Pick the Winners!

Children’s Book Week is coming up in May (more on that to come), but one of the best parts of that week is awarding the Children’s Choice Book Awards.  And how are those books selected? By you!

So, check out the nominees…

And then get your sibling, child, niece, student you tutor, random kid on the street, etc. to vote! There are soooo many good choices!

P.S. I had the chance to meet Jarett J. Krosoczka (nominee and gala host) last November at the Connecticut Children’s Book Fair. He’s just as charming and funny in person. And his books are hilarious! 

I Love My Credit Card

You will rarely find a person who says this- but it’s true: I love my credit card! Why? Because I get points back and those points are redeemable for Amazon gift cards, as well as a host of other things, but the key part here is that I get ‘free’ books! I use my credit card normally and every six months or so I get $50 of books! Yay! This week I got Beauty, Nightshade, the first three books in the Mortal Instruments series and Fire in the mail.  I’m going to have lots of happy reading weeks all thanks to my credit card….

Bad Reviews

A little while ago there was quite a flurry of responses about the existence, or lack thereof, of the YA Mafia. YA Highway did an excellent job of staying on top of all the blog posts related on that topic, so I’m going to steer clear of it. You don’t even need to know what the YA Mafia is for this post; I’m only going to highlight one facet of the conversation: bloggers that give bad book reviews.

This topic is actually is quite timely for me. The most recent reading roundup is the first time I’ve outright expressed my dislike for a book on this blog. Not only did I give my first negative review, I also gave a mediocre one. Up until this point all the reviews I’ve written (and every single book I read gets a review) was either a) glowing b) kind or c) one of the above but with a few aspects that needed improvement. I was on a great reading streak – I more or less loved every book I had read since August!

It was bound to end. I read the book that I didn’t like and wrote my blurb as always, only to realize that it was nowhere near my usual positive review. Bad reviews, by important reviewers or influential authors (that’s where the YA Mafia comes in), do have considerable impact on whether some people will pick up the book. I don’t pretend that my words have that kind of power, but whatever I write online can be read by anyone – the author, the editor, a potential reader – anyone.

What if, somewhere down the line, someone googles my negative review and judges me for it? What if I interview for a job under the book’s editor? What if I publish a book and want the author to blurb it? What if what if what if! You could ‘what if’ yourself into silence.

There were choices. I could have lied, or sugar coated the truth, or even avoided reviewing the book at all. But here’s the thing: I’ve reviewed every single book I’ve read since August. It wouldn’t be fair to you if I glossed over the books I dislike: how else will you know whether or not you can trust my book opinions?

And there’s the most important part of reviewing. What I say about the books are MY opinions. They’re not HarperCollins’s (see my handy dandy disclaimer that hangs out at the bottom of my blog), nor are they regurgitated from other book blogs – they’re mine and mine alone. I give you reasons why I think what I think, and then it’s your turn to read the book and form your opinions. Everyone has opinions and no one is going to like every book they read. So if you agree with my review, great! And if you don’t, let’s discuss it: leave a comment on the post! An open dialogue provides the best resource for potential readers to judge reviews for themselves.

In a While, Crocodile

Fact: I’m going to away this weekend to visit my best friend/ four-year-college roommate/ fellow book lover! I’m SOOOOO excited (to quote a fantastic Easter book coming your way in 2012). I’m going to be on a slight post hiatus because of all the fun and busyness, but I’ll be back soon!

Ice Cream

No, this is not where I’m going to share my favorite homemade ice cream recipes (but that can be arranged at a later date if you’d like), but rather the title of this post refers to soon-to-be-huge author of Divergent Veronica Roth’s brilliant blog post.  This post was written way back in October and I wanted to respond to it, comment on it, do something, but it was so brilliant yet simple I felt that I could not match its eloquence. 

I’m not going to try to now, either.  The gist of what Veronica says (but please read her post) is: you have to go out and do things in order to be able to write well.  Experiencing new things gives people (and therefore writers!) a fuller understanding of the world that they can write about to give their books more depth.  Don’t just sit in your house and write all day, every day.  Fly a kite! Move to Eastern Europe! Try Korean food! Volunteer at an elementary school! Do something! (Just to be fair, Beth Revis [Across the Universe] gave the same boiled-down advice during the Breathless Reads tour a few weeks ago that reminded me of Veronica’s post.)

I completely agree with this advice, and it’s always interesting to me to see how what I do influences my writing.  Here are a few recent examples…

The Rose of Coracus (WIP)

·      Read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and realized that maybe the oomph needed as a climax in my novel was a little revolting and rebellion. Not full-blown and horrifyingly violent like in Mockingjay, but the idea is there.  The same can be said about Katniss and Prim’s relationship inspiring me to build up Shayna and her sister Minna’s.

The Lady and the Unicorn’s Lover (WIP)

·      Read Tracy Chevaliar’s historical fiction novel, The Lady and the Unicorn, then saw the famous tapestry in the Cloisters Museum in New York, then wrote a term paper about medieval tapestry for my art history class in London, which inspired the playful title of my novel.

·      Watched the wonderful British TV series, Downton Abbey, which inspired me to increase how much the servants’ lives (beyond the main character) are depicted.

Untitled Picture Book Idea #1

·      I bought new socks the other day.  They’re made from bamboo.  I suggested (hopefully) to my boyfriend that pandas would now become attracted to me and follow me home. This seems like a playful premise for a children’s book.

Untitled Contemporary YA Series #1

·      I was thinking recently about my church youth group and some of the wonderful experiences we had together during middle and high school.  There were also a lot of serious issues that had to be dealt with. Since there’s been a lot of talk about teens wanting stories about real kids (not rich/ famous ones) and/or novels that deal with ‘problems’ I’ve been wondering if my experiences with that group could be the basis of a series.

Untitled Contemporary YA novel #1

·      My boyfriend has a crazy roommate. The roommate doesn’t have any social skills, barely speaks English yet reads classics (like the tome Gone with the Wind-only people like me read that!), and keeps very strange hours (often returning to the apartment at 4am only to leave again at 7am).  Thus, the currently theories are that he is either a spy from a foreign country or a vampire.  He’s great source material for some sort of story.

So, there you have it, by reading books, watching tv, visiting museums, studying, buying socks (!), socializing and just living- aka not writing- I’ve come up with plenty of story ideas and ways to make my writing fuller. 

Mmmmm….and now I want vanilla ice cream with peanut butter cups and chocolate swirls!

Reading Roundup

Jane by April Linder

In this modern retelling of the classic (and one of my favorite books of all time) Jane Eyre, plain Jane Moore has to drop out of school and become a nanny for rockstar Nico Rathburn’s daughter, Maddy.  To be clear, I never would have picked up this book had it not been a retelling- the plot on it’s own doesn’t appeal to me and although I have reservations about retellings, I can (and do) appreciate how the author manipulates and expands the story to suite their purposes (if you haven’t read another retelling of Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, I recommend it for its unique take on the story and beautiful language).  All that being said, Jane still didn’t work for me.  It’s a very quick and fun read, but that’s where the positives end. The writing was often unpolished and awkward; for example, every time Jane has a drink of water (it’s quite often!) she realizes how thirsty she was and the metaphors for sex are painful (“[I] let him unmake me into a thousand glittering pieces” [244]).  Worse, though, was the fact that Jane Eyre and Rochester’s relationship just didn’t translate well to Jane Moore and Nico Rathburn’s. It is difficult to pick up on Jane’s feelings for Nico unless you know the original and then they go from confessing their love, to having sex, to attempting to get married in a span of twenty-four hours. This is the twenty first century! She’s a well educated Sarah Lawrence girl, who’s never had a boyfriend. Her financial prospects might not be bright, but she was working towards a better future through hard work and effort- and then she sleeps with her significantly older employer and plans on getting married at age nineteen! The modern retelling aims to be realistic, and this had red flags all over the place for me. Normally my reviews aren’t so long, or so harsh, but I was quite disappointed with this cheesy book.

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

When I picked up this book knowing that it was about a modern teen and a teen during the French Revolution, I expected traditional alternating chapters from each character’s point of view. I was so wrong. This is the first young adult book I’ve read in a while that felt like it had substance. Don’t get me wrong- I love YA, and I know a lot of YA novels deal with important issues well, but Revolution was much heavier and denser (literally- it’s nearly 500 big pages- and figuratively) than most novels that deal less successfully with the same subject of grief. Not only does Donnelly edgily explore modern day Brooklyn teen Andi’s depression after the death of her brother, but she also weaves together the musical history of a 18^th century composer and the story of Alex, a teen during the French Revolution determined to help Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette’s ill-fated son, the dauphin. Donnelly’s novel might be a tad too ambitious as the novel is really long and the multiple storylines a little difficult to follow, but the message and conclusion of the novel- through all the revolutions that take place- are incredibly satisfying.  A recommended read.  (Historical Fiction Challenge Book #1)

Her Fearful Symmetry  by Audrey Niffenegger

I was so excited about this novel. It’s by the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife (a MUST read) and takes place in London/Highgate Cemetery, an area that I love. This novel, though, didn’t work for me. It’s very episodic, to the point that I felt like I was missing major character developments and I would flip back thinking that the pages had stuck together. I just didn’t understand why the characters acted the way they did and the promised “romance that transgresses all natural barriers” (quote on the back of the book by Ron Charles, The Washington Post) was not romantic or compelling at all.  Without giving too much away, you barely see the two as a couple during the entire story! I sobbed after reading The Time Traveler’s Wife. I was vaguely curious reading this novel.  The twist at the end helps redeem Her Fearful Symmetry, but not enough for me to recommend anyone read this book.

Manuscripts: 5

Reading Is Making You Fat

How’s that for an eye-catching headline? And I hate to say it, but in some ways, I think it’s true (after all, this is Fun ‘Fact’ Friday). Reading, and writing, is a sedentary activity. People say, “curl up in bed with a good book” not “let’s go on a hike with our new book!”.  And, in the past couple of months, I’ve seen myself gain a tiny bit of weight. This clearly does not have anything to do with my unrelenting sweet tooth.  It has much to do with the fact that I wake up, walk five feet to the subway station, sit on the subway for thirty minutes, walk briskly for ten minutes to the office, sit at a desk for eight hours, walk briskly for ten minutes to the subway station, sit on the subway for thirty minutes, walk five feet to my apartment, cook dinner, and then, more often than not, sit down to read a manuscript or read a book or write a blog post or write my story. Sit sit sit sit sit!

I’ve tried to come up with a solution to this, but it’s hard!  I need to be reading and writing- it’s not (just) that I’m lazy and like lying in bed all afternoon (who doesn’t?). My best solution so far?  Audiobooks.  They can go anywhere with you- on a walk, to the gym, you can even listen while you’re vacuuming.  You can be active AND read!  Lately, I’ve been listening to White Cat by Holly Black on my commute and have surprisingly loved it.

I never thought I’d like audiobooks. I am very much a visual learner and I thought I’d get lost listening to a book rather than reading the text on a page. Not so! If you have hesitations like me I suggest you try one audiobook first before brushing the concept aside.

The one downside is that audiobooks are expensive.  From Amazon, White Cat will cost you around $30 for CDs or $23 for a direct download to your computer. I got mine for free with a 30-day trial to Audible.com. It’s a great way to test whether audiobooks work for you or not! Be forewarned, though, that Audible.com is an Amazon.com company and even if they don’t ask for your credit card information, Amazon.com has it on file to automatically pay for your membership when your free trial is up. (Yep, had to make some angry phone calls about that mishap). But the library always has audiobooks, too!

Oh, and if you still need a solution for the sit sit sit-ing of writers, author Helene Boudreau has come up with a solution (Thanks to upcoming Katherine Tegen author of Incarnate, Jodi Meadows, for tweeting about that ages ago).