Thank you to the citizens of Panem who sent tributes from all 12 districts to take part in the first Bookmans Survive The Hunger Games. This event was created by fans for fans. No matter if you've seen the film or read the book, everyone recognizes the phrase, "May the odds be ever if your favor!" The odds were in everyone's favor as all survived the Hunger Games at Bookmans Mesa.

* By Sharla Miller, Bookmans Grant regular

Who eats Tofu anyway?

I was desperate to find healthy, well-balanced meals for my six-year-old who decided to become a vegetarian. The cookbook section at Bookmans offers an array of books to help me make healthy, tasty meals for the family to enjoy together. A Tofu Cookbook from the Soy Sisters and Friends is not only full of great recipes but each recipe is broken out into calories, protein, fat, cholesterol, fiber and sodium. As always Bookmans has exactly what I need, the helpful staff provide top-notch service and I pay half of the cover price for a book that has no signs of wear and tear.

Always a last minute shopper.

I have a hole the elbow of my favorite shirt.

However, my disappointment in this degraded textile situation is fleeting. I open my top desk drawer and pull out my travel sewing kit, pull out a strand of matching thread, and begin to wet the end with the intention of passing it through the eye of a needle. Then I stop, stare at the minute piece of stainless steel between my fingers and realize, there is probably a whole generation of folk who wouldn’t know the first thing about this archaic process.

(Admin. Note: This Veterans Day I decided to celebrate by puting to work one of my favorite "Army guys", as my nephew who is now an Army guy and war veteran himself used to call them. Andrew Ballenger has served the country in the military for over 20 years as both an enlisted man and an officer. He's a veteran of both Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and a voracious consumer of military writing.

He's also the brother of my favorite veteran, my husband Jesse. RB)

By Major Andrew Ballenger

In keeping with our nation's celebration of Veterans Day, I offer recommendations of four books of a military genre. I made huge omissions to limit the list to four as some of the best military texts were written by foreign soldiers. In keeping with our own holiday, I've kept it strictly to U.S. military subjects, but added a movie title bonus.

by guest blogger Andrea Beesley-Brown, Midnite Movie Mamacita

The 6th annual International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival took over MADCAP Theaters in Tempe for four nights of film, fun and mayhem! Thursday night kicked off with a screening of the Sci-Fi Office Comedy Drones with Adam Busch (co-director and actor) and Jordan Kessler (producer) in attendance. They shared their stories and experiences of being independent filmmakers and took time to take photos with fans after the screening. Bookmans' HSFFF guest pass winner fair Marlaina and her mother trekked down from Flagstaff to also attended the festival.

There are bad movies….and then there are really, really BAD movies. This week at MADCAP Theaters we explore TROLL 2 a movie so bad that you’ve probably never hear d of it or if you have seen it, it was hidden far back in the recesses of your mind. Well we are here to celebrate this cinematic monstrosity and we do so by screening it with the documentary exploring the cult phenomenon behind TROLL 2 called BEST WORST MOVIE. As an aspiring child actor Michael Paul Stephenson played Joshua Waits, the star of TROLL 2.

What do you get when you cross Fantasy with a Horror Film? In this particular case you get Hausu (House), a kaleidoscopic trip into a cinematic magical kingdom.

Made in 1977 by Japanese ad guru Nobuhiko Obayashi (director of the infamous Mandom commercials with Charles Bronson) Hausu is such a delight that after seeing it you will be left humming its catchy theme song.

We sent Gretchen (@nyazgirl) to VidCon2010. She got some awesome exclusive interviews with some great vloggers. It's funny, it's smart, it's the future of video... check it out:

Our guest blogger Gretchen (a.k.a. @nyazgirl) is at VidCon 2010 representing Bookmans. You can check out her first day's adventure's here:

I picked up a messenger-bag-full of Cyberfrog issues from Bookmans recently with the sole intent of lambasting them in this column to further my anti-Ethan-Van-Sciver-agenda.

For those of you who spend your free time talking to girls (or whatever it is people who don’t blast comic-book-centric podcasts on their stereo as loud as they can each night just to drown out the sound of their own sobbing do), Van Sciver is the current illustrator of Green Lantern for DC Comics.

Every hobby has a pecking order; whether you’re a hardcore gamer who scoffs at the occasional player, or you’re a lover of wine, judged harshly by the bouquet swirling wine connoisseur. As a lover of books, and avid reader since I could decipher the letters as a child, I knew the pecking order existed, but never knew to what extent until I bought a Kindle.

The only thing that makes living in Arizona tolerable is the handful of used bookstores scattered amongst the multitude of meth labs and Sonoran hot dog/ammunition stands that litter the landscape like so many would-be-immigrant bones in the Nogales Desert.

I don’t know how they survive in the state ranked 49th in the union for education and whose border militia dwarfs the Democrat population 6 to 1, but thank Rao that they do, ‘cause I don’t think I could make it through the week without them.

My absolute-hands-down-favorite of the lot is the Bookmans Entertainment Exchange stores, because entering one of their locations is like stepping through a stargate into a parallel world, wherein the concept of pawn shops was pioneered by a gang of good looking hipsters.

I could not let April glide past me without acknowledging National Poetry Month and the poet that changed my life.

I discovered Mary Oliver in the collegiate haze of words every English Lit major must wade through in order to find their own truth. I appreciated Keats, Yates, Donne, and their canonic cadre. And when I settled into my seat in “Literature about Nature” I expected nothing.

Her name appeared on a black and white syllabus.

Her book appeared on the bookstore shelf next to Foucault.

But her words.

Her words appeared in my brain with a slow percolation. A wide-eyed realization that something I had not planned to love, was inching its way into my soul.

So, you've done your homework. You read the previews months ago, then the reviews a week ago, then the user impressions days ago - but you're still understandably on the fence about picking up the latest tech toy. We've all been there, and after a week of owning my iPad, I'm here to give you the definitive answer! Possibly.

I've never seen a single device be so incredibly divisive, both in the tech community and in the minds of average consumers. If you tell someone you bought one, reactions range from excitement and jealousy, to the questioning of your sanity, and everything in between. Some of this, I believe, is due to Apple's absurd marketing campaign, which as history has taught us, will often serve to create an equal-and-opposite backlash. "Magical and revolutionary" it is not - at least not yet.

a guest blog by Mrs. Green (a.k.a. Gina Murphy-Darling)

What if more businesses decided to create more trade situations? Example: Bookmans in Mesa, Arizona. Not only do they have a cafe with great food (Mrs. Green has not tested it yet but stay tuned) and fair trade coffee, they accept trade-ins for food and drinks. I think they may be the first cafe in the country (maybe even the world!) to do that. Know of any others? Please post if you do.

And just running the numbers: Bookmans Entertainment Exchange has bought 21,951,188 items since January 15, 2005. I can’t get my head around how much “stuff” that would look like but talk about waste reduction!