On My Library Queue

As this is my first post, I will go ahead and introduce myself. My name is Maya, and I love, love, love young adult books. In this space, my friend Rachel (who will introduce herself in a future post) and I will be writing about YA books, and sometimes about movies, television, and music that would also be filed in The Young Adult Department.

To get us started, I’m going to present a sample of books that I have placed on hold at the library, which will be read by me at some future date.

As a side note, the Brooklyn Public library is amazing (as are the Queens and New York public libraries, and all libraries in the entire world), and getting my library card was one of the best things I did in 2010. Did you know that they now have their entire catalogue online and you can search it and reserve books with a click of the mouse? Simply type in your local branch, and the bookmobile will deliver it there, to be picked up by you, as soon as it is available. Amazing! I have a steady stream of YA and graphic novels coming into my library. Anyone monitoring my account would probably guess that I was a YA myself. But they would be wrong.

Currently on my queue:

1) The Treasure Map of Boys by E. Lockhart
This is the third book in the Ruby Oliver series, which includes The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, and Real Live Boyfriends. Those titles may make these books seem frivolous, but they are essential YA reading. Lockhart nails the voice of a smart, funny, and sometimes overly analytical teenage girl. She also manages to perfectly capture that mix of excitement, discovery, and emotional wreckage that comes with navigating friendships and relationships in high school.

2) Runaways vol. 5: Escape to New York by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Takeshi Miyazawa
Runaways features a group of teenagers who discover that their parents are super villains. They run away from home and vow to stop their parents’ evil deeds. Vaughan is a well known name in the comics world, thanks to series like Y: The Last Man. His stories in this series are always entertaining, and the art is always beautiful. I’m also super excited for my home city to make an appearance in this volume.

3) Hush by Eishes Chayil
I read about this book on Kristin Cashore’s blog. It is about an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish girl whose friend committed suicide many years earlier because of a secret that no one will talk about. Booklist promises that the book “takes readers into a cloistered society and exposes its secrets.” Apparently, 70 other library patrons in Brooklyn were as excited to read it as I was, because when I put this book on hold, I was number 71. Now I am down to 54, but it looks like it’s going to be a while before I get to read this book.

What books are on your to-read lists?