Nancy Werlin: My New Favorite

I just finished reading The Killer's Cousin and Locked Inside by Nancy Werlin, and she just may be the new author whose entire bibliography I must consume immediately.

Classic Covers: The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

This is the edition of Avi's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle that still sits on my bookshelf.  I read it over and over again, inspired by Charlotte's journey from rich girl, ignorant in the ways of the world, to sailor dressed in boy's clothing.

My Made-up Role Models: Katy Keene

Katy Keene is the titular character of a comic under the purview of the Archie empire. Apparently she's been around since 1945, but I knew her during her 1980's revival period.  I can't actually remember anything she did, besides be a model and generally nice person and have fabulous blue-black hair.  So Ms. Keene was really more of a made-up style role-model for me.  Let's take a look at the clothes!

My Programs

I have finally watched both The Secret Circle and The Vampire Diaries from last week and am ready to reveal my favorite parts!  (Massive spoilers ahoy.)

Linkies!

Awesome stuff culled from the dubya dubya dubya.

• Libba Bray procrastinates by answering questions in a hilarious manner, warning at the beginning of the blog post "It's only going to get weirder from here."
• Joan Rivers and Coco met each other on the High Line yesterday, and then they had a mutual lovefest on Twitter.
• Sean Maher, aka Simon Tam from Firefly, came out, and the Entertainment Weekly article is quite wonderful.
• KateLinnea perfectly sums up The Vampire Diaries season 3, episode 2 by saying "OH MY GOSH I LOVED THIS EPISODE SO MUCH."
• Tom Wilson, who played Biff in the Back to the Future movies, has a postcard he gives out to fans with a list of FAQs on the back, and the Nerdist has a scan.  Among the info listed: "Crispin Glover is unusual, but not as unusual as he sometimes presents himself."

What Is It About Prep School?

Is it the uniforms, the beautiful people, the stuffy history?  Or is it simply the thrill of being let into a private world, which we could never enter in real life, where the characters are filthy, filthy rich?  Here are some great books about prep school.

Classic Covers

This is it, the edition of Island of The Blue Dolphins that kept me reading obsessively for an entire day.  I had to read the book for school, and I had put it off until the last minute.  So there I was, Sunday morning, my grandparents were in town and all I wanted to do was hang out with them, but I had to read an entire book before Monday.


I had never read an entire book in one day before, and I wasn't sure if I could do it.  But I also had never shirked my homework before, so not doing it was out of the question.

My Best Parts: Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle

Every week I will be posting screenshots of my favorite moments from The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle.  These images are after the jump.  To the left is a photo I took of myself after I finished watching the season premiere of The Vampire Diaries.  I hope one day that The Secret Circle will inspire such a self-portrait, but for now it is just a pretty good pilot that I am excited to continue watching.

Do I even need to tell you not to look at this post if you haven't seen the episodes yet?

My Library Queue: Mystery Is in the Air

Nothing beats that satisfying feeling when an author finally reveals a key piece of information about a character or situation and it is really really juicy and completely unexpected.  So with that in mind, and with the Girls Write Now Crime Fiction workshop coming up in October, I have added some exciting mysteries to my library queue.

ANTM Purple Dress Addendum

As a late entry to yesterday's post about purple dresses, here is America's Next Top Model: All Stars contestant Allison Harvard in a light purple bo-peep number.

Andre Leon Talley called it the best example of personal style he's ever seen.  And if the Talley says it, it must be so.

By the by, there is some extremely spoilery information on Allison's Wikipedia about this cycle.  Could it be true?

Bleeding Violet Fashion

Last night I finished Bleeding Violet, by Dia Reeves, which was really imaginative and well written and somehow managed to be a lot of fun despite some deeply disturbing occurrences.  The narrator, Hanna, dresses only in purple as a tribute to her dead father, and she only wears dresses that she makes herself.  So, as a tribute to Hanna, let's talk DIY purple dressmaking.

Internet Goings-On

There's a bevvy of fabulous stuff on the web today and I need to share.

• The Fug Girls are covering fashion week, and they posted the above amazing photo of Nikki Minaj talking to Anna Wintour.  Does this mean a Nikki Minaj Vogue cover?  Please?  Pretty please?
• In honor of fashion week, Rich Juzwiak put together an AMAZING gif wall of supermodels in music videos.  If you can name every supermodel and the artist and song for every video, I will worship you as a pop culture god.
• On KateLinnea, a hilarious discussion by her almost-lawyer friend of The Vampire Diaries law (or lack thereof).  Is it really murder if you are killing non-humans?  Does property get passed down when characters die for only two minutes?  And who the heck is taking care of these children?
• Nathan Rabin rewatched Sucker Punch, aka, the most infuriating, ridiculous, disturbing movie I have seen this year.  His take? Majestic fiasco.

Drink, Slay, Love Is Born

Today is publication day for Drink, Slay, Love (or Kindle download day for me), and to celebrate, Sarah Beth Durst has written a delightful explanation of how she ended up writing the book. Here's a sample:

MY BRAIN: So, what are we writing about next?
ME: I really like unicorns.
MY BRAIN: What are you, four years old?
ME: What's wrong with unicorns?
MY BRAIN: Unicorns are not cool. Unicorns are sparkly.
ME: My unicorns would be cool!
MY BRAIN: You just miss your Lisa Frank sticker collection from your Trapper Keeper.

Read the full dialogue between ME and MY BRAIN over at SBD's blog, along with a brief teaser.

My Made-up Role Models

I have been lucky to have a large number of amazing, smart, powerful, and loving women in my family, all of whom have helped me to become the woman that I am today.  But my journey to womanhood was also influenced by another group of amazing women: fictional characters.  These ladies may not have been real, but they loomed large in my imagination and influenced the way I saw the world.

Today's made-up role model: Aunty Entity from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (played by the wonderful Tina Turner, a real-live role model!).

In Other Web News...

Here's some links to great things going on around the YA web.

• YA Crush reviews the wonderful Melina Marcheta's The Piper's Son, which made me cry many times.  As all of her books do.
• The Enchanted Inkpot has a wonderful gallery of fall YA Fantasy covers.  Looking at it makes me feel like when you go into one of those all-accessory stores and everything is so shiny and you want to take it all home with you and recreate the display in your bedroom.
• Look at the amazing cover of the new Buffy Season 9 comic! (posted on LoveYALit.)  So beautiful.  Season 9 can't be any crazier than Season 8, right?  Right?
• Aisha Tyler has a podcast!  OK, this one isn't strictly YA-related, but I loved her when I was a YA (and still do) and she was hosting talk soup and The Fifth Wheel, so it counts.
• Rookie has this amazing guide to buying your first guitar.  I got my first guitar from Sam Ash, and even though my dad was there I was so terrified that I would be seen as a dumb girl who didn't know anything that I just agreed with anything that he and the sales guy said.  In actuality, I was only 14 and I'm sure the sales guy thought it was great that I was getting a guitar and never would have judged me about my lack of knowledge.  But I would have felt much better if I had a guide like this to prepare me.

I Can't Wait To Read...

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Rookie Is Up and Running

When I heard that Tavi Gevinson, teen blogger extraordinaire, was creating a web site, I was thrilled.  The first piece I read of Tavi's was an essay about Terry Richardson, in which she clearly and persuasively articulated points that people twice her age were having trouble expressing.  And she did it all in a wonderful voice, which was casual and fun while still managing to be thoughtful and poignant.  In the year or so since Tavi's new web site, Rookie, was announced, I have been anxiously checking her blog for news of the launch.  In that time, I fell in love with her writing, her sensibility, and her aesthetic.

The Secret Circle Is Almost Here!

Speaking of things I can't wait for: The Secret Circle premieres on the CW on Friday, September 15!  Normally, I would be like any other fan girl, grousing that the show seems like it is not faithful enough to my beloved LJ Smith book series.  But The Vampire Diaries is so wonderfully entertaining that I have learned to Let Go and Let Kevin.  Smith, that is.  Do his thing, that is.

Was I upset that the Vampire Diaries TV show completely eliminated Meredith, one of my favorite characters from the book series?  Yes.  After two seasons of delightful, terrifying, exciting entertainment, do I still care?  Not so much.  I am hoping that The Secret Circle will be similarly wonderful so that I don't care about the characters that have been axed and the plots that have mutated.  And the trailer does look pretty exciting....  (But PS, don't watch it unless you want like the first couple of episodes spoiled)

Unfortunately, I can't embed it here, but I did take some wonderful screen shots that capture the flavor.

I Can't Wait to Read...

...Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst

My Library Queue

Hello, world!  It has been far too long.  And what better way to get us reacquainted, than to take a look at a few of the items in my library queue?