adjudicated and pinkfinity are asking about personal theme songs. I don't have mine available for downloading thank you, lauriegilbert! "Extraordinary" by Liz Phair:

I am extraordinary, if you'd ever get to know me
I am extraordinary, I am just your ordinary
Average every day sane psycho
Supergoddess
Average every day sane psycho

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Our home modem died. That was not fun. But I have a new one, yay! Only now I'm behind on email, boo!

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Work has not let up, and on top of all that I have to do on a daily basis I had the Office Plague last week. I will be very happy as of July when one of my biggest time-sucking commitments will come to an end. Normally I'm one of those people who isn't happy unless I'm way too busy, but this is kind of ridiculous.

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fasterthanlight asked me if I was still writing fanfic and the answer is YES! A more detailed answer is, "When I have the time, which is not as often as I'd like for it to be."

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Been following the fap over Orson Scott Card winning the Margaret Edwards Award and I have to say...I agree wholeheartedly with the Edwards committee. Card's personal views should have no bearing on receiving the award. Ender's Game absolutely fits the criteria of the award. Applause to the Edwards committee for doing a great job this year. I know one of the members fairly well and I know how hard she worked and how much serving on that committee meant to her.

Like this, only it's not Amy Winehouse.

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Reading:

Prey by Lurlene McDaniel. I wanted to read this the minute I heard about it. Basic plot: A high-school freshman begins an affair with his thirty-two-year-old history teacher. It's done in three voices: The boy, the teacher and the boy's best friend, who is the one who breaks the secret. It's a great premise and fabulous fodder for discussion written with terrible dialogue, superficial character development, and a predictable ending. Too bad, really. I didn't expect it to be Boy Toy, which was my favorite book of 2007, but I did expect that the teacher wouldn't sound like some professional seductress/evil overlord, and that the best friend would at least be likable (and not in the way where you like a person because you feel sorry for them).

Tyrell by Coe Booth (coebooth). DAMN. This book is STUNNING and I suggest that everyone go out and read it right now. This is easily one of the best first-person novels I've seen in a long time. Normally I like well-done first person because they show how unreliable narration can really drive the story, but in Tyrell's case I liked the first-person narration because it voiced not only Tyrell, but his friends and family and even his physical environment. I love that Booth didn't try to make Tyrell into some kind of Upstanding Teen Novel Hero, whose greatest aspiration was to go to Harvard and Make Something Of Himself. Tyrell wants to be a DJ like his dad and protect all the people he loves. More than anything Tyrell is honest and vigilant, and that makes the reader want to see him succeed at what he sets out to do. The only thing? I wish this were available on audio.

A Drowned Maiden's Hair: A Melodrama by Laura Amy Schlitz. I should have read this book when it first came out. I avoided it, I confess, because it's historical fiction and really long, and I'm no good at history. Doesn't matter with this book. Schlitz's writing is sublime. She has this incredible gift for writing settings so that the reader gets a clear view of what's going on but never once does said reader get bogged down in adjectives. Basic plot: a girl is adopted to help with the schemes of women who make their living as fraudulent psychics. But it's more than that. There's an overlying theme of morality and moral ambiguity, and cruelty and love. Melodramatic? Sure! But it's supposed to be, and it's amazing.

Airhead by Meg Cabot. Dead people and famous people are all the rage in YA lit, so how long was it going to be before we got a book about a dead famous person? This is a different turn for Meg Cabot. It's got her breezy, fast-paced edge but it's not fun and fluffy. Basic plot: Completely average high school student Emerson Watts takes a blow to the head while saving her sister from a falling plasma TV at the opening of a Stark Megastore. When she wakes up, she can't figure out why she's got a manicure and a craving for wasabi peas, and why everyone is calling her Nikki, as in supermodel Nikki Howard. This is definitely a fun and intriguing read, and I'm curious as to where Cabot will take the rest of the series. She's set us up to know that all is not right in Nikkiland, but we don't know how not-right, or who's behind it.

Next on the pile: He Forgot to Say Goodbye by Benjamin Alire Saenz; The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart...which I've had for seven months and still haven't read because I suck...and also I can't find mine :( ; Debbie Harry Sings in French by Meagan Brothers (good so far, but I'm only on page 10); Skin Deep by E.M. Crane, lots of others.

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and now...back to work

Tags: books 2008, books i'd pay retail for, memes, ya

Yesterday I:

Sat in the Lincoln Tunnel and panicked about being late for a book event.

Heard about a lot of cool upcoming books.

Had lunch with Jerry Spinelli, who is very wonderful.

Came back to the library and proceeded to a co-worker's wake.

Wrote 685 words of my reversathon fic.

Listened to a lot of Avril Lavigne.

Was reassured by lizzb that I am not, in fact, insane.

I think I now understand the meaning of the word "whirlwind."

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I went to the grocery store the other day and found a 20-ounce bottle of Vanilla Coke!! My happiness knows no bounds. Now all I have to do is find it in Diet and my life is perfect.

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Those of you who watch America's Next Top Model know who James St. James is. Who knew he was a writer as well as a style maven? His YA novel, Freak Show came out last week and I snagged a copy from a nearby library.

Let me tell you, people. This book is FABULOUS. DIVINE. GO OUT AND READ IT RIGHT NOW.

Plot: Redneck Florida is anything but ready for sixteen-year-old drag queen Billy Bloom. Influenced by his mother, Billy has grown up on a diva diet of sequins, of Westwood and wigs. Back in Connecticut, Billy was pretty free to be who he was, but when his unstable mother sends him to live with his old-money town-founder dad in Florida, his flamboyant outfits and Lizaesque dialogue make him the target of spitballs and beatings. When his classmates put him in a coma, the only people who stay by his side are Flip, the star football player and Blah Blah Blah, a gossip fiend who loves Billy's openness. Despite his classmates' cruelty Billy is determined to make it through school, and with Blah Blah Blah's help he concocts the ultimate be-yourself plan: He's going to run for Homecoming Queen.

Why you should read it, darling: The dialogue, both inner and outer, makes this book. It's over-the-top and spangled, just like Billy, but the book is just the right length to keep it from putting the reader off. The ending is just imperfect enough, and the...I'll call it a relationship to avoid spoiling you, gentle readers...between Flip and Billy is really well done, so teenage. Also, I don't know of any other YA books that fall in the "queer" description if you're categorizing LGBTI/GLBTQ books. Billy describes his sexuality as "largely theoretical," and rather than focus on the "OMG, what sexuality am I" aspect that a lot of other YA books do (which doesn't make them wrong or less important, just different from this one) it focuses on theories of identity, popularity, and friendship. Or at least, that's what's there under the satin and ruffles.

I also read Beauty Shop for Rent...fully equipped, inquire within by Laura Bowers, which I meant to post on earlier. I think what I'm finding in 2007 is that there aren't as many literary YA behemoths as there were in 2005 and 2006, but the "lighter" fare is amazing, so much better than it's been in years past. BSFR centers on fourteen-year-old Abbey, who is determined to escape a legacy of teenage pregnancy and become a millionaire by the time she's 35. She's wise about investing, works at her great-grandmother's (Granny Po) beauty shop, and saves, but all her careful financial planning can't seem to bring her the thing she wants most: her mother. When thirty-one-year-old Gena rents Granny Po's beauty shop and gives it the makeover of a lifetime, everyone in Abbey's circle of friends and family is transformed in ways that were impossible before paraffin treatments. The intergenerational relationships are sheer delight, and Abbey's angst over her mother is realistic but doesn't make you want to throw yourself out the window, either. Again, a great book for discussion, especially mother/grandmother/aunt/significant elder female-daughter/granddaughter/niece/young woman you're mentoring book groups.

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Today, I heard a tale from a YA librarian in the Midwest who is facing a parent who wants to ban a graphic novel from her library. This parent believes that no person, child, teen, or adult, should read this particular graphic novel and it should not be in the library in any section. (I don't want to go into what the GN is, but I will say that I know many teens who love it and it's certainly appropriate for a teen area; I bought it for my last library.) The librarian, superheroine that she is, did everything all librarians are supposed to do when faced with a challenge to materials: She collected reviews, articles about the importance of GNs in libraries, and lists of recommended GNs that include the challenged novel. She informed her director about the challenge, and her director stands behind her, which is good because...

The parent will have no part of any of the librarian's reasoning. The graphic novel corrupts society, said the parent, and the librarian could never understand and is not truly qualified for her job because she...

...wait for it...

is not a parent.

How APPALLING is that???

I told some of my coworkers, all of whom have children, about the parent's reason for not listening to the librarian, and they all thought it was horrible. I can sympathize very much with the librarian, because I've caught this crap from some people at outlying libraries, too; that because I don't have children there are some things I could just never understand. The thing is, when you're working with children in a public library you don't have to have them, you only have to listen to them (and respond appropriately) and use your knowledge to serve them as best you can. I know of people who believe that people who don't have children should not be allowed to work with them, which is ridiculous and heartbreaking. I'm better at my job than many librarians who have teens at home. The thing is, they have THEIR children, and their children serve as a comparison point for all other teens. This is normal; Dog knows I certainly compare other cats to Beezus and Henry. But normal everyday comparisons are one thing and telling someone she's basically incompetent because she works with young people but doesn't have any at home is quite another. The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence."

I'll be following this librarian's story. She'll be meeting with the director and the parent soon.

I'd go into my related rant on how awful it is that Mr. Cedar, an Eagle Scout, does not feel comfortable volunteering with a local Boy Scout troop at another time.

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I can't spoil anyone about Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End because I haven't seen it. Maybe next Tuesday. Nothing worse than a movie theater on weekends. Even Orlando Bloom wet is not enough to brave the wilds of stupid people who think their movie commentary is oh so funny. Hey, genius, if you were half as witty as you think you are, you'd be writing for television and movies instead of sitting in a theater eating popcorn. Now please be quiet, you're ruining my pirates.

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So much to write, but so much to read before that.

Tags: books, books i'd pay retail for, fangirling, libraries, rants
126: giddy
780: your bridges were burned and now it's your turn to cry me a river

...I learned from books I read in 2006.

Stephen King and Neil Gaiman say all the time that the way to become a good writer is to be a good reader, and although I may not have aspirations of publishing, I do have aspirations of being very good at this fanfic hobby of mine. So here is what I've learned from my past year of reading, and where I learned it.

How to write:

an incredibly scary story with no blood or otherworldly monsters: The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin

an omniscient protagonist, and peripheral characters: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

free verse: Burned by Ellen Hopkins

action scenes: the Pendragon: Journal of an Adventure Through Time and Space series by D.J. MacHale

language without which there would be no main character: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. I: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson

humor that doesn't sound like it came out of a generic teenage sitcom: Born to Rock by Gordon Korman

descriptions, corruption, and a main character that always enthralls even if you don't like him: Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud

minimalist: The Queen of Cool by Cecil Castellucci

life during and after traumatic events: It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

travel, or a life that is influenced by place as much as people: Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City by Kristen Miller

a short story no one can forget: White Time by Margo Lanagan

comfort, wit, everyday humor, and charm: Toys Go Out by Emily Jenkins


(Notice that I did not include a list of how to write Mary Sues, overwrought descriptions, oceans of unreadable angst, teen books that reflect the author's minimal knowledge of what a good teen book looks like, stories without focus, characters no one cares about, 300-page books that feel like 700-page books, or stories of great concept that fall flat on their face in execution. I read plenty of those, believe me, but it's a sunny, Lush-scented day in the land of Cedar, so I think I'll save those for a blistering day with PMS and no chocolate.)

Tags: books, books i'd pay retail for, writing
126: full

Vacation over. Am still weepy over my missing pink Sidekick and pink iPod and driver's license and keys and pink Coach wallet that Ma Cedar bought for me. So I will write about books instead.

Speaking of books, I have one wishlist item for Chrismukkah: A paid version of BookTracker. And yes, that is a very tacky way to state it. But you (mostly) love me anyway.

I got a question over a listserv earlier this week: What are your top five picks for the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award? I shared my opinions there, and I'll share them here.

( Top picks for 2006, with caveat )

Also, I have a massive headache.

Tags: 2006, awards, books, books i'd pay retail for
126: sad
780: it's rough justice but you know I'll never break your heart