 |
| This is a cat dressed like Edward Cullen. These pets in literary-inspired costumes are ridiculously amusing. |
Ready for a roundup of all things book, literary, reading, and otherwise worth clicking? I’ve got a mix of all kinds of stuff to share.
- Remember a few weeks ago that survey about book blogging? The results from that survey are in, and it’s interesting to see how long people have been blogging and what’s made their blogging change. Anyone who blogs goes through times of feast and times of famine, and it’s comforting to look at these results and feel like you’re not alone in those experiences.
- We don’t cover middle grade much here, but I do like to keep tabs on it. Angie Manfredi has a really nice reader’s guide for those who are looking for the next books to read or give to readers who love the Percy Jackson series. And if you haven’t been following Sarah Thompson’s excellent “So you want to read middle grade?” series, you should.
- If you haven’t read Eliot Schrefer’s New York Times piece about the value of YA books, it’s a good one. No confessional or persuasion here. Just reason.
- “It’s amazing how many different ways you will hear this kind of sentiment leaving the mouths of a disappointing amount of people. Another book about a girl falling in love. Another book about a girl with trauma. Another book about mean girls. Oh no not another book about a girl that is breathing and alive and on and on and on. Why write them? When is enough enough with these girl stories? I think I was ready for just about anything in terms of push-back relating to the questions I hoped my work was asking about gender expectations and stereotypes relating to girls, but I was not prepared to hear those questions weren’t worth asking in the first place.” Courtney Summers’s excellent post about writing for girls has got me thinking about how we as readers interpret, react to, and invest in stories about girls. There’s a LOT to dig out here.
- Follow up reading that post with this one by A. M. Jenkins who talks about writing girls and writing boys in YA fiction and the different reactions and responses to them.
- Malinda Lo looks at a decade of slow but steady change when it comes to LGBTQ books and mainstream publishing. Charts, graphs, and data that is more than worthwhile to think about.
- A look at what it’s like to be the ghostwriter for V. C. Andrews. This is a neat little piece, and I especially find it interesting the bit about needing to take so many copious notes since fans notice little things, like the change in eye color of a minor character.
- Elizabeth Wein looks closely at who is buying YA books — is it really as many adults as we’ve made it out to be?
- So is it a microtrend (or a full-blown trend?) that YA horror series that used to be popular are being rebooted? I blogged about it earlier this month, and that was before news of R. L. Stine would be reviving his “Fear Street” series.
- Here are 6 fun and interesting charts and info graphics about YA fiction. While I am on the topic of visual information presentation, allow me to point you in the direction of two awesome infographics about YA lit from Molly Wetta: Choose your own YA Apocalypse and What would Katniss read?
- What must it be like to be a male cover model on a YA book? There’s an interview for that.
- I read three great posts this month about the notion of impostor syndrome and what it feels like to never feel like you’re enough (or that you’re faking it all). Cory kicks it off, followed by this post by Abby, and it wraps up with a post by Char Booth.
- Design*Sponge is one of the blogs I regularly read that has absolutely nothing to do with books (and I LOVE it so much). But recently, they had a really fascinating piece about book covers and what they do or don’t do in today’s world. It’s interesting to read about this from outside the book world. This is nice long-form journalism.
I’ve had a number of posts over at Book Riot these last couple of weeks, too. I’ve talked about what happens when fans are disappointed by the finale in a book series (without spoilers), I created a downloadable crossword puzzle and reading list to YA zombie lit, the differences between criticism and censorship, and I made a booklist of YA stories set in 24 hours or fewer.
Have you read anything great in the last couple of weeks I should know about? I’d love to know in the comments!