I'm slowly trying to wade back into the blogoshere, and I can't help but thinking over and over again, "WOW, have I missed a lot!" I'm also very surprised at the number of blogs I used to keep up with on bloglines. Here are a few links to some things that really struck me in my playing catch-up:
- All that laying on the couch and in bed these past few months left plenty of time for light reading...which, or course, quickly led to numerous 99 cent downloads of books that looked interesting but fluffy. (I mean, really, you can't buy twelve full priced books in one day!) The unintended result of my bargain nook shopping was a substantial increase in the number of so called "new adult" books I was reading. Not being active with my usual blog and news sources, I was also doing this reading in a sort of vacuum. It was very interesting to come back only to have both Stacked (also here) and A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy (followed up here and here with more to come) go into very in depth discussions of the genre and many of the issues I was finding while reading it.
- The Cybils 2012 Finalists were announced on Tuesday; and, again, it was really cool to see how many of the finalists I had read -- even being out of the loop the last third of the year. I was especially happy to see And All the Stars by Andrea K Höst in the Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction category, and both Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein and I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga in the Young Adult Fiction category.
- I was also very excited to see that Rachel Hartman's Seraphina is a finalist for the 2013 Morris Award. It's always wonderful to see books you love get recognition!
- Finally, bitch magazine compiled a list of 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader. Though looking for books with strong female leads (or at the very least positive portrayals of females within them) has always been on my radar as a reader, I must admit that it is usually, if not on the back burner, at least on the side burner. I think it is the natural outcome of being surrounded by a large family of teenage boys and having a knack for finding the books that lure reluctant teen boys to read. (Part of why I also enjoyed this article that encourages authors writing for teen boys.) However, as my daughter gets older she also gets persistently more determined in her quest for "girl heroes" in the media she consumes. It makes me simultaneously swell with pride for her and become comsumed by my feelings of my own inadequacy to guide her. I was appalled by how few books on the list I had heard of, much less read (only 15!)
