Amanda Hocking

I have good news! The release date for the St. Martin’s edition of Switched has been bumped up from January 24th to January 3rd! That’s a whole three weeks earlier!

Word on the street is that the reasoning for this is because a major retailer wanted to give Switched a big push, and they didn’t want it so close to the Hunger Games film release, so Switched doesn’t get eclipsed by all you Hunger Games fanatics.

And me, I’m excited about it because I won’t have to wait so long for you guys to read the books. I’m on pins and needles waiting for you all to check out the three brand new short stories and a couple choice extended scenes in each of the books.

Onto the second bit of good news – OMFG! Have you checked out blink 182’s new album “Neighborhoods?” It’s crazy awesome.

I’ll admit to being at first skeptical that blink would ever come out with a new album, and then afraid that it wouldn’t be any good. But it totally picked up where their last album left off 8 years ago, and it exploded into something awesome and better. They managed to combine my favorite parts of both Mark and Tom’s side projects – (+44) and Angels and Airwaves, respectively – into their new music but still keep it sounding uniquely blink.

If you haven’t bought the album yet, go buy the deluxe version. It’s completely worth for the bonus track “Fighting with Gravity,” which I am ridiculously in love with.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, and it’s very interesting. I want to start a book club to talk about because none of my real life friends have read it. After that, I plan on reading Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt. It’s gotten some flack over the years, but I think it’d still be a worthwhile read. So if you want to get in on the book club, that’s what’s next.

Also, I’m not taking a vote on what we read for this book club. I’m just picking things that I feel like reading, and asking you to join me. You don’t have to. But if you want to, I’d like it. Right now I’m going through a WWII phase. It happens.

I’m congruently re-reading Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut along with Auschwitz, because it’s such a fabulous book. But reading Mother Night along with actual accounts of what happened in WWII really adds a whole new layer to the book. I’d highly recommend it.

In conclusion: Switched out January 3, 2012! Go buy blink 182’s Neighborhoods (Deluxe Edition)! And read Auschwitz if you want to join my unofficial book club!