Over on Book Riot this week (& last):

 

• Three on a YA theme tackled complete fantasy series you can dive into and books set on strange and mysterious islands.

 

• I talked about reading the “Little House” series as an adult, as well as highlighted a series by a Native about the Natives living during this same time period.

 

• Have you seen this micro-trend of illustrated collective biographies of women? It’s neat, I love it, and I cannot wait to read all of these. (Also, someone apparently got mad about this post because “there are so many great BIOGRAPHIES of women out there” which…right, is a thing I said in the post. The purpose of collective biographies is to pique one’s interest so that you seek out those biographies).

 

• And one of my favorite posts/book lists in a while, I offered up a pile of recommended YA reads for fans of the Netflix show Stranger Things. 

 

This week over on Book Riot…

 

• I talked about why I’d like to see more quitters in YA fiction. There was a piece floating around the YA world a few weeks ago that attempted to define “clean YA” and one of the bullet points was that the characters never give up in the face of challenges. It gave me a lot of pause — why isn’t it okay for teenagers to quit? And why don’t we see more quitters in fiction?

 

• A request from a reader for pirate themed YA books lead to this week’s “3 On A YA Theme” post, which is all about pirates.

 

 

In exciting book-related updates, I’ve seen sample interiors and the cover for Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World and I honestly could not be happier. The book has a new publication date of February 28, 2017, meaning you can have it in your hot little hands for Women’s History Month next year. I cannot wait to share more with you all because I am wildly proud of and excited about this book.

If you haven’t yet, you can add the book to your Goodreads “to read” shelves. Once it hits 1,000 “to read” adds, which we are not far from (!!), I’ll do a giveaway for a preorder of the book.

 

Big week over on Book Riot. I’m excited to share these pieces:

 

• I had the pleasure of interviewing author Megan Abbott about her recently-released book You Will Know Me, about why women are killing it in crime and YA fiction, and so much more. This interview may be one of my all-time favorites.

 

• I pulled together 65 YA horror novels written by women. The best part of this list, though, is I could have added so many more. I limited to one book per author, too.

 

• If you’ve been itching to read anything by Meg Medina, I put together a reading pathway to get you started.

 

• And here are some YA novels set in Hawaii.

 

Over on Book Riot this week . . .

 

• A look at three pairs of books that are companions to one another (all the fun of a series without the commitment).

 

• The bookish life of Florence Welch, aka leading lady of Florence and the Machine. I love when musicians and other artists I really admire are themselves book lovers and loud about it.

 

A quick head’s up: I’m going to write about Domestic Arrangements next week, meaning that the debut YA roundup I do monthly will be pushed a week back…which just means it’ll hit on August 1 for July debuts. So if you’re looking for that, it’ll still happen!

 

Last week was “Best Of” week at Book Riot, so I didn’t do a round-up of writing. So enjoy this twice-as-big edition of things I’ve written there these last two weeks.

 

• A how-to guide to taking great bookish selfies.

 

• Three on a YA Theme tackled fantastical and magical libraries, as well as loud, proud teen geeks.

 

• And here’s your preview of 164 YA books hitting shelves between July and the end of September of this year.

 

As far as my week in reading has been concerned, I’ve blown through two more books in the “Little House on the Prairie” series and am elbow-deep into Domestic Arrangements, which I hope some of you will join me in reading. I’m deeply in love so far. It’s edgy by today’s standards, let alone 1982 standards.