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Welcome to The Personal Book Shopper Contest!

To recap, we know word-of-mouth is the #1 one way readers find their way to their next book. And we know that if you're into social media, you're used to sending out the call for recommendations of one sort or another. So to hearken back to my earliest days as @BookMadam, I'm going to hook you up with some good books. It's the personal touch.

How does it work?

We're inviting readers to submit a few "choice words" to describe themselves. Have a deep think and get as creative as you'd like. Using those words, I, along with a rotating door of readers, publishers, booksellers, authors, bloggers, librarians—you name it—will attempt to come up with not one but three books we think you might like . . . and then we're gonna give 'em to you! We'll choose three winners per contest. Counting on my fingers, that's, yep, nine books given away each month. Even if you don't win, you'll still walk away with a new reading list!

And the first contest begins . . . now!

Enter in one of three ways:

1) Twitter: Follow @CdnBookshelf so you'll never miss our news and announcements. When each Personal Book Shopper Contest is announced, using the hashtag #mybookshopper, reply to @CdnBookshelf with a minimum of five choice words to describe yourself.

2) …

Welcome back to The Personal Book Shopper Contest! I'm your host, Julie Wilson (@BookMadam).

Every month, we ask readers to imagine a world—walk with me—a world in which a rotating panel of librarians, booksellers, publishers and authors put on their collective thinking hats (and feeling hearts) to select three books each for three randomly-selected winners based solely on five words those readers submitted to describe themselves. You can imagine, it yields a wide variety of results, which is just how we like it!

Check out June's results to see how it all went down.

We've fired up a Facebook event for July's contest and already a few early birds have shared their words. Here's a sample: natural nomad -- greeniac -- circular rainbow; yackademic, energetic, optimistic, apoplectic, winsome mystic, goofball; tenacious, optimistic, thoughtful, good listener, sensitive.

What are your words this month? To enter:

1) Add your words to this month's Facebook event here. (Feel free to "Share" the event with your friends!)

2) Reply to @cdnbookshelf on Twitter with your five words and the hashtag #mybookshopper.

Get to it, word nerds! (She said with much affection.)

Contest closes tomorrow: Wednesday, July 20 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

This month's winners, along with our guest panel, will be revealed this …

Congratulations to the winners of July's Personal Book Shopper Contest!

Our panelists went to their corners, their hidey-holes, their secret places and have come back with their individual picks for each winner, using only five words! Crazy!

Let's meet our panelists:

Door #1: Corey Redekop writes sometimes (see: Shelf Monkey), publicizes the works of others more often (see: Goose Lane Editions), and aggrandizes himself most of all (see: his inflated sense of self-worth [you can see it from space!]). (Ed. Corey submitted his own bio. I can only see his sense of self-worth on sunny days between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Get on it, Corey!)
Door #2: Ryan Deschamps is twitterin' knitterin' former Haligonian, new Reginian librarian, who likes readable non-fiction, zombies and super heroes.
Door #3: It's a new car . . . and Steph VanderMeulen, indie bookseller, book blogger at Bella's Bookshelves and freelance copyeditor.

Our winners:

Shelley Savor: readaholic, greenishblue, curious, driven, pensive
Tracey G. Paris: Swims deep but loves deeper.
Avis Anderson: quiet, quirky, questioning, québécoise, quibbler

Corey's Picks:

Shelley Savor: readaholic, greenishblue, curious, driven, pensive
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, (Penguin) by Stephen Marche
The World More Full of Weeping, (ChiZi …

We know word-of-mouth is the #1 one way readers find their way to their next book. If you're on Twitter or Facebook, you've at one time asked for a recommendation, whether for yourself or as a gift. Your local bookseller can certainly help you come to a conclusion, as well as one of your library's reading advisers. You can even go direct to a host of social media savvy publishers who have people available to help you make a choice from their own list. But we also know that in many cases that decision is influenced by a person close to each reader, often someone with whom the reader keeps intimate company. To that end, we'd like to introduce you to a veritable book brothel of advisers lead by Canadian Bookshelf Host, Julie Wilson, a.k.a. @BookMadam, and her rotating cast of booksellers, librarians, authors, publishers and bloggers. (Those who have been following Julie for some time will know this is how she got the moniker "Book Madam," after a series of online contests with Indigo and McNally Robinson booksellers.)

How does it work?

Think, what if you could submit a few "choice words" to a personal book shopper—#mybookshopper—someone who wanders off into the bookish wild armed with only those words, to return sweatier and disheveled, hoisting a book over her head picked fresh …

The day has arrived! Our panelists for the June edition of The Personal Book Shopper Contest have come back with their picks for this month's winners.

Remember, we do this all again next month. Mark your calendars for Tuesday, July 19 at 10:00 a.m. and look to us on Twitter at @cdnbookshelf and on Facebook for reminders.

Let's meet the panelists again, shall we?

Shelley Macbeth is the force behind one of my favourite independent bookstores, Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge, ON.
Aaron Brown is the force behind the CanLit blog The Canadian Book Review.
Julie Forrest is the force behind—I'm sensing a theme here—the litblog Read, Play, Blog and the Founder of the This Ain't Your Mother's Book Club. (She's also a publishing professional known to just about every blogger across this great country.)
Ashley Winnington-Ball is the force behind the entire Universe. Oh, fine. She's just severely well (and widely) read and one ridiculously good jewellery designer.

Now to the picks! Each winner will receive four books as selected for them by our panelists. And you, dear Reader, will walk away with a recommended reading list of one, two, three, four . . . twelve books!

Steve Vernon, the panelists have spoken. Your words are: bearded, big-bellied, blustering blowhard of bookstores. These are your b …