Unshelved is sponsored this week by Shelf Awareness, daily enlightenment for the book trade. The Shelf, as it's known amongst publishers and booksellers, is a great daily read about books and the people who make, sell, and buy them. Head on over and sign up for a free email subscription so that you can start getting enlightened today!

The lifeblood of the Unshelved store is our stalwart store manager Jana, who answers our email and sends out packages. Said lifeblood will be away on vacation most of September and October and, while we'll still take orders, shipping will be rather intermittent during that time.

That's why we set the rather arbitrary sounding deadline of August 31 for our current store promotion. You'll get free shipping in the U.S. on all our books, including our newest collection Reader's Advisory and related book bundles AND you'll get timely delivery.

P.S. If you want to pay by check you should order even sooner, as we won't ship your goods until we've deposited your check.

Being the high-minded tolerant fellow that I am, I recognize that some people make different lifestyle choices than I. I'm a Twitter man through and through, but I accept that some prefer Facebook. (For those of you who do both: make a choice, will you?)

I exaggerate a bit - Facebook has been an invaluable tool for connecting with old friends, but I only check in there once a month or so. And I only accept friend requests from actual, well, friends. I've met so many people through Unshelved that I feel like I have thousands of friends, so for these purposes I've rigidly defined "friend" as "someone I've eaten a meal with." If I've ignored your friend request, that's why. You clearly need to buy me dinner.

But recently we've gotten an onslaught of requests to read Unshelved on Facebook. So now you can become a fan of Unshelved. If all goes well our strips and blog posts should start showing up in your feed or stream or whatever they call it in Facebook land.