As you’re reading this, I’m frantically preparing for tomorrow’s presentation. I’m also probably collapsing a bit from all the excitement of being around so many friends and colleagues who are as passionate about YA Lit as I am. I’m also collapsing a bit under how much work went into the next pile of blog posts that will be coming to you starting this afternoon.

But it’s all worth it in the end. I cannot wait to share this stuff.

This week’s links of note is chock full of great and thought-provoking posts and stories, as well as some lighter fare. I’m putting this together days in advance of posting, so I’m probably missing some links that came out in the last couple of days. If you’ve read something this week I should know about, feel free to leave a link in the comments!

• Arguably the most “wtf” story of the past couple of weeks: Penguin and Random House are merging. The night before everything was a done deal, though, News Corp (who owns Harper Collins), wanted to put in a bid to buy Penguin. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Here’s a link to what could possibly happen with the merger. What I’m going to be curious about, since a large part of the talks centered around digital publishing and initiatives, is how libraries will fare in this. It’s a tiny part of a huge puzzle, obviously, but seeing neither publisher plays well with libraries, and that this merger suggests there will be a narrowing of the market, what’s going to happen to readers? 

• Are we willing to overlook the potential negative consequences of edgy books? The CBC Diversity blog ponders this question. 

• Test your chops of literary libraries with The Guardian’s quiz. I . . . did not even take this because as I started reading the questions, I realized I was going to fail. And I don’t like to fail if I don’t have to.  

• Booklist has named their top ten first novels for youth in the last year. I’ve read four of them, and I think they were all pretty accomplished novels, even if they weren’t necessarily my favorites. And funny enough, two of the four I read I would argue are much more novels that have appeal to adults, rather than to teens. Do you agree or disagree with this list?

This week’s links of note is legitimately shorter than most. I’m in the midst of preparing a huge presentation for YALSA’s YA Lit Symposium and I’ve been working on setting up the forthcoming contemporary week series here at STACKED, to run November 3-10. I’ve got five amazing guest posts, and I’ll be including coordinating book lists to the topics the guests wrote on. Contemporary week will kick off with a post including all our presentation materials from the Symposium, including a massive project I’ve devoted all my free time to. Which would explain why this week’s links of note is shorter.

• What’s new in YA Fiction? Mashups. But not the kind of Mashups where Abe Lincoln is taking on something paranormal. These are mashups that tangle genres. I think some of these work way better than others, especially when trying to sell books to a teen. 

• So how much do women dominate the YA world? Not that much, according to this awesomely well-researched piece over at Lady Business.  So next time there’s moaning about the guys reading problem, maybe it’s not because of who is writing the stories nor who the main characters in stories are. There is another great followup piece over at Zoe Marriott’s blog.

• Turns out Isaac Marion hates that he’s associated with young adult books. Even though it was blurbs from a YA author who got him his start. The shame and stigma, etc. I’m posting this so you can add him to your “don’t bother” list. 

• The amazing ladies of The Readventurer have posted another “wall of books,” this time featuring titles from Australia. I felt my to-read pile grow by leaps and bounds. 

• Here’s a good piece on how to support an author. Though I do find the “buy a copy even if you won’t read it” bit to be kind of weird. I get the point, but I don’t like extra clutter in my house. I’d rather just gift a book in support.  

• Ten essential books for book nerds! How many have you read or do you own? I’ve read The Book Thief and The Polysyllabic Spree. I do own Reading Lolita in Tehran but haven’t read it yet. 

• Want to visit a haunted library? Here are the ten most haunted in the United States. I’ve been to exactly zero of them.  

• Quercus books is going to expand to US distribution. I’ve read a couple of YA titles from Quercus (having ordered them from the UK) and I’ve really enjoyed them. This is great news. 

• Ploughshares literary magazine does a feature on little-known literary boroughs, and this time, they covered Iowa City, IA. I went to college just north of Iowa City and used to go down to their amazing indie, Prairie Lights, to get a fix. I got to hear a few readings there, too, and I had the privilege of hearing so many well-known literary readers while in college because of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop being there. I also had a professor who came from the IWW, which really did transform a lot of my thinking about creative writing and the creative process. When they tell you you will not have opportunities for “cultural events” in the midwest, I beg to differ. I loved reading this piece. 

• Cassie Clare wrote a great piece about bullying and how it’s a bad thing. I know that sounds cheesy and I feel like everyone’s read this already, but I think her speaking out like this — especially with the audience she has — is brave and powerful.  

• Want a literary Halloween costume? Look no further.

• The ten most twisted couples in literary history. I haven’t read enough of these to agree. But do I love a twisted couple.   

• I think it’s way too early to be talking about the best books of the year, but The Huffington Post disagrees with me. They offer up their favorites of the year.  There is one YA book on the list. Can you guess what it is? 

• Speaking of Halloween, twisted couples, and other scary thoughts, make sure you check out the new series over at Nova Ren Suma’s blog: What Scares You? 

Ready for this biweekly edition of Links of Note? It seems like there are lots of interesting and provocative pieces about libraries this go around. Also a lot of great groan-worthy stories!

• The year is 1937. Do you know the rules of the library? Check out the gallery of images of expected behavior in the reading room from this period in time on Galleycat. I think a lot of these images are actually still relevant — especially the rules on the left here. 

• I’m really fascinated by this piece — how do you make a book disappear completely? Can you? The Atlantic talks about how Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine seemingly disappeared, even with all the technology available to us now.  

• I like this book list of novels in verse by the topics they delve into. I’m stuck on the notion that these are controversial topics — simply because something is a part of reality, I have a hard time labeling it as controversial — but the list is pretty darn good and current. 

• One of the perks of living in a world where anyone can start a book review blog, can post a review on Goodreads or Amazon or B&N, is that we can get a wide range of review styles. But over at The Millions, there’s an interesting essay about the anatomy of a book review, and I like the points about how reviewers sometimes need to step back and figure out if it is the book or if it is them personally. Like I said though, the nice thing about online reviews is you can choose which ones you read based on the person writing them if you want.

• A lengthy but interesting piece over at Forbes asks whether consumer reviews have a future, given the great fun we’ve had discovering about sock puppeting and paid-for reviews lately. 

• Something more light hearted: the AWL looks at the cost of being a kid in a classic children’s novel now against what it cost when the book was published.

• Over at the Christchurch City Libraries blog, there’s an interesting recap of a book event that raises the question of whether or not the term YA is creating a barrier for teen readers. I pretty much think this is a big nothing, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.  

• How about some vintage ads for reading and libraries?

• How many of the 20 most beautiful children’s books have you read? Or shall I say, how many of the 20 most beautiful children’s books as determined by the folks at Flavorwire have you read? I’ve read a few of them, but I am really loving the look of Vivaldi. And I love Oliver Jeffers’s illustrations any time.

• Hey, is young adult fiction the new chick lit? Good grief, people. Can we move on from labeling everything? Or how about more importantly, this doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t even link this because it’s nothing but bait, but it’s just so dumb I can’t help myself. 

• A guy makes lending libraries out of phone booths in New York City. Best and most absurd line in the entire story is about someone who borrowed a book, suggesting reading is dead and “shame about the internet, though.” 

• The Huffington Post Books section muses about what your favorite book says about you. I guess if your favorite book is one of the eight they feature, then you can learn a lot. And if not, you pick the closest one. They acknowledge their sweeping generalizations, by the way. 

• From the Telegraph, check out the books most often left behind in hotel rooms. Spoiler alert: they’re all best selling novels and perhaps most likely to be being read in a hotel room anyway. 

• YALSA wants feedback from members AND non-members about how they can be better. Go answer their survey. It was painless.     

• Remember the line of vintage contemporary books? Here’s a neat story about that entire series, as well as a discussion of covers, packaging, and the looks for classic books. Fair warning: this is long and I’m STILL working my way through it. But what I read was good and I plan on continuing it.

•  The always-eloquent Andrew Karre has an interview over at Mitali Perkins’s blog about editing YA books during the era of YA novels.

• I took part in a science book club in college, where we read non-fiction titles that had some basis in science/health/medicine, and one of the titles I remember reading and enjoying was The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. The New York Times reports that Lia Lee, who was the center of the story, has died from her illness. I hope this book gets another update because I want to know more of her story.

• I love this guest post written by Adele Walsh — you may know her as Persnickety Snark — about how blogging got her her dream job.

• The articles over at The Atlantic Wire about YA are getting more and more obnoxious. This week’s installment was on why adults are reading YA books. I keep linking these and I don’t know why. Their YA expert is just not. 

• How about 10 underrated books you should read? I haven’t read anything on this list, though I have read books by Handler, Murakami, Wharton and Kerouac.      

• From the Lawrence Public Library, the same folks who brought you the awesome infographic on what books you should read after The Hunger Games, comes an infographic on what you should read after Winter’s Bone. 

• I guess since I haven’t read any Jane Austen, my brain has never quite gotten the work out it should. Literary novels apparently make you smarter or something. Actually, this is an interesting piece on the science behind reading. 

• Is it egotistical to link to a post someone else wrote about a post you wrote? What if I said it’s one of my library heroes? Seriously. Seeing this this week over at Marge Loch-Wouters’s blog was out of this world. It was really good food for thought, too. 

I’m so excited about this upcoming week, I can hardly stand it. Kid Lit Con is Friday and Saturday, and aside from the presentation (which is coming together so well!), I’m excited to touch base with people I rarely get to see. I’ve made dates for tea and for gelato, and I am eager to experience New York City outside of Book Expo America. If you’re going to Kid Lit Con, I can’t wait to meet you, and if you’re not — I’ll definitely have a post or two to share with take aways. 

I’ve found I love doing these posts — they’re a little all over in terms of content, but I tend to like reading across topics, so I hope other people find these as interesting to read through as I do.

• Let’s start light. Here are some child-friendly computer books. Be warned that label is a bit of a misnomer but there is plenty of good computer humor to go around.

• Do you keep track of what books have been optioned for film? The LA Times ran a story with a bunch of new YA titles recently optioned. I bet you’ll recognize many of the titles (and maybe groan at a few). 

• Related to that, there’s a nice interview in SLJ with literary manager Eddie Gamarra about the process of turning children’s books into movies. 

• New blog alert! Sarah Flowers and her son Mark have put together a blog based on the concept of their generation gap — how do they read YA books and share them with one another? What are their similar and different perspectives on YA librarianship? This looks like a blog to watch. If their names sound familiar, it’s because they’re both heavily involved in YALSA.

• From Flavorwire, a look at the first edition covers of 25 classic novels. I love how simple and clean most of them are and it’s interesting to see which images are still the iconic ones associated with certain titles (like Gatsby). 

• The resident YA expert at The Atlantic writes about the way online critics have been given a hard time when it comes to reviews, including a rehash of the Emily Giffin debacle. I will say this: I’ve noticed a huge change in tone for review/response in the last year and behavior among bloggers and authors. That’s part of why I’ve had a hard time reviewing this year. It’s always a weird risk, as silly as it sounds. I should be used to it having done this for 3.5 years, but it seems tensions are higher than ever now and sometimes the risk isn’t worth it for me. 

• What kind of reader are you? The Atlantic has a guide to define your type. I read through all of the types listed on that page and I didn’t fit any of the descriptions. But lucky for me, there is another page of reader types here. I would call myself a mix of Hopelessly Devoted, The Critic, and The Sharer. Maybe also a bit of an “it’s complicated” reader, though I’m not a Pisces, thank you very much. I am a balanced, variety-seeking Libra.

• Is this the year of the infographic? Here are a ton of library-related infographics that have made an appearance this year.  Bonus: tools for making your own infographic — this will be particularly helpful for a little project I’m working on (tease!)

• How many Norton Anthologies clutter your book shelves? Between my husband and I — both of us were English majors in college — we have more than one shelf of these door stoppers. Did you know the Norton turned 50 this year? Check out the story behind the anthologies.  If you’re wondering, my favorite Norton is my Postmodern American Fiction edition (it’s portable, not too heavy, and contains amazing postmodern work. . . my favorite kind of lit).   

• The Horn Book has a fascinating story about font choices and picture books worth reading. If you get a print version of the magazine, I also suggest spending some time reading “Whitney and Me” in the September/October edition. It’s a great story about work-for-hire writing and about how the author’s perspective of writing that way changed when charged with writing a biography of Whitney Houston. It’s not on the website yet, unfortunately. 

• Another story from The Atlantic, and this one is on “cross-unders,” or books published YA that have adult appeal. These are all fall releases. Can I just say I hate the term “cross-under?” I don’t know what it is but it makes me feel uncomfortable. Why can’t it just be cross-overs? Why under? 

• Want a good laugh? Here’s a list of a bunch of funny books by reading preferences. Source is a little suspect to me, but the lists look pretty solid. 

• I love this blog post over at The Readventurer so much — a metric ton of YA novels at 220 pages or fewer. I love shorter YA novels, so I plan on checking out a ton of the ones on the list that I’ve overlooked. 

• Razorbill UK just made a deal with self-published author Tammara Webber to publish a number of her books traditionally.  Of interest to me in this story are a few things: it’s another self-published author (and one doing really well if you pay attention to rankings) choosing to go with a traditional publisher and what caught Razorbill UK’s attention was her “new adult” novel. I have feelings about that label — it’s adult and there’s no shame about it — but I found the publisher’s discussion of how this is a new trend worth looking into interesting. That’s basically the opposite of the reaction in the US, isn’t it? 

• You should go ask Courtney Summers a bunch of really tough questions over at the YA Book Club Group on Goodreads. Also, I don’t normally link to other contests around the web, but she’s giving away 4 books coming out this fall that I’ve read and approve of: Beautiful Music for Ugly Children by Kirstin Cronn-Mills, Through to You by Emily Hainsworth, Yesterday by CK Kelly Martin, and Send Me A Sign by Tiffany Schmidt. Go enter here — and yes, you will see reviews of all of these books on STACKED soon.  

• Still on the fence about Kid Lit Con? Betsy Bird has posted the entire schedule on her blog, and you should read it and be convinced to go. You saw Maureen Johnson is the keynote speaker, right? Because I’m pretty excited about that. 

• Ever dreamed of having your book design dreams become a reality? Simon and Schuster are looking for the next look for Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451 to commemorate it’s 60th anniversary. Details here! 

And that’s a wrap! But before I sign off on this post, I’m curious: are there things that are of interest worth sharing in bi-weekly link roundups? Would you be interested in links to contests on other blogs or venues for books we dig? Non-book news that catches our eyes? I don’t know about anyone else, but I read a ton of different blogs and collect a lot of different, interesting pieces and wonder about what other people would be interested in seeing. Drop a line in the comments — or privately via email — with any suggestions or thoughts you have. Ninety-nine percent of what I blog is what I want to blog about; this is the one percent where I’d be happy to tailor it a bit to what readers might be interested in!