Just because I’ve been MIA from the blogosphere doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading the hell out of new YA books or stalking the upcoming releases. In fact, these are my top picks for the rest of this year.
Have I missed any? Let me know in the comments!
Jackson Pearce’s book SWEETLY was released this week! I can’t wait to read this! The cover is gorgeous and I loved Sisters Red.
This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein by Kenneth Oppel – Oh how excited I’ve been for this book to finally come out! Like Sweetly, I’ll be buying this in hardback because I just really love this cover.
It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up.
As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, everyone’s motivations to survive begin to change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life–and death–inside.
When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?
(Because they are good for the soul)
Alex J. Cavanaugh is like, the master of blogfests and community ideas, and he came up with one that I am so in love with. I think all of us can benefit from getting involved in his Insecure Writer’s Support Group. From his blog:
“Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!”
The first post date is Wednesday, September 7th. For more info and to sign up, go here.
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Have you signed up for the Writers’ Platform-Building Campaign yet? Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve held out this long if you haven’t. But you’ve only got a couple of days left to give in, so you might as well make today the day 
See you there!
I am terrible, terrible, terrible about posting about awards I am given for my blog. I have a couple to post about not next week but the week after, so for those of you who gave them to me, THANK YOU SO MUCH I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN YOU. I just plan several weeks of posts in advance and then have trouble adapting when something like a cool blog award comes up. Since next week is Hot Dystopian Summer Nights, I’ll update my awards the following week. Thank you again, I love you all!
Merry December 1st everyone!
December means back to life as usual and I will no longer be posting every day. The practice of which, can I just say, is absolutely madness? Writing blogs every day is like having a second job that doesn’t pay anything but is at least populated by the best sort of people. I’m returning to Monday-Friday posting schedule starting December 6th. As a gift to myself, I am taking Thursday and Friday off to recharge and To Read Many Books.
Links! Giveaways! Contests! Excitement! Adventure!
This December I am going to post a series of “Top 5” book gift lists to help those who want to give books as gifts find books for a specific type of person. I’ll have a book list for:
And more, I am sure. If you have a list you’d like to see or have a picky reader you’d like help finding the perfect book for, post it in the comments and we’ll help you out!
No matter how the rest of 2010 was, I plan to see the final month of the year out with a bang. Who’s with me?
At the sci-fi fantasy convention I attended last weekend, one topic of conversation kept coming up over and over again between con guests, aspiring authors, and published authors. It even had its own panel on Sunday called “Vampires don’t sparkle” which I did not attend but pretty much got the blow by blow anyway at other panels.
I’m sure Stephanie Meyer doesn’t care what a bunch of sci-fi authors have to say about her at a convention in Omaha, Nebraska, but I did find myself on more than one occasion defending her and her books from the riotous mob. I even considered hijacking a panel at one point to throw down over this subject, but I minded my manners. The irony of this is that I’m not really a Twilight fan and have said so on more than one occasion. I think Mrs. Meyer’s writing is poorly executed and her glorification of an empty, co-dependent, watery girl and her dangerous, controlling, stalker boyfriend is a real problem for today’s teens. But to be fair, that’s not Mrs. Meyer’s fault. She wrote a book, our society made it a household name, and she can’t be blamed if anyone decides to emulate themselves or mold themselves after her stories, just as it wouldn’t be Cassandra Clare’s fault if someone decided they could totally make a motorcycle fly off a building, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fault if someone committed crimes based on the Sherlock Holmes mysteries. When you divorce the way the world has twisted her stories from the writing of said stories, what you get is a four book series that people have fallen in love with and spawned a whole generation of paranormal fiction for just about anyone’s taste.
What I heard were a lot of people talking about how Twilight ruined vampires, to which I argued: not really. I mean, if vampires were ruined they wouldn’t be the hottest selling ticket on the paranormal money train. The market wouldn’t be interested in them to the obsessive, singular way that they are. If anything, Twilight gave vampires a chance to really shine (no sparkle pun intended) and with it just about every other movie monster in the business.
Case in point: a coworker of mine hasn’t read a book for fun since she was in sixth grade. Her kids are older than she was the last time she read for fun. Also, she’s dyslexic which makes it so much harder to enjoy books in the first place. But she liked the movies and we got into more than one discussion about it because I don’t like the movies at all. At. All. Somehow I convinced her to give the books a try. And for a person who hasn’t read anything for fun since before she could legally drive, she devoured the first book and half the second in only a matter of days. So I have a real hard time backing the party that calls for Mrs. Meyer’s head because she ruined vampires. The evidence says otherwise and the only people who seem to hate her are other authors and people who like their vampires unromantic.
I even got into a discussion about how Twilight was sort of like the Nintendo Wii of the book world. It doesn’t have the juice to hold the attention of the hardcore readers, but the moms and dads and people who have never been for-fun-readers are pumping their money into a market that could really use the attention. And a lot of them are sticking around to see if there’s something else they might like.
And you just can’t argue with that, no matter how much sparkly vampires drive you crazy. There are so many people I have known that picked up Twilight and afterward made the jump to Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series immediately after, and from there The Hunger Games, Beautiful Creatures, hush, hush, and many others
I’ve convinced my coworker to go from Twilight to Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver series. And how cool is that?