn’t work; I never got round to sorting it out. I have tried a few times but where I haven’t done any coding for a while I’m a bit rusty. I’m hoping over Christmas I can get some help from my savvy boyfriend to work it out.

And I really want to get one of those plugins/features that open up a mini window when a person clicks on an image. The way I’ve currently got it, that you have to right click and open in a new tab, is really outdated. If anyone knows the sort of thing I’m looking for please let me know where to find it because the reason I’ve not done it yet is because I haven’t found it.

Christmas in my family has always lasted longer than a few days. We tend to spend as many days together between the 24th and the 1st as jobs will allow, and in addition to this I have my boyfriend’s family to see. Because of this I am going to take some days off from blogging. I may be back as early as 28th December, the latest I’ll be back will be 2nd January. No matter which, I intend to comment on some blogs during the holidays, and my break doesn’t extend to Twitter – I’ll be there to celebrate with you all.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

This photograph was taken by Xlibber.

I have been floored by the response to my request for guest posters. I received three posts and the subjects and quality of the content is absolutely fantastic. Let’s just say that I am possibly more excited about the fact that I’m able to show you these posts than I am about my holiday, but don’t tell my boyfriend that. The content fits this blog very well, and the reasons for this will be apparent from the schedule:

• Monday, 26th November, Alice will be explaining how reading is a social activity and why it is important. Writing both personally and generally, and including source work, she covers an issue I briefly discussed from a different angle and, dare I say, she does it far more adeptly.
• Wednesday 28th November, Chris has a travel piece for you all about the library at Kremsmunster Abbey. A combination of history and literature, I’ve seen the photographs and you don’t want to miss it.
• Friday 30th November, Meg will be talking about her trip to Cardiff Castle and a very appropriate reading of I Capture The Castle. A traveller’s tale, punctuated by journeying, historical information, and personal reflections, it made me realise ever more how lucky I am to have access to old buildings.

So there you have it, three posts by three talented writers, and a more varied week of content than I could ever produce alone. I leave this weekend and return the weekend afterwards with my November round-up, but I will try to be on Twitter if possible and also answer any emails that need speedy replies. See you soon.

This photograph was taken by Ardfern.

As long-time readers of this blog may remember, and newer readers will find out in the next clause of this sentence, the end of November plays host to my anniversary.

The past few years I have tended to simply leave the blog in silence, but this year, especially given my attempts at keeping to a schedule, I thought it might be an idea to ask if any of you would like to be guest writers. I think the blog could do with some different energy and having thought about guest posts for a while it seemed appropriate to use my holiday as a time when you all could run amok here and run me out of my own domain. The spammers that haunt my comment box will no doubt generously regail me of their adventures in drugs and fake designer handbags, so it would be nice to have some real good content to counteract it, and many of you are much better thinkers than I am.

So here’s the deal: I have 3 days up for grabs in late November: the 26th, 28th, and 30th, that I would love you to write for. And if I get more than three posts in response to this call, I have the week starting 2nd December that I could use a hand with, too.

I’m looking for any sorts of posts except book reviews, because this blog is going to become a review fest if I’m not careful. So if you want to write a book-related post, a bookish rant, a post about your life, a literary event, or even a look back at a holiday you took yourself, that would be great.

If you want to include a photograph(s) that would be great, too, though please make sure they are either your own, in the public domain (copyright exceeded), or from a photographer who has given permission in return for credit (in which case please include with your article the link you got the image from and the creator, if known). Of course if you’re talking about a particular book(s) you might want to include the book cover, which is fine. If you plan to use your own photographs and wish to watermark them that is of course okay, if you prefer not to watermark I’ll add a disclaimer to the end of your post/underneath the photo.

Write as much as you want. I’m prone to producing the odd 2000 word essay here, so by all means be as in depth or detailed as you like. Alternatively you can write something shorter, I’d give a rough guide of at least 300 words.

I would ask that you send me the finished articles before 22nd November so I’ve time to format and schedule them. If you want to pitch an idea before writing it, that’s fine. I’ll be linking to your blog and Twitter, and I’d rather like to include a short biographical note with the introduction to your posts, so if you’d like to write one yourself go for it.

You don’t have to be a blogger, but of course you might want to have some sort of online presence so that you can be properly attributed as the writer. I will aim to tweet the link to each post, but you may want to link to it yourself as well in case I can’t get online that day.

Please send all pitches, finished posts and extra information to books@carnelianvalley.com

I’ve never written one of these request posts before so I’m hoping I’ve given you the right information without excluding anything. If I have, feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Thank you and I look forward to reading your words.

Email subscribers, you will notice that your emails from The Worm Hole are coming from a new service, MailChimp. As Feedburner is closing down I decided to switch to a different service in advance so that there would be time for mistakes before finalisation. I’ve spent an hour or so on getting everything set up so hopefully it works and all of you are receiving this post in your inbox. If someone could let me know in the comments if they received this post in their inbox that would be very useful, as you know from the error there were issues to begin with.

To those of you who subscribe to this site via RSS/Bloglovin’ nothing should change for you because I only use Feedburner for email subscription. Incidently, I’m sorry if this post showed up and disappeared a few times in your reader as I had to unpublish it a couple of times when checking the email subscription.

As I haven’t had a chance to say it before, thank you to everyone who subscribes to this site or reads otherwise. Knowing you’re out there and reading my posts is absolutely awesome.