UPDATED: Fingers Crossed!

After seeing True Grit, I was convinced that Hailee Steinfeld would be the PERFECT Katniss Everdeen in the forthcoming Hunger Games movie. And she is in the running against my beloved Kaya Scodelario, so take that as the bold statement I mean it to be.

Race to the Bottom of the Pile

A few weeks ago I went into a frenzy and placed a large number of books on my library queue. And then they were all delivered to my library AT THE SAME TIME. So I got to feel like the awesomest person in the world as I lugged home a stack of YA books that was taller than my torso. (Just to be clear, there was absolutely no sarcasm involved in that sentence. I really did feel super cool.) I am currently in the middle of Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan (which is super awesome and I can’t wait for work to finish so I can read more) but I still have three more books to go!

YA Fugvel

I just found out some super exciting news: Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, the fabulous women behind Go Fug Yourself, have written a YA novel. The ladies have managed to keep their site consistently funny, writing from the point of view of voices as distinct as Jennifer Lopez and that guy behind J. Lo in the picture who can’t believe what she is wearing, and often letting their internal monologues spill onto the page to hilarious effect.

Tender Morsels

If forced to choose whether a novel I read would have an excellent story or be excellently written, I would choose story every time. Luckily, the YA novels I have been reading lately—Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart, The Order of Odd Fish by James Kennedy, and now Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan—have made that choice unnecessary. Margo Lanagan’s words seem to lift up from the page and coalesce into a picture around the reader’s head. In Tender Morsels, Lanagan’s lyrical writing brings to life a character who has been so misused by the real world that she prefers to live in a facsimile where everything is safe but no one is real apart from herself and her daughters.

The Order of Odd Fish

China Mieville, author of books such as Perdido Street Station and The City and The City, thinks that authors of fantastical fiction “don’t listen to [their] own filters.” In other words, they imagine something outlandish and ignore the voice that says that their idea is silly or impossible. James Kennedy, author of the delightful and moving novel The Order of the Odd Fish, proves that he has an abundance of this talent. His novel is populated with stylish talking cockroaches, octopi that can be ridden like horses, and an order of knights whose mission is to be wrong in interesting ways. And that’s only a brief sampling.

The Secret Circle Will (Hopefully) Be A TV Show!

In junior high knew that I was totally obsessed with L.J. Smith's Secret Circle books. Obviously I loved her Vampire Diaries, Forbidden Game, and Dark Visions books as well (I didn't read Night World until recently and I couldn't believe I had waited so long to read them), and no one was happier than me that the success of the Twilight series gave Ms. Smith a new surge of popularity. (Except maybe her. She was probably happier than me.) But The Secret Circle will always hold a special place in my heart. Witchcraft, hot boys, best friends, soul mates, and references to Greek mythology; what more could a girl ask for? And now, thanks to the success of The Vampire Diaries TV show and L.J. Smith's spot on the NY Times bestseller list, there is going to be a Secret Circle TV show!

Banned by Bitch

I just read over on E. Lockhart’s blog about an upset that has taken place in the online YA community. Bitch magazine apparently posted a list of 100 feminist YA books, and then removed three because they were deemed inappropriate. (So really a more accurate title for this post would have been “Deleted by Bitch” or “Pulled From the List by Bitch,” but neither has that snappy alliterative flavor of the current, possibly misleading, certainly inflammatory post title.) Well whenever I see anything deemed inappropriate for any reason, it piques my interest (I imagine most people are the same. So I immediately added the books in question to my library queue.