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The quandary: You want to support someone's new book and as much as you'd like to buy it, you can't. Perhaps you can't justify the cost of the new book right now. Perhaps your author friend is prolific and has multiple books coming out, and you can't afford to get them all. Perhaps you have so many author and illustrator friends that if you tried to buy all their books, you'd need to sell your car first. Or your house.

Here are some other ways you can show support for an author's book:

First, read the book. How do you read it without buying it? Borrow it from the library. For picture books, you could even read the book AT the bookstore.

Reserve a copy at the library. At least at some libraries, this helps show the library that at least one person is interested in that book. If popular enough, the library may order more copies.

Review/rate the book. Post a rating and/or review in sites like Goodreads, LibraryThing, Amazon, BN.com or your own blog. If you didn't like the book, don't lie. Nilofer Merchant suggests using a phrase like "this book is not for you if you are xxx" because even this kind of negative review may help others know the book IS for them. Take a few extra minutes to browse the other reviews of the book and then (if the feature's available) Like the reviews that you did like or found helpful.

When you read the book, read it where people can see it. Not sure about the rest of you, but I'm always surreptitiously checking out the covers of books that people read in public. This is where print books have the advantage of digital. Read the book on public transit, in the park, on the beach, at the airport, while waiting in line. You never know when people will decide to check out the book just because they saw you enjoying it.

Recommend the book to others through social media. Including the book cover (either scoop the cover image from the publisher/author/illustrator website or photograph the book cover in the library or bookstore) especially helps. Even just a short "Loved this book!" along with the cover will be appreciated. You can make it even more personal by adding a reason why you loved it. Take the time to tag the author or illustrator; tagging not only alerts the author/illustrator to the post but it also encourages people to click your tag link to find out more about the person.

Share and retweet the author's or illustrator's posts. Be judicious -- don't share/retweet everything, especially if you tend to share/retweet a lot on your feed. To authors and illustrators: make sure your post is PUBLIC if you want it shared. I can't tell you the number of times I've started to share someone's FB post but then discovered that it's a Friends-Only post; even if I shared it, the only people who see it would be our shared friends who already have it in their feed. If you're confused, read this FB support page about how to control who sees your posts.

Post a photo of the book in the wild. Especially around launch time, I find that social media sometimes gets inundated with images of just the book cover. Make your post more personal by taking a selfie of you holding the author's book, or another reader with the book -- photos with people in them always get more Like-love. Or take a photo in a fun setting, like adding a cup of tea beside a picture book about a tea party, for example. Or if you see the book in your local bookstore or library, take a photo and tag the author or illustrator. I can't speak for other author/illustrators, of course, but I always appreciate when someone does this.

If the author or illustrator is on YouTube, subscribe to their channel so you can more easily find out when they upload new trailers or videos.

Talk about the book. Don't underestimate the power of word-of-mouth. Recommend the book to friends, work colleagues, your local bookseller and librarian. When a friend of mine recommends a book they personally like and think I'd like, too, I pay MUCH more attention than when I see a generic "this new book just came out, you should get it!" post on social media.

And meanwhile...

Whether or not you can afford to buy my book(s), THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who has supported me and my work! I really appreciate it.

Do you have other suggestions about how to support book authors and illustrators? Please post below.

Related Resources:

How To Support An Author's New Book: 11 Ideas For You - by Chuck Sambuchino on Writer Unboxed

How To Support An Author - by Nilofer Merchant

5 Quick Ways To Support Your Favorite Author - by Dorothy Wiley

How To Support An Author Beyond Buying Their Book - by Erin in Pub Crawl

Living like Damn Hell Ass Kings!


What the 2012 update looks like.

luclatulippe:

Hey freelancers: have you been keeping track of your monthly expenses like I recommended 18 months ago? 

Well, because at heart I am The Illustrator Who Wanted To Be An Accountant™, and because my site stats claim this was a mighty popular post, here’s an update to our Monthly Revenue & Expense Worksheet as a PDF for you to download. (Also, here’s an Apple Numbers spreadsheet. If anyone can convert this to a prittay Excel version, that would be coooool!)

Here’s how we use it:

1. Print out a new sheet every month.
2. Use a sexy magnet (optional) to stick it on our fridge (or front door; somewhere where you’ll see it often each day). 
3. Jot down every miserable Expense you make during that month. (Round up and drop the cents to keep it simple.)
4. There’s also a teeny tiny box for Revenue, so jot down every job you get. (Or jot down every cheques you actually receive; whichever works best for you.)
5. Jot down business expenses too, like HST/GST, software, hardware, paper for your printer, etc… 
6. Add these up at the end of each month* and see what kind of hot mess your finances are in. FUN! (And if you’re like me, you’re going to want to double-check your calculations; our groceries were $960, not $850. FOR TWO PEOPLE. WTF?)

This is a rough worksheet rather than a typed-in-the-computer spreadsheet for tax purposes. It’s meant to encourage you to quickly jot things down so you can get a bird’s eye view of your “money in/money out” situation. It lets you see right away if you are in the red or in the black, and if you have any money left at the end of the year to put away and invest.

• Where are you over-spending? Restaurants? Clothes? 
• Are you not bringing in enough money? 
• Did you bring in more than usual last month? Good job!
• Do you have some left over each month you could be putting into tax-free savings account, or a retirement fund? (Are you even doing this?)

Yes, you can use an app (there are literally hundreds out there, and you may be able more easily to track them as they happen), but for me good ol’ paper-and-pencil works best. 

When you’re done, you can type all the totals into a proper spreadsheet and have a

* I round up a little each time, because I know there are small items I forget here and there.

Freelancers, young and old: How do you keep track of your expenses? Paper or App? How accurate/disciplined are you about it? You run a business after all, so if you’re not doing this somehow or other, you’re only cheating yourself in the long run. Hop to it! :)

If you’ve been reading the headlines on just one news service in the past few days, you’ve probably come away shaking your head and wondering what the future holds for you and yours.

Here are some examples of things in the news.

• A legislator in California has proposed that the 13 counties south of Los Angeles be separated from the main body of the state and granted statehood, to become the country’s 51^st. The apparent reason behind the proposal was that the state is simply too big to govern efficiently and needed to be pruned, so to speak. The proposed new state would be called “South California.”
• The huge iceberg that calved from a Greenland ice shelf last August is now in Canadian waters—Labrador, to be exact. Curious how it went west rather than east as common thought would expect, isn’t it? It’s being monitored by satellite from a beacon planted on its surface. Its original size was one-quarter of its parent ice shelf. That’s many billions of gallons of fresh water floating around desalinating the North Atlantic as the berg melts.
• All of those extended unemployment benefits and past government tax cuts will expire in January, leaving millions without any available income.
• Immediate results of Minnesota’s government shutdown due to lack of finances are beginning to come to the front. The Minnesota Zoo will suffer greatly if not funded soon, for instance. 

These are just a few of the headlines from yesterday and today. Granted, the Minnesota Zoo’s problems don’t seriously affect any of those living outside that state. Its fate does point to those smaller and less visible victims of gross financial distress plaguing each of the states this year.

 Costs of everything have risen, populations have increased and revenues have fallen due to the housing crunch and employment downturns.

 With unemployment benefits being suspended in January, Minnesota may not be the only state taking a leave of absence in the coming months. Those states hardest hit may follow suite in alarming numbers. And your state may just be one in the flock.

Canada is the one having to deal with the iceberg and its potential for danger—for now, at least. As the berg dissipates in the Atlantic’s northern waters the cumulative effect of all that fresh water in the Northern Atlantic will affect everyone. It’s become a favored climatological theory that desalinization of those waters helps bring about the slowing of the oceanic conveyor belt and hastens the cooling of the Earth to the point of a little ICE AGE.

And the one headline that really should clue the populace as to how shaky things are, both socially and economically, centers on the California issue. For a state—any state—to propose a split of both territory and legislation to the point of putting the motion before the state government is a rare event. It puts the spotlight even more brightly on the condition of some states to conduct business and remain solvent.

For any state to suggest such a territorial split encourages others to consider their own situations and conditions. The social ramifications are staggering for the coming year. At the moment it’s not important if the motion passes. The idea has already fallen ou

The state of today’s economy is insecure, causing concern in many people and fear in many others.  It used to be that we relied on our retirement income to see us through our golden years, but we now have to face the reality that we must take action to ensure our well-being in the future.  How do we go about this?  What steps do we take, where do we go, how do we know we’re doing it right?
Financial advisor John Hauserman, CFP^®, has created a no-cost website as a tool for you to use on your financial journey.  This site features the amazing Planning Map, designed to help you think like a financial planner.  You can begin by setting up an account at no charge, complete with your zip code which will enable you to save your progress, but your information will never be sold or given away to any outside party. Or, if you prefer, simply skip registration with a single click. As you chart out your financial situation, you will never be asked for account numbers or personal information.

Since I began freelancing nearly 10 years ago, I've never separated my writing earnings from other income. I paid the self-employment taxes on those earnings. Honestly, I did not see the need to separate income from a few writing sales each year from my earnings from my full-time job.

Then, I started freelancing full time. For the last five years, as my writing business has grown - along with the income - I've contemplated forming a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), but I haven't determined if it's worth it. Yes, I make a living from my writing abilities, but I don't view myself as a "big-name brand" so I'm not sure if I will be ahead by forming my own writing conglomeration where I can rule the publishing world...at least in my mind....and keep personal and business finances separate.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, an LLC is a type of business structure, allowed by state statute, where owners have limited personal liability for the company's debt and actions of the LLC. The LLC can include several members or it can be a sole proprietorship.

Will it add more paperwork or will it make bookkeeping and tax time easier? What costs are associated forming this type of arrangement? Do other writers use an LLC or is it an unnecessary expense?

I'm still weighing my options about the value of an LLC for a freelancer, and I've scheduled an appointment with the accountant so we can discuss the benefits and drawbacks. Then I will be able to make a sound decision...and continue my quest for publishing domination!

What do you think, writers? Should a freelance writer form an LLC?

by LuAnn Schindler. To read more of LuAnn's work, visit her website.

(C) Copyright wow-womenonwriting.com Visit WOW! Women On Writing for fresh interviews, news, How Tos, and writer's markets. Enter the WOW! Quarterly Flash Fiction Contest Open Now!

Because of low enrollment this past winter session at UD, I lost my class. It's a five-week intensive for which you get the same fee as you would teaching during a normal semester. Translation: it's a nice chunk of change that I was expecting and didn't end up getting at the last minute when my section was canceled.

For some reason, about 70% of my monthly bills are due between the first of the month and the 10th of the month. I consider the 1st through the 15th my "first of the month" bills, which really comes out of the end-of-the-month paychecks. UD pays me on the 15th and 30th; Bank of America pays Joe bi-weekly. He used to get paid on the 15th and 30th, which made everything really easy, but now I have to pay more careful attention to what I'm paying and when because sometimes something will be due on, say, the 9th, but Joe's check won't come out until the 12th.

Anyway.

By mid-January, I knew we were going to have some serious difficulty getting all of the beginning of the month bills paid in February. There was the home heating oil thing, which meant purchasing 100 gallons right after Christmas and getting a tank fill around my birthday. There was the fact that I wasn't expecting another paycheck until 2/15. The numbers were making me crazy until I realized that if I could have one credit card payment moved to after the 15th of the month, everything would work out just fine.

So I called Chase, owner of my biggest credit card balance, and requested a due date change to "after the 15th of the month." The way their billing cycles fall, he said he could have it changed to the 21st and would that be acceptable? I said yes, it's perfect, thank you so much. Then I was informed that the due date change wouldn't take affect until March.

This was a problem.

Joe and I spent nearly an hour on the phone that day, talking to various customer service representatives and managers, about would it be possible to push the due date change through for February, and if not, would it be possible to get a three-day extension on the February due date without incurring any late fees or interest rate increases. The answer: No. NO NO NO NO NO sorry we can't help you NO.

This made me really, really angry. I've been a loyal Chase customer since 1997. I've financed two cars through them (both paid off in full early), have two credit cards with them (both paid on time and more than the minimum), and even have a small home equity line of credit through them (also paid on time and also paid more than the minimum).

All around me, people are defaulting on credit cards, mortgages, auto loans. They're filing bankruptcy, having their slates wiped clean and dumping huge amounts of debt. Banks are hurting because people borrowed more than they could afford, because the job market screwed them, because junk loan officers got greedy. And sometimes it's really just about people who charge what they want when they want it, regardless of how capable they are of ever paying off the rapidly acrued debt.

But me. Me, I pay on time. EVERY MONTH, I PAY ON TIME. I pay more than the minimum, even when we're so strapped I won't let myself buy a medium cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.

And yet.

People like me are suffering because of all the others who either can't or simply don't make their minimum payments on time. Let me clarify: I know there are people who got knocked down hard by this economy, and who are good people that would gladly pay their bills if they had the money to do so. These are not deadbeat people, but honest, hard-working folks who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances. I would probably put Joe and myself in that category, because we've been hit from every side. We've just been lucky enough that when disasters strike, we've been able to pull money from somewhere (another reason our wedding fund has been drained three full times in the past year). But also, I do think it's more than just luck.

During YALSA’s October echat on advocacy, there was a lot of discussion about how the economy is having an impact on the advocacy efforts of teen librarians. (Chat participants remarked on difficulties in gaining sponsorships for programs as a result of limited funds within the community.) I’d been thinking prior to the chat about another way that the economy is having an impact on teen librarians – their own finances.

I thought it could be useful to provide some resources to YALSA blog readers to help in managing finances .

The National Foundation for Credit Counseling provides many useful resources on their website including:

• A budget worksheet that helps keep track, on a monthly basis, of spending. It includes tracking everything from net income per month, to credit card payments, to spending on entertainment. Even if you aren’t concerned about the impact of the economy on your own finances, this could prove to be a useful tool for keeping track of spending.
• An article that does a very good job in providing insight into how to “survive job loss.” The article includes information on being smart about everything from managing emotions to credit card spending to getting counseling and support in finding a new job.
• An article that provides tips on how to survive a recession and covers information on making yourself invaluable at work and managing debt.

Along with the above three resources, the National Education Association’s Member Benefits web site includes an article titled Recovering in a Financial Crisis. The second page of the article, in particular, provides good information on managing credit and breaks the information down into categories based on where someone is in a career cycle – just starting out, mid-career, or pre-retirement/retirement.

Have you found any resources that have been useful in managing your finances during the economic downturn and that you think would be useful to YALSA blog readers? If so, add them in the comments section.

Here are the top adult titles for YAs in 2007 as determined by the editors of Booklist:

Nonfiction

Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo. By Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence. St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne, $23.95 (9780312358327). This remarkable story recounts the recent wartime rescue of the once-world-renowned Baghdad Zoo through the experiences of a South African conservationist and heroic Iraqi zookeepers.

Child of the Jungle. By Sabine Kuegler. Warner, $24.99 (0-446-57906-8). In her extraordinary, heartfelt memoir, Kuegler describes her tranquil youth spent among Indonesia’s Fayu tribe and then her painful shock when she reentered modern civilization as a teenager.

Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles, and Other Quinceañera Stories. Ed by Adriana Lopez. HarperCollins/Rayo, $14.95 (0-06-124192-X). Fifteen writers tell personal, often irreverent stories about quinceañeras, the traditional celebrations that mark a Latina’s fifteenth birthday.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. By Ishmael Beah. Farrar/Sarah Crichton, $22 (0-374-95191-8). In spare, direct prose, Beah speaks about his harrowing life as a teen soldier in Sierra Leone and shows the reality of civil war, behind the headlines.

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam. By Ann Marie Fleming. Illus. by the author. Riverhead, paper, $14 (9781594482649). Fleming retraces her Chinese-born great-grandfather’s career as an internationally celebrated magician in this deft, kaleidoscopic graphic-format biography.

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring. By Richard Preston. Random, $25.95 (9781400064892).
With clarity and drama, Preston profiles three champions of the coast redwood—the world’s tallest trees—and reveals the rarely seen world of the forest canopy, 300 feet above the ground.

Fiction

The Amnesia Clinic. By James Scudamore. Harcourt, $23 (0-15-101265-2). After Anthony moves with his family from England to Ecuador, he meets Fabían, a local teen with whom he trades wild, invented tales that lead to a life-changing quest. Scudamore’s spellbinding debut novel explores the power of storytelling.

AYA. By Marguerite Abouet. Illus. by Clément Oubrerie. Drawn & Quarterly, $19.95 (9781894937900). Set in West Africa during the late 1970s, this engaging graphic novel about an older teen girl who is frustrated by less-forward-thinking friends and family is strengthened by memorable characters and universal emotions.

Baltimore; or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire. By Mike Mignola. Illus. by Christopher Golden. Bantam/Spectra, $25 (9780553804713). Atmospheric, minimal black-and-white spot art illustrates this chilling vampire story that combines the horrors of World War I’s western front with fairy-tale elements.

The Beautiful Miscellaneous. By Dominic Smith. Atria, $24 (0-7432-7123-8). In this unusual, beautifully written novel, 17-year-old Nathan develops synesthesia and an encyclopedic memory after an accident, which dramatically changes his relationship with his brilliant father.

The God of Animals. By Aryn Kyle. Scribner, $25 (1-4165-3324-9). After her sister elopes with a rodeo cowboy, 12-year-old Alice tries to cope with her increasingly adult responsibilities on her father’s struggling Colorado horse ranch. Kyle tells a powerful story of coming of age amid isolation and hardship.

Mary Modern. By Camille DeAngelis. Crown/Shaye Areheart, $24 (9780307352583). DeAngelis’ riveting debut applies modern science to Frankenstein themes in a story about a young woman whose cloning experiments result in strange new family bonds.

Mister Pip. By Lloyd Jones. Dial, $24 (0-385-34106-7). Traumatized by her tropical Pacific island’s civil war, 13-year-old Matilda finds unexpected solace in her class’ study of Great Expectations. A moving story about growing up in the aftermath of imperialism and the redemptive power of art.

Nineteen Minutes. By Jodi Picoult. Atria, $26 (9780743496728). This harrowing novel about a school shooting, narrated from multiple perspectives, flashes back to the bullying and cultural influences that lead teenage Peter to open fire on his classmates.

Petropolis. By Anya Ulinich. Viking, $24.95 (9780670038190). First-novelist Ulinich blends satire, farce, and heart-wrenching realism in this original coming-of-age story about a Russian Jewish teenager who enters America as a mail-order bride.

The Silver Ship and the Sea. By Brenda Cooper. Tor, $25.95 (9780765315977). Distinctive characterizations distinguish this exciting story, set in a human colony on a dangerous planet, that explores the evils of prejudice.

Swim to Me. By Betsy Carter. Algonquin, $23.95 (1-56512-492-8). In this warm novel, set in the 1970s, teenage Delores trades her dismal Brooklyn family life for Florida, where she reinvents herself as a mermaid in a water show.

A Thousand Splendid Suns. By Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead, $25.95 (1-59448-950-5). The intertwined lives of two very different young women form the heart of this deeply affecting novel, from the author of The Kite Runner (2003).

When We Get There. By Shauna Seliy. Bloomsbury, $23.95 (9781596913509). After losing his father in a mining accident, Lucas, 13, begins a search for his long-departed mother. The subtly drawn entanglements of small-town families and neighbors inform this sensitive debut.

********************
I've pretty much read none of these (and not heard of most of them) except for Long Tack Sam and Long Way Gone (which has lots of issues right now that complicate things). Any thoughts on whether any are You Should Read This Award worthy? (I can't seem to find any lists for earlier years but I'm working on it.)

I have a review up at Bookslut for Jamie S. Rich's novel, Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? This one flew way under the radar last year, probably because it came out from Oni Press which is known primarily as a comics/gn publisher. It's about a former young literary wonder who in the wake of his wife's suicide vanished from public life (actually pretty much vanished, period). His books have become fodder for grad student discussions and one of them goes looking for him and discovers his hiding place in Bejing. What follows is the slow building of a relationship based on literature and literary discussion as well as a lot of flashbacks about how it is to be discovered and acclaimed as a young writer. Here's a bit of my review:

There were many things about this novel that I enjoyed but what really surprised me is that Rich was careful to make Iris [the deceased wife] a full and real part of the story. It would have been very easy to dismiss her as the long dead wife and only show her through Percy’s memories, but instead, in the flashback sequences, Iris is revealed as just as smart and vibrant as her husband. Making her a significant part of the story adds a depth to Percy’s loss, and explains a great deal about why he collapsed in the wake of her death.

The author also does an excellent job of showing how someone can come undone in his portrayal of Percy. This is a man who has thoroughly and totally cracked up even to the point of becoming a bit of a clichéd cat-person, and when he tries to communicate with Julia the only way he knows how -- by the choice of novels he leaves for her -- readers will find themselves understanding him in a deeply personal way. If you want to know me, really know me, then look at my bookshelves. This is something Rich understands and he shows it through Percy.

Have You Seen the Horizon Lately? is a look into the literary jet set, the sort of life that demands no regrets or apologies from the players who live in its limelight. It’s a unique story told in an undeniably cool way. Rich taps into a sensibility that makes one want to write enigmatic novels that grad students will endlessly argue about but likely never understand. He knows who we all want to be and shows us what that would be like. The fact that it isn’t a necessarily happy story is immaterial, it is still a true one and at its heart, a hopeful one. There is just something about Jamie S. Rich that makes him a writer to watch.

The whole time I was reading Horizon I kept thinking that this was exactly the kind of book that Jess would have been carrying around in Star's Hollow. He would have loved how Percy falls so hard after dipping too deep at the well of fandom and then uses books to communicate with Julia. And Rory would have been all over Julia - that's who Rory is to a certain degree; a committed student who would stop at nothing to uncover the truth about an author who meant to so much to her.

Of course that is Rory before Logan and as annoying as I sometimes found Jess I can't help but think that they belonged together, but I digress.

Horizon is a hipster novel all the way and perfect for witty and slightly subversive teens. It will make them feel like rebels when they're reading it and incredibly smart for "getting it". I'm adding it to the list for the You Should Read This Awards, but more importantly I hope that my review brings it some attention. A lot of YA fiction is the same stories over and over again; it's nice to read a book (even though it's written for adults) that will appeal to them in a completely different way.

What we have here are the American, British and Russian covers for Kirsten Miller's Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City. (Sorry about the British cover coming out blurry - it is so small on the Bloomsbury site that any increase in size loses the sharpness.)

I think this is very interesting - for a book sold as Middle Grade, or ages 10 & up, you've got some major variety here. The British cover seems to definitely be skewing to an older readership - those girls look more 14 (and are dressed more 14) than 10, that's for sure. Although that might fit better with the age of the girls in the book. The Russian cover is the best I think, and the US cover the worst. While the US cover did catch my eye simply because it wasn't a photo (and not headless!) that Russian cover is beautiful. It also shows the whole group of girls, something I think the US cover is sadly lacking. (The book really is not all about Kiki after all.)

These covers make me wonder who the different publishers are selling to age-wise, or whose eyes they are hoping to catch in stores. I think older teens would find Kiki dull to a certain degree - no sex or hint of romance which most YA fare seems to include (for girls anyway). (This makes me wonder if teenage girls really are romance obsessed or just believed to be romance obsessed. It's one of those chicken/egg problems.)

What I really loved about this book (and its sequel) was that it played so wonderfully into that longing that most kids have for adventure - for discovering that there really is weird stuff going on in the world and it's not all that boring school/homework/piano lessons/soccer practice/required family function crap that you have been led to believe. This is, of course, what Harry Potter is all about as well. The hook Miller threw into the Kiki books was the actual NYC history that crops up throughout the narratives. It lends the stories more credence - makes them harder to dismiss and ignore than a story of wizardry and magic. (Which just can't possibly be true, can it? :)

Three Kikis, same story. It's interesting to see how we all view something so differently, isn't it?

[You can read more about the Russian cover at Kirsten Miller's site - where I got the image from!]

As compelling as The Invention of Hugo Cabret is on its own, an interview like this one at the NYT really gets me jazzed. Consider author Brian Selznick's fascinations:

On a recent tour of the funky duplex apartment that Mr. Selznick, 41, shares with his partner, David Serlin, a professor at the University of California, San Diego (the couple also rent an apartment in La Jolla), he pointed out many treasures on display. In a bathroom, the walls were covered with movie stills and sketches for a puppet theater piece that Mr. Selznick had based on the life of Christine Jorgensen, one of the first people to undergo a sex-change operation. In the studio upstairs, a collection of more than 50 snow globes clustered on shelves beneath a grandfather clock.

Mr. Selznick, who is tall and lean and has wavy brown hair, wears round black-rimmed glasses that make him look like a grown-up Harry Potter. He eagerly excavated items he collected while researching “Hugo”: a small chest of drawers packed with 19th-century pocket watch parts bought at a flea market in Paris; two sketches of Cupid riding in a chariot that had been drawn by an actual automaton housed in a Philadelphia museum.

“While I was working on the book,” Mr. Selznick said, “there were people who said, ‘You’re doing a book about French silent movies and clocks for kids? That sounds like a very bad idea.’ ” But, he said, his editor told him, “If these elements are important to the main character they will be important to the reader.”

The best news of all? He's working on another book written in the same illustrated style.

Oddly I have just read the third book in a row that includes characters who are druids (or influenced by druids). One can almost understand the evil cheerleader trend I wrote about a few weeks ago, but being knee deep in druids is rather unexpected. Here's the rundown:

Girlwood by Claire Dean. I'm still not sure exactly what sort of book this one is exactly (if one has to categorize it at all) although I'm leaning towards coming-of-age with heavy environmental overtones. It is ages 12 & up so more MG than YA, and follows what happens in Polly's life after her older sister Bree runs away. Bree has been on a drugs and danger path for awhile so it's not a huge surprise when she runs away but still upsetting to her family. Polly, whose grandmother is the local eccentric/herb woman, (I kept thinking of the aunts in Practical Magic) becomes convinced that Bree is hiding out in the local woods. As it turns out those woods are threatened by developers who Polly hates (of course). She begins leaving things for Bree in the woods (food, clothing) and she and her friends also become quite attached to a certain glade (the "girlwood" of the title). And then lots of bad developer things happen but Polly kind of gets a boyfriend and there is a happy ending.

There is a hint of fantasy here - her grandmother really loves the trees (thus the druid talk) and seems born of the trees or something. Polly can see people's auras and she has visions of fairies - maybe. I don't think there is enough fantasy to term this book a fantasy however, it's just too subtle. It's more a girl power title (although again we have evil rich girl - in this case the daughter of the developer who is, of course, Polly's classmate). A pleasant read but seemed to shy away from taking bold steps in any one direction. (And was bit heavy handed on artsy people = good, finance driven folks = bad.)

Will Peterson's Triskellion is about twins Rachel and Adam who are sent to their maternal grandmother's distant English village for the summer as their parents continue their blistering break-up. The village is bizarre from the get-go, as in very creepy episode of The Avengers weird and grandma is pretty happy to see them (very happy at first) but also sorta weird. And then it just gets major scary strange and the kids find themselves joining up with another teen who seems able to communicate telepathically, disappear at will and is on a mission that requires their help. There's an archeology bend to the story as a national tv program gets involved digging up an ancient crop circle type thing in the village and the kids try to sort out the mystery at the local church which ties into the dig. Lots of thrills and chills, lots of bad guys, lots of not knowing who to trust and a bunch of absolutely crazy "green men" who are all druid wannabes in the forest and spend their time abusing and/or nearly killing villagers.

But that's just another day in the lovely ville of Triskellion.

This is an adventure that is close to being quite good - but there were too many loose ends; too many aspects of the story that I just had to accept. One thing that bothered me is the divorcing parents. At one point Adam bursts out that their father is leaving the family for a younger woman and that's why they have nothing to do with him. While the book is not about the divorce, dropping it in there and offering these hints that the father is all evil and the mother all sympathetic but apparently they used to be a happy family just raises questions. Peterson should have just killed the father off before the book began and sent the kid's to grandma's while mom organized life post-dad. That would have taken care of this orphaned subplot.

There's also some mystery with bees - what do the bees have to do with all this? Why are the bees helpful? And while you kind of know who the mystery teen is at the end, you don't really. And why does Rachel get convenient visions? And why must the villains be so obvious? And why must one guy who seems to be a three dimensional fairly decent character suddenly lose his ever loving mind and become a knife-wielding thug? Lots of questions on this one; I know that young teens will enjoy the mystery, but I think there will be frustration at the ending.

So your druid score thus far - good guys in Girlwood, bad guys in Triskellion.

Finally Guy Gavriel Kay's Ysabel is out in trade paperback and this one I can't recommend enough. Ned is 15 and tagging along with his famous photographer dad in France when he meets Kate and they stumble into a modern mystery that is tied to the deep deep past. You've got tons of history going back to the Romans and Celts (Julius Caeser's uncle Marius plays a major role here) but the history never bogs down the modern thriller - Ned and Kate learn stuff, amazing stuff, and it all plays into current scary events. What I liked is that by the end you understand why every single thing happened in this story - including just how Ned and Kate stumbled into the whole thing to begin with. There's lots of family drama, lots of running for your life, and a true respect for how in many ways history never dies (but just replays itself over and over again). As for the druids - well, they don't really want to be dragged into this story and are quite angry to be here. So not totally evil, but definitely defiant and smart. I wouldn't turn my back on this particular druid guy, that's for sure.

Oh and I forgot - one animal sacrifice in Ysabel, one animal sacrifice in Triskellion and one tree sacrifice in Girlwood. Nobody gets something for nothing anymore.

Not sure where all these books will fit into specific columns but expect to read more thorough reviews of each in the next few months at Bookslut. My favorite is Ysabel though, all history geeks must read that one. (Oh and oddly it is not a YA title, although the book is written almost completely from a teen perspective.)

I'm still out of town in Portland this week, so posting is sketchy (sorry!) but I did want to let everyone know that yes - I am really really aware of Jon Sciezska's great site, Guys Read. I think what he does is awesome, but it is not aimed at the age group I'm talking about (young adult as opposed to middle grade, or more high school than 12-13 years old). I also think that one site (and that's pretty much the only site people have mentioned to me) is not enough. In other words, Jon is awesome, but there is plenty of room in this pool for all of us.

The thing to remember also is that this site will be much more active in terms of daily postings - so readers will hopefully find bloggers whose taste matches their own and that kind of thing. We're going to do something different from Guys Read, but with the same goal; I think we will get along just fine without being a poor imitation.

And now back to helping my aunt pack. For those of you interested in seeing YA books insulted yet again, do visit Shaken and Stirred. Be sure to read the comments......I am shaking my head over this one.

There has been a lot of discussion in recent months about how young people do not read enough and how, in the face of that startling decline, Americans are on a path to cultural illiteracy. It is very easy to blame computers, video games and television and while I do acknowledge that all of those things take up precious time, I was raised with the television on all the time and spent countless hours playing Frogger and Space Invaders while also body surfing, going to the movies and watching my brother launch model rockets.

In other words, it wasn't always all about the books and yet I was - and continue to be - an avid reader. However did that happen?

I've been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why some kids continue to be readers after elementary school while others leave books behind for decades. As a reviewer I know there are a ton of good books out there but I also know that many many of them are written for girls (or they are books that seem to be for boys but really will be read more by girls trying to understand boys). So it is boys that I'm more focused on and concerned with. After following a very good discussion on this very subject over at Sara Lewis Holmes' blog, I finally figured out what I think is a key problem:

Boys don't know how (or want to take the time) to find good books.

Well the internet is nothing if not a place to find stuff so several of us have been emailing back and forth on how to create a site that is teenage boy friendly and will provide a lot of book reviews on books boys will like. Our goal is to be open for business in June, with twenty different bloggers posting once a month (for sure) so there will be a ton of different points of view (from SF to action to nonfic and art) and opportunities to be all things to all boys. We will also hopefully have short interviews with not only male authors but other adult men who can share what books mean to them and what books they enjoyed as teens. And we will have boys chiming in with recommendations and comments as well.

It is a big undertaking but we think it is something that needs to be done.

The question I have though, is about the title. I threw out "Flying Cars and Lost Cities" when I first came up with the idea just because I think those are both things that boys want. But I need some feedback on that - would boys like a site with this name? Would it appeal to them? Would they be willing to visit it and see what we have to offer? If any of you have actual teenage boys in your homes (or workplace), I'd especially be grateful for their thoughts. We have just started talking about the design so I'm going to need to do the domain and all that soon and would like some input as to whether we're on the right track or not.

Comments or emails (colleenatchasingraydotcom) would be welcome. I'm traveling down to Portland today (on the train!) but will check tonight and see what you all have to say.

[Post pictures from Popular Mechanics and National Geographic - that's Angkor Wat in Cambodia.]

One of the reasons why I enjoyed Tanith Lee's Indigara and Connie Willis's D.A. so much was that they both presented versions of the future that weren't gut wrenchingly depressing. It seems that YA SF has lately been hit with some major pessimism and while I'm not averse to the occasional good peek at a dystopian future, being buried in it is enough to make you get under your desk and wait to hear the nuclear alarm that you know is soon to come. (Although maybe now we are more likely to hear tsunami warnings.) Here's what I'm talking about:

In The Secret Under My Skin, the world has suffered a "technocaust" and the heroine lives in a orphanage and spends her days digging through the dump looking for useful items. I thought it was a good book, but man - not a happy one.

Life As We Knew It the moon gets whacked by a meteor pushing it out of orbit and gravely affecting the earth's climate. Another good book, but not so much on the happy happy joy joy. (The whole potential starvation and freezing to death stuff kinda keeps it from being too positive.) (Lots of folks loved this book and it has gotten a ton of positive reviews.)

Siberia (by Ann Halam) takes place in a gulag where people who don't tow the government line are sent (okay that's not so hard to believe). Our heroine is taken from her scientist mother (dad was killed of course) and sent off to a school full of other miserable children. She must battle her way to mom and the happy warm people while protecting vital DNA strands for pretty much every living creature on the planet. This one also has fur farms where all furry creatures are raised for - well, you know what they're raised for. I think this was a very good book but my God - gulags, brutal state sponsored schools, no science and fur farms. Not happy.

The Declaration - This time children are taken away from their families because you aren't allowed to reproduce unless you agree to die. (We have a space problem). Shades of Logan's Run but with the additional uplifting fun of beating children.

EPIC - "Generations ago violence was banned on New Earth. Society is governed and conflicts are resolved in the arena of a fantasy computer game. Everyone plays, from teenagers to senior citizens. If you win, you have the chance to go to university, get more supplies for your community, and fulfill your dreams. if you lose your life both in and out of the game is worth nothing." Games are bad - very very bad.

And due out in March: The Sky Inside. This would be perpetual suburban life under a dome where every morning the people "vote for for a matter of national importance - today, the color of the president's drapes." Our hero is Martin who one day must leave the dome because a strange man has arrived and taken children away, including Martin's sister. I can't help but wonder if they are going to a state sponsored school somewhere...

This is not about the books being poorly written or not having good stories; they could very well all be fantastic. (I've read and reviewed some and will likely have read and reviewed them all in the next couple of months). The problem is that they are all dark and depressing and present very poor views of the future. YA Science fiction (whatever that means) seems to be pointing itself away from the space operas and rocket ship adventures of my youth (oh for Eleanor Cameron when we need her!) and into a picture of life that is hard and unforgiving and dominated by cruelty and control. I can't help but see similarities to novels and stories from the 1950s - during the height of the Cold War - and I assume that the fears raised by life in the War on Terror (whatever that hell that is exactly) are bleeding over into the books and stories we write (and thus read).

That whole global warming climate crisis isn't exactly uplifting either.

I'm not saying the future should reflect utopia merely because it's the future, but part of why I enjoyed D.A. and Indigara so much was because they were funny and thoughtful and the technology was interesting. They were enjoyable to read. In other words - these were SF books that DID NOT SUCK THE LIFE OUT OF ME. Novel thought don't you think?

SF has always been a genre much enjoyed by teenagers - especially boys. Maybe part of why Johnny isn't reading so much lately is because the genre he reaches for is telling him (over and over and over again) that he has no reason to hope for the future. He might as well hang it all up and bury himself in Cheetos because only bad things are on the horizon. Laugh all you want at Star Trek, but they were out there having an adventure every week - cool stuff was going on. Would it be so bad for teenagers to have space ships and interplanetary travel to look forward to?

Are we all so jaded by the problems in the world that we can only see more in the decades and centuries to come? If that's true then we really do have reason to be depressed. Science fiction used to be about the hope of the future; forgive me if I'm thinking that genre (when it comes to YA anyway) could use some serious overhauling.

[Post pic of Blade Runner - one of the greatest dystopian future movies of all time.]

So I just picked up the fourth book (FOURTH) in a row where the head cheerleader is all things evil. We're not talking evil in a kicky vampire kind of way, we're talking full on Cordelia with no redeeming features. Everything hard about the smart, endearing, creative and woefully unappreciated protagonist's life is exacerbated by the evil machinations of the head cheerleader. She is out to get us and that is just the way it is.

(Okay, one of the books does not have an official head cheerleader but the rich popular catty girl who is the source of all things scary in this high school was a carbon copy of the head cheerleader in the other three books - in fact I kept waiting for the passage where she had her pom poms. I can only assume that it was an oversight that she was not given the title she was clearly tailor made for.)

I don't know when this became the latest trend in YA lit (or is this considered the return of a classic trend?) but it is really quite disappointing to see authors fall back on such a cliche. Yes, yes, I know that Buffy needed Cordelia but do recall that Buffy was a former head cheerleader and Cordelia's continued cattiness after she was the cheerleader who becomes friend to the geek squad (okay the vampire slaying geek squad but still) was both funny and surprising. In other words, Whedon played with the cliche; he reinvented it and made it something new. And Rory had Paris - who was evil but not a cheerleader (perish the thought) and also went through her own transformation. (Hell Paris had Francie and Francie wasn't even a cheerleader. The only cheerleader to ever grace the screen in that show was Lane which totally turned the cliche on its head and was quite wonderful.

In other words, you can have your teen drama without bashing cheerleaders.

For the record, I was not a cheerleader. But our head cheerleader in high school was....nice. She's still nice. The cheerleaders were the same kind of mix you found elsewhere in my school - sweet, kind, smart, pretty, and yes - some of them were not the nicest girls. But we also had that in choir and band and, well, we had that everywhere. That's what you get in high school - a bunch of complicated kids who rarely fit anyone's idea of a stereotype. Unless of course you are in the world of YA literature, then you're just knee deep in cheerleaders and not a one has a single redeeming feature.

On the one hand this might seem funny - squads of mean girl cheerleaders are taking over the literary halls of high schools everywhere! - except for a reviewer (or at least this reviewer) it gets mighty darn hard to read through a book that sounds way too much like the one that came before - and the one before that - and the one before that. Each of the four books I've read recently had different sorts of teen problems: I don't fit in, my parents are fighting, my parents are sick/dead/distant/lying and, oh yeah, I don't fit in - but those problems aren't exactly earth shatteringly new. A lot of teen fiction skews in the same direction anyway so when you add something like a transparent villain who basically looks the same in every single book (blonde is popular mean girl hair color - go figure) then it gets very hard for a reader to see beyond the similarities. You lose any connection to the book because you're ticking off how it is like the book that came before it. And then you put it down and pick up the next one hoping it will be something different. And there she is again - that devilish cheerleader and the only sound you can hear is your own head banging on the table is abject despair.

Oh poor cheerleaders! Why do must you be so very bad?

I can't review these books because I can't see past this cliche. It's entirely possible that teenage girls (who are the audience) will love them, but I am afraid that I am just too old to set aside the use, of what I think, is a cardboard (dare I say cartoonish) villain. It is at moments like this that I wonder if a adults can even review teen fiction. In this case I can't and I'm sorry for the authors involved but this was just too much.

I have been thinking more and more about my Bookslut columns for this year, trying to craft them in ways that improve on themes from the past and yet manage to include lots of different books from different authors that might get overlooked for teens (and kids) otherwise. One thing I've realized in all the focused reading I've done for that site is that there are plenty of great books for boys and girls when they are young but when we approach the post Middle Grade years, the titles for boys drop off hugely. There are a zillion books for teenage girls, many of them romance, family dramas, quirky family comedies, saucy school dramas, and on and on. But for boys it seems that most publishers just don't seem to know what to do. It is ridiculous the amount of time I spend trying to find decent "boy" books compared to those for girls. Girls are easy - girl books are everywhere - but boy friendly titles just aren't.

There, I've said it. Books for teenage boys are not easy to come by. (And I have read more than one book that seems to be marketed to boys but reads to me as a book for girls with male protagonists. Girls love them, but I don't think they hit with the boys so much. I also read books with teen boy protags that I think are really written for 30 year old male reviewers. Again, not thinking they work so well for the high school guys either.)

When everyone wonders why kids don't read so much what they seem to mean more often, is why do girls read trash and boys read nothing. I remember my jr high/high school years and while they included some big important books, they were mostly about Harlequin Romance novels. I read at least 1,000 - or maybe even 5,000? - of those books between the ages of 14 and 17. They were with me all the time and I bought them at thrift shops and library sales by the truckload.

It was trash and it was what kept me alive. (I also ate a lot of doritos and drank pepsi like it was a food group. ) What I wanted was a cowboy/soldier/fireman/covert government operative/cowboy/pilot/cowboy/super rich guy/COWBOY to take me away from everything in my small town life. This was both very pedestrian and very typical. Am I proud of spending so much time deluded in happily ever after land? No - but I'm not ashamed either. I was a teenager, we do stupid things. I wasn't getting drunk, high or pregnant, just reading romance novels.

There were worse things I could do, believe me.

But the boys. What were the boys reading? Not a single one of my guy friends read anything that I can remember outside of school assignments. They never talked books. They were studious guys (AP English even) but reading was not their idea of fun. They surfed, listened to an absurd amount of music, played tennis, had jobs and bought cars. We went to the movies and parties and hung out. I always had a book in my backpack, they never did.

So girls read trash and boys read nothing (making a case in the broadest general terms here and I know full well there are exceptions to the rule but I'm ignoring them). Girls will go beyond the trash though - they might segue from the Gossip Girls and their ilk into some funny Chick Lit and then back into what interested them when they were younger before romance dominated their lives. They'll go for mysteries or SFF (former Harry Potter fans) or ease back into literature (we all do adore Little Women after all). But if boys have stopped completely then what becomes of their future potential reading habits?

Can you become a reader again at 25 if you quit when you were 12?

It's something to think about, this keeping boys reading business. And I really do believe that they must be targeted as the specific creatures they are. What do boys like as boys - boys of all colors, races, locations, sexualities? What are not their common interests so much as their common traits? What makes boys tick in other words?

(Answer that one for me and I'll try to time warp back to my 16 year old self - it could save her a ton of heartache and frustration!)

Boy books versus girl books, and just what the differences must be. I think it all comes down to what my brother read lot of when he was in high school: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and the X-Men. Not a romance in the bunch but a lot of action and mystery. And some space ships; you've got to have space ships.

I think science fiction and fantasy could save teenage boys. What I'd love to know is why, judging from all the catalogs that come my way, I seem to be in the minority when it comes to thinking this. There is SFF out there but so much of the SF is depressing dystopian end-of-the-world stuff that I think anyone would get sick of it after awhile. Space opera? Alien adventure? Dr. Who-like mysteries and thrillers? in other words, SFF that doesn't suck the life out of you? Not so much and that's a shame because I think publishers are missing an opportunity here. There must be millions of teenage boys looking for the 21st century Bradbury or Burroughs. Give us jungle adventure or life on Mars and I think they'd read it; in fact I know they would.

I'm writing about Alaska right now - anybody else up for this challenge?
[Post pic of a flying car because really - that more than anything is what a boy wants.]

This was a nice surprise in the Summer Harper Collins catalog:

When the medium from her great-aunt's seance is found murdered, fifteen-year-old Sophie sets out to find the murderer with the help of her friend Mikael. But suddenly she no longer knows whom to trust - her handsome teacher might be a terrorist, her friends don't believe a word she says and the possibility of communicating with the dead no longer seems so crazy after all.

The Explosionist is an extraordinarily accomplished debut novel for teens that delivers a spectacular glimpse of the word as it might have been - had one moment in history been altered. Napoleon, Sigmund Freud and Alfred Nobel play small but surprising roles as this richly textured story unfolds against the backdrop of a vastly different Second World War.

Way to go Jenny!

I'm very conflicted about Ann Rinaldi's new book, The Ever-After Bird. (This is going to be a spoilerific post so skip if you plan to read it.) It's a MG historical fiction about a girl who goes to live with her aunt and uncle after her abolitionist father is killed in a dispute over fugitive slaves (her mother died as a baby). CeCe does not share her family's anti-slavery zeal - she sees it as work that caused chaos in her life and her father's death (which is weird as he was abusive and very difficult to live with). Her uncle is determined to change her mind and proposes taking her with him on a trip down south where he plans to alert as many slaves as possible to the route of the Underground Railroad. His cover is that he is not only a doctor but an ornithologist as well and is working on a book on GA's birds (one bird he is seeking is the Scarlet Ibis, otherwise known as the "Ever-After" bird of the title). CeCe agrees to go out of curiosity over just who her uncle is and how he draws his birds so well. Of course by the end of the book she has uncovered several family secrets (one plot line), learned to deal with the fact that her gentle uncle kills birds so he can draw them (another plot line) and becomes ardently anti-slave (third plot line!). A lot of that is rather predictable, I mean it's not like CeCe was going to suddenly embrace the idea of owning 100 slaves or anything like that. But there is a very weird wrinkle in the slavery plot line and I don't know what to do with it.

As it turns out, Uncle Alex has an assistant, Earline, who is a student at nearby Oberlin College. Earline is an escaped slave herself and she has some sort of project she's working on that involves her going back south (she is constantly taking notes during the trip). Earline will have to pretend to be Alex's slave during the trip which is understandably tough, but she is rude to CeCe from the very beginning (when they are still in Ohio) because the teen apparently reminds her of the girl who she answered to back when she was in slavery. Right there I thought that was odd - clearly CeCe could not be the first white girl Earline had been in contact with since she fled the south. Alex suggests Earline is jealous of CeCe's relationship with him - but the man is married and Rinaldi goes out of her way to show how much he loves his wife (who by the way is paralyzed from the waist down due to an accident that also killed their son - that would be part of the family secrets plot). So why is Earline jealous of CeCe? But that was just odd at first, and not a major stumbling point except that Earline just keeps being obnoxious and CeCe can't figure out what to do with her and Alex keeps being understanding and by the third incident of Earline the bitch (and I'm sorry, that's what she acts like), all my sympathy for that character was long gone.

And that's a problem because you really need to sympathize with Earline in this book for it to work.

Soon enough they are on their way and stopping at plantations, meeting the whites and blacks and looking for birds. The ugliness of slavery is easily revealed, and CeCe starts to think twice about the whole abolitionist thing. As for Earline, well in between playing her role as faithful slave and taking furtive notes, she starts exchanging long soulful looks with the man Alex hired to drive their carriage - the white man. And then (in like two days) she tells CeCe she loves him and then (like two days later) she tells her they plan to marry in a wedding in the slave quarters of the plantation they have just arrived at - in Georgia. CeCe thinks she is insane but Earline is in LOVE!! She can not be stopped! It's all so wonderful!

And of course many many bad things happen but CeCe emerges as enlightened and heroic, Alex is brave and heroic and Earline is damaged and alone. (Don't ask about the white guy she was going to marry.) And then, other than an epilogue explaining what happened years later, the story ends. It was all about CeCe finding her moment and the fact that it came only because Earline was colossally stupid doesn't seem to be the point. In fact, Earline acting like she hasn't got the brain in her head she needed to get into college in the first place is not at all part of the story. She's the necessary foil for CeCe's character development and that's all. When I realized that, I also realized something else - all of the black characters in this book are there just for the white ones to look good.

Am I the only one who has a problem with that?

I mean how is it possible that Earline, who as it turns out was raped and impregnated by her master, should fall for a southern white man in like 15 minutes on the one hand, while still struggling so much with memories of the long ago evil daughter of the house that she has to be rude to CeCe? Are there no black men she finds appealing? And what about the fact that the only black man the group exchanges more than a couple of words with is a slave in some kind of torture device that Alex tries to free and can't - and so the poor guy ends up drowning himself. White people are powerful - either powerful good or powerful bad (and there are several nasty ones in the story) while black people are weak - all of them enslaved, confused, and at the whim of their emotions to the detriment of their own and everyone else's safety. They sit waiting for the kindly whites to come and show them the way north and without white help, it is clear they will never be free. (And Earline is a prime example of how without white help, they will still be in trouble even after freedom.)

There are so many things wrong with this.

But - and here is where I get conflicted - I can see a lot of little white girls enjoying CeCe's story. They will like how she slowly comes into her own, gets over her own childhood abuse, saves Earline and acts very very bravely. They will likely also be intrigued by what Alex does with the birds and how CeCe comes to grip with that. So as a reviewer, should I be thinking of those little girls and seeing the merits of the book? But what about the little black girls? All they have is crazy Earline - or should they be identifying with CeCe also? I don't think the book is racist, it's just screwed up but what do I do with that opinion? And thent what really really bugs me is that I can't see how this book can be historical fiction when it hinges on something that seems so outside the realm of possibility it is hard for me to bear. A former horribly abused slave falls in love inside of a week with a white man in southern Georgia and risks everything to marry him right then and there? I mean putting aside the fact that it's a white guy she falls for, is it so impossible to imagine they wait a week until Ohio?

Am I crazy or is this just so far removed from reality that it shouldn't even call itself historical fiction?

Frustrating, very frustrating. And now I have to write a review that is negative and I hate that but I don't see how I have a choice. This is a nicely written story that is something other (rather intentional or accidental) than it seems to be and that bothers me, that bothers me a lot.

I just finished reviewing Sherman Alexie's National Book Award winning The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for my December column. I almost thought at this point that it would be overkill to write about the book - everyone and their third cousin has called it brilliant by now (and they are all right), so another review isn't exactly important to sales I imagine. But I think I got a few things out of the book that maybe some others missed - or at least I wrote about it a bit differently. Anyway, I loved it and wanted to review it and hopefully will convince some readers who are on the fence to read it. There was something that Alexie said in his interview at Finding Wonderland that really resonated with me, and then when I found that argument in the final pages of the book it really hit home hard. Here's the bit from the WBBT interview:

For many years, I've said that my two strongest tribal affiliations are not racially-based. My strongest tribes are book nerds and basketball players, and those tribes are as racially, culturally, economically, and spiritually diverse. And, like Arnold, I also belong to a hundred other tribes, based on the things I love to read, watch, do. Ever since 9/11, I have worked hard to be very public about my multi-tribal identity. I think fundamentalism is the mistaken belief that one belongs to only one tribe; I am the opposite of that.

Here is more along the same vein from Absolutely True Diary:

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in my loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream.

I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms.

And the tribe of cartoonists.
And the tribe of chronic masturbators.
And the tribe of teenage boys.
And the tribe of small-town kids.
And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners.
And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers.
And the tribe of poverty.
And the tribe of funeral-goers.
And the tribe of beloved sons.
And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends.

It's in this declaration of tribal belonging that transcends religion, nationality and ethnicity that I really think Alexie makes a jump of epic proportions. He sees himself far beyond how so many others try to see him (and see each other). He sees the universality of human relationships - how all of us have at least one tribal affiliation in common. And I got then who I am - who I have always been.

I belong to the tribe of hardcore body surfers, the tribe of Alaskan aviation (a way of life I know better than nearly any other); the tribes of Jimmy Buffet, Johnny Cash and U2 lovers; the tribe of Buffy addicts and Star Trek geeks and old movie fans. My people are book lovers and comic book readers and writers of all kinds. They are dog lovers and ice tea drinkers and overly fond of both cheese and chocolate (but not together). They have walked the same trek to two Thanksgiving and two Christmas dinners that I did, as part of the broken home tribe; they are cancer survivors; they are worried parents of sick children.

My tribes are a long list of their own, although I see that Alexie and I intersect from time to time; as all of us do when we think about it - when we allow ourselves to see the bigger picture that humanity truly is.

The wonder that is The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is not only that it is a great coming-of-age story, or that it portrays modern day reservation life so effectively and poignantly; it is that I found myself connecting with Arnold Spirit Jr as a fellow member of some of my tribes. Alexie brought us together, and I hope that countless others will find that connection with him and his characters by reading this book. That's how you make the world a better place - another tribe I dearly hope to belong to.

So, interview questions are off to Loree Griffin Burns, David Mack and Nick Abadzis, all wonderful authors who I am so looking forward to writing about in the WBBT. I've also been having the most wonderful email exchange with Lisa Ann Sandell whose Song of the Sparrow is one of my favorite books of the year and one I wish everyone would read. Drama, romance and war - it's really a stellar novel.

I also wrote my review of Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story for my column next month. It's interesting but while I do agree with Eisha that Vizzini's book is about depression (the main character has suicidal thoughts, calls a hotline and is directed to go to the nearest hospital where he checks himself in), I think that Craig's journey would appeal to anyone, whether truly depressed or not, who has ever felt overwhelmed by family, friends or life in general. I actually resisted reading this book for a long time because I had no interest in reading another depressed teen story. (And there are so many out there - as Eisha put it in her Foreward column on books on this subject: "But I still found it interesting to see how many novels published over the past year or so have depicted depressed teens.") But Ned has guest hosted at Bookslut and sent me a note about the book coming out in tpb and I had heard good things about it so I decided to give it a shot. Right from the beginning, as Craig struggles to figure out what he needs to do to make the "shift" happen, so his brain can get back to normal - so his life can get back to normal - I found myself captivated with this kid. He was depressed, but he was also well enough to know that he wanted to be better. In other words, this isn't a book about a screwed up kid getting more and more and more screwed up (and being surrounded by other screwed up kids). This was about a normal well-adjusted kid with a very nice family who got in over his head in pursuit of the perfect (meaning acceptable) life and can't get off the train he is driving. He wants to be okay; he just doesn't know how.

To say that I could identify with Craig is an understatement.

A lot of reviewers have mentioned how funny the book is and they are right, but anyone who has ever spent time in a crazy family or at a crazy job with tell you there is a lot of humor to be found in pretty much any situation (aside from those truly horrific of course). We were stressed out beyond belief at the Company but had serious laughs everyday. The ones that shock me now are the jokes about the near crashes. When you can laugh about losing an engine on takeoff in a snowstorm then you really know about the joys of black humor. Vizzini's work reminded me of those days. He never strays from the seriousness of the situation but yeah, it is funny.

Here's the thing though - holiday dinners are also funny - but that doesn't make them any less painful. I think what Ned has done with this book is tap into the collective stress and bleakness that we all have over work or love or family and put them inside the life on one teenage boy. I read this book compulsively because I saw so much of myself in Craig - even though I've never been suicidal, or spent time in a psych ward, or attended a very competitive school (perish the thought!). But I was able to place my own experiences into Craig's - able to apply his thoughts and observations to my own memories - and so the book worked perfectly for me. I would guess that it would work for anyone (teen or adult) who has ever been in a stressful situation. It's not about a kid freaking out over school, it's about all of us freaking out over everything. Here's the bit that really hit home for me:

That's my school. I worked harder to get in than I did for anything else, ever. I went there because, coming out of it, I'd be able to be President. Or a lawyer. Rich, that's the point. Rich and successful.

And look where it got me. One stupid year - not even one, like three quarters of one - and here I am with not one, but two bracelets on my wrist, next to a shrink a room adjacent to a hall where there's a guy named Human Being walking around. If I keep doing this for three more years, where will I be? I'll be a complete loser. And what if I keep on? What if I do okay, live with the depression, get into College, do College, go to Grad School, get the Job, get the Money, get Kids and a Wife and a Nice Car? What kind of crap will I be in then? I'll be completely crazy.

I know people like that - I've been people like that. It's Kind of a Funny Story tells what it like to be the person trying so hard to hold it together for reasons you don't even fully understand. It's a book that tries to remind readers about living your life which is such a simple lesson but one we all lose track of, over and over again. It's a great read and one I'm very happy to recommend.

I recently read a decent portion of City of Bones which lots of people loved and was really disappointed. It seemed like the kind of YA urban fantasy that is right up my alley; teenage girl sees something (someones really) no one else can see and thus discovers a parallel world in New York City where a great big honking battle between good and evil (even with angels this time) is being fought. I was looking forward to it big time but had to struggle through the first 100 pages or so and then decided to just put it down. Rather than just donate the book and be done with it though, I've been thinking about why it did not work for me. Here's a few obvious things right off the top (caution - spoilers ahead):

1. There was no explanation as to why the teen heroine suddenly saw the Shadowhunters that night. How come she had never seen any before if they are out hunting in NYC all the time?

2. Clary's mother is a former Shadowhunter that has been in hiding and they happen to get her the same night she happens to see some Shadowhunters on her own? Hmmm. Also - wouldn't Mom have thought to warn Clary about some of this by now?

3. They've never in a jillion years brought an outsider into the building but break the rules for Clary - and then the next night break them for Simon?

4. Clary overhears the big bad guys talking to her Mom's boyfriend about someone with her mother's name, and remembers her mother's unexplained scars which look surprisingly Shadowhunter-like but still can't believe they are talking about her Mom? This one really annoyed me.

But other than small problems and too frequent fantasy cliches (the hidden house smacked of Dr. Strange, the teens all learning on their own was totally Xavier's Academy, the library was right out of "Beauty and the Beast"), it was Clary's response to the call that really struck me as off. She finds out she's caught up in events beyond her control, she battles a demon, she learns she's not human and yet she worries about what she is wearing. All of the teen angst and none of the teen humor from Buffy was here - without any super strength to back it up. I couldn't figure out if she was questioning her new world, denying it or embracing it. And that I think is a problem with books where the call is a big part of the story.

If you don't get the call part solidly down, all the action in the world isn't going to fix the story. (And if you're wondering about "the call", Gwenda had a great post on it last year that explains the whole thing.)

The Black Tattoo was another book that did not work for me because of the call. You have a fairly unremarkable teenage boy who is out walking with his buddy and gets grabbed by a mysterious stranger who sees something in him and tells him he must come to a mysterious building and embrace his destiny. So he goes (ooookay), battles the girl who has been training for this moment all her freaking life and beats her. He is hailed as the new hero and now she has to fight alongside him. I'm not even going to touch the fact that the girl was defeated in two minutes by uberboy who fights purely on instinct and with his "gift", but the boy just decides to go with it and become new warrior dude. The lack of questioning did not ring true for me at all (teenagers question everything) and it ruined the story for me.

Catherine Fisher's Corbenic was one of the only books I've read where the teen refuses the call. Cal exits a train at the wrong station in the dark and wanders down the road ending up at a castle-like building (this is England). He finds himself in the middle of a party where he learns he is on a quest for the Fisher King. He refuses to undertake the quest and goes back to the station and continues on to his uncle's house. But in the weeks that follow he can not forget what he was charged with or the Fisher King himself. His life takes several unexpected turns, he meets many unusual people and while struggling to deal with long running family issues, he realizes that he must accept the charge if he is to stay sane. He can't refuse it - not even if he wants to (and he begins to think he shouldn't anyway). But the whole book is about what he should do which makes for fascinating reading.

It's kind of like all seven seasons of Buffy without the monster killings.

One thing that occurred to me as I set City of Bones aside was that my own YA book is becoming more and more about answering the call - but spread out over the whole text. It's more of a family mystery for most of the book although there is a big bad that must be dodged and avoided. But the mystery is the key and whether or not to fully explore that mystery and accept what she finds at the end is my girl's question. And writing that story, and reading these others, has made me realize in some way we are all engaged in answering the call. What kind of life do we choose to live? What challenges do we choose to face? What battles (at home, at school, at the office, etc.) do we choose to fight? All of this is part of determining what kind of person we choose to be, which at its heart is really what this call business is all about.

And I guess that's the way you have to write about it too; as if you were facing a challenge on the playground or in the cubicle and then decide how would you respond - and thus figure out how you want your characters to respond. I'm still working on this a lot, I know. But I want to get it right for me and hopefully, it will then ring true to other readers as well.