STACKED

books

Giveaway: The Letter Q

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We’ve got a giveaway today, courtesy of Big Honcho Media and Scholastic’s This is Teen campaign. Two readers will win a finished copy of the anthology The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves, edited by Sarah Moon.

About the Book: 

In this anthology, sixty-four award-winning authors and illustrators such as Michael Cunningham, Amy Bloom, Jacqueline, Woodson, Terrence McNally, Gregory Maguire, David Levithan, and Armistead Maupin, make imaginative journeys into their pasts, telling their younger selves what they would have liked to know then about their lives as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people. Through stories, in pictures, with bracing honesty, these are words of love, messages of understanding, reasons to hold on for the better future ahead. They will tell you things about your favorite authors that you never knew before. And they will tell you about yourself. 

Here’s the trailer:

You can also find more information about the book on Facebook.

Want a copy? All you have to do is fill out the form below, and we’ll pick two winners for a finished copy of The Letter Q on June 6.

Truth: Blogging is Hard

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This morning I sat down to start writing reviews of a few books I’ve finished lately that don’t come out for a few months. Usually, I try not to read too far ahead of pub dates for books for a number of reasons, but one of the big ones is that I end up sitting on pre-written reviews for months. That isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but sometimes it means that something being published soon or something published not too long ago doesn’t get my attention right away.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t review everything I read. If I did, my reviews would be much shorter. But more than that, I like to write about books that spoke to me in some way — either because I really liked something about the book or because something really didn’t work. I find, too, I get way more satisfaction writing a lengthy, critical review over a few things, rather than writing a bunch of smaller reviews of many more things. So yes, sometimes things get overlooked and yes, sometimes I read something everyone else has read. I just don’t feel like blogging about it. I blog for me, first and foremost.

But as much as blogging is something I do for myself, it is something I also do knowing full well I am blogging for an audience. And let me tell you: I appreciate the fact people actually read this and people care. It’s amazing and fulfilling in a way that’s not easily expressed. So thank you.

There are times, though, I find myself wondering why I put in the effort or whether it’s worth it. Blogging sometimes feels like work. I sat down today to catch up on a handful of reviews I want (note: want — not need) to write, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I really liked a couple of these books, and I really want to express that here. But I couldn’t make myself put words to my thoughts. Instead, I caught myself rereading some of my older reviews and thinking about why I write them in the first place. I put the pressure on myself to write them and I’m pretty adamant about the fact I will review what I want to review and how I want to review them. No one is pressuring me. Even when I take on review copies, I don’t force myself to write a review if I don’t want to. I don’t see a reason to because this is my blog and if it means that someone doesn’t want to provide me a review copy in the future, so be it. It doesn’t change the fact I can acquire the book when it comes out.

Writing a review can take me hours. I do it because I like to think about what’s at the heart of the book and what makes it work or not work. I’ve got a mental list of things I go through when I write a review, too, of certain elements I want to touch upon. I don’t hit them all in a review, but I do think about each one of them. A good review can take me two or three hours to write, and it can take me another hour to reread, revise, and prepare (and sometimes, to be honest, that is in and of itself draining when you’re looking for images, saving them, fighting with Blogger to format them correctly, and so forth). And except for that very last part, I love the process. I love thinking about how to construct a review, how to speak about what the book does or doesn’t do well, how I can convey it best with my own words. It’s a huge mental challenge. It’s writing. I’ve been writing my whole life. Blogging has just been one of the best means of doing it and doing it regularly.

I don’t compare myself to anyone else who is blogging because it’s just not my style. I don’t really care what other people “are getting” from blogging. I know what I get out of it, and that’s good enough for me. When I write a good review or a good post, it makes me feel good. I get satisfaction knowing I’ve expressed physically what I’ve been bouncing around mentally.

But as I sat down to review today I found myself completely disinterested. And it wasn’t just today. I’ve been putting off some of these reviews for weeks. Over the last couple of months, I’ve put off writing reviews for books for weeks, too (in one instance, I put off writing the review for 6 months, even though it was a book I loved and wanted to talk about). As much as blogging is for me, I know I blog for a readership and an audience, too.

There’s this competing voice in my head that also reminds me of that when I sit down to write a blog post. It’s not just for me, or I’d not use blogging as a platform for my thoughts and then promote it. It’s also for readers (of all shapes — I don’t know exactly who reads STACKED). There is a level of interaction and engagement that comes from blogging, and I find myself thinking about this when I do write a review. I’ve talked before about how I think stats are a load of crap because they don’t tell you anything about a blog other than it gets a lot of traffic. It doesn’t show or tell you anything about effort or about heart or about passion.

If you go through the first page of STACKED, you can see what gets people talking. It’s not book reviews. That’s not to say people aren’t reading book reviews or thinking about them. They just don’t interact with them the same way they interact with sexier content. And writing that sexier content — posts about covers, sharing amazing interviews and guest posts, posting the lines I’ve been reading — is  fun to do. It only becomes further reinforced as fun, too, when you see people are talking about what you’re writing or sharing. Seriously. It’s FUN.

Writing book reviews, as fulfilling as they are, though, sometimes feels like work. Like a job. Even if I’m setting my own limits and making my own decisions about what I am and am not reviewing, it still can feel like work. And I always wonder if they feel like work for readers, too. I know it’s not the case. I know intellectually that devoted readers read everything (or at least skim it). The reviews are there for those who are here for book reviews. They’re the perennial readers who are going to be there no matter what. These are the same readers who often don’t comment. And that’s okay.

But it still sometimes makes sitting down to write a review so, so hard. Because the response sometimes just isn’t there. There’s not a payoff at the end of it except for whatever it brings me personally. But it doesn’t make it any less hard.

I say all of this but I also own this: I am a terrible blog commenter. I read a lot of blogs, and not just book blogs. I read a number of excellent author blogs, a number of excellent publishing-related blogs, and an excessive number of food blogs. But I’m terrible at commenting or at interacting with them. It’s not that I don’t care — I do or I wouldn’t read them — but it’s that I don’t always think to do it or I mean to do it and click out of the browser or, really, I don’t have much to say. But then I have these moments when I’m doing my own blogging and I remember just how much work and effort goes into blogging, no matter what the topic. I know I’m much better at commenting off-blog than I am on-blog: on Goodreads, I can click “like” easily and let someone know I read and appreciated their book review. On Pinterest or on Facebook, I can do the same or I can leave a quick comment with a “thanks.” I don’t know why it is that when I’m reading a blog, I don’t stop to drop a thanks or I don’t stop back by and follow up when I’ve read/cooked something recommended there. I think the internet “like” has made me lazy.

The truth of it all is that blogging is hard. It can be fun and fulfilling — and it is both of those things — but it is so much work, too. I put the pressure on myself to do what I’m doing, but that’s just because I am who I am. That doesn’t change the fact, though, it’s hard and at times draining. That doesn’t change the fact I get burned out or tired or wonder why I put in the effort at all. Because blogging both is and isn’t for me at the same time. I stress about little stuff (never the big stuff) and lately, it’s been reviews and why I write them or how I write them or if anyone even reads/cares about them at all. Are they for me? Are they not for me? I’m still not sure sometimes.

Just like an author worries about how their book will do when it’s out in the world, I worry about what I write and post right here. It’s not the same but it is the same. It’s sharing a part of yourself and your thinking and even if it’s something you’re passionate about and love doing, it’s still work. It takes effort and sometimes you wonder and worry about whether it’s worth it at all.

I’m not going to quit blogging or quit writing reviews. I find satisfaction in it. But I know I speak on behalf of a lot of bloggers who get to this point. This burnout, this worry about whether or not it’s worth the effort happens, happens to every single person who ever spends the time to write and share what they write. It’s just hard to talk about.

All These Lives by Sarah Wylie

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Dani and Jena are fraternal twins, and they spent most of their lives pretty close to one another. When Jena is diagnosed with cancer, her life is turned upside down, right along with Dani’s. Dani finds it unfair her sister has to suffer with endless rounds of chemotherapy, with losing her sense of self, with the possibility of losing her life all together. See, Dani feels like she’s been granted 9 lives, given that she herself has survived near-death experiences more than once. It’s unfair — beyond unfair — her sisters one life might end so soon before she’s had the chance to live it.

So Dani makes it her mission to die so her sister doesn’t have to suffer.

All These Lives by Sarah Wylie is the kind of cancer novel I appreciate because this isn’t a book about cancer as a disease. It’s not a novel about the things cancer does to a body. It’s a novel instead about how cancer can be a means for people to find a reason to live and to survive.

Dani’s a sarcastic narrator, and she’s hurting deeply because of her sister’s illness. At times it feels like she may be a tiny bit envious of her sister because she’s getting so much attention and special treatment because she’s sick, but the truth is, Dani is grieving heavily. For her, sarcasm, coldness, and distancing herself from the present help her cope with what her sister is going through. She doesn’t want to remain close to anyone because she’s struggling with guilt in being the sister who is okay. The one who isn’t sick. More than that, though, Dani feels like she’s been unfairly blessed with the ability to keep on living, despite numerous brushes with death.

Throughout the book, Dani attempts more than once to die — having survived more than one near-death experience, Dani believes she’s been blessed with nine lives, rather than just one. She sees her own death as her way of letting her sister live. Because they’re twins, she believes they have a special sort of connection to one another and by giving up one of her lives, Jena can live. The problem, of course, is that in Dani’s attempts to end her life, she only hurts herself more, not to mention she hurts her family more than she could imagine. It would be easy to call what she’s doing selfish, but it’s not. Dani aches, and this is her release. Each time she made an attempt to die, I hurt for her because she was doing what she thought was good and right. As the reader on the outside, you know it’s not the case, but she is unable — not unwilling, but unable — to realize that. At least immediately.

Although this is a novel about Jena’s cancer, never once did it feel like a drawn out book about an illness. In fact, very little page time is devoted to the illness and what it was doing to Jena. Instead, the book focused more on what cancer did to the sister who didn’t have it. I felt this made the issue of illness more powerful than had the story focused on Jena. Cancer stories have a way of being manipulative sometimes because they put the onus of emotion on the reader, who always brings their own experience to the story. While writing this story from the perspective of the sister dealing with someone else’s cancer certainly will pull upon the reader’s own experiences, Wylie successfully develops a whole story without requiring the reader to face the cancer and implications head on. We’re not forced to feel sympathetic toward a character because they’re battling a disease they have no power over. We’re allowed instead to develop sympathy toward a complex character who may or may not be all that likable. She’s more than a disease. This is a book where illness plays a role in the story, rather than the story playing a role in the illness.

All These Lives is literary, and the story and characters never falter beneath the prose. They work together, and in doing so, the pace stays steady throughout. But more than being literary, what I loved was the message Dani and the reader walked away with — that living is the greatest thing you can ever do for someone else. It’s a realization that emerges after one of the close brushes with death Dani has, and when she has that moment, I understood just how much pain and grief she’d been dealing with and how heavy it truly weighed on her. It was almost easy to believe Dani’s defensiveness and believe that she was sarcastic through and through. The truth was, it was her way of letting herself be dead. That wasn’t what Jena would want from her at all. Some of the lines made me a little teary eyed, as Dani wrestled with the pain of knowing how she’d behaved and the pain of knowing it wasn’t at all what she should be doing to support her sister.

This paragraph’s spoiler-ridden, so proceed with caution. Maybe the thing I appreciated most about this book was that no one dies, but there’s also no miracle cure. Instead, once Dani wakes up and decides she needs to live and to love to the best of her capability, the story comes to a satisfying ending. We’re not made to suffer as Jena’s life withers, nor are we forced to believe that she’s suddenly all better. For me, this was the way a story like this is best handled because it really wasn’t Jena’s story. It was Dani’s through and through.

All These Lives will appeal to readers who are looking for a good sibling story, and even though this is fully contemporary, I think it’ll appeal to readers who loved Imaginary Girls for the sibling relationship aspect. Readers who liked Before I Die or Gayle Forman’s If I Stay will find the same emotionally connection with Dani as they did with Tessa and Mia in those two stories. Writing-wise, this one reminded me of Ilsa J. Bick’s Drowning Instinct, and despite being less edgy (even though Wylie’s book is certainly edgy), All These Lives should appeal to fans of Bick’s novel.

Wylie’s debut impressed me more than I thought it would, and I’m eager to see where she goes next. She’s earned my trust and respect as a reader by taking a subject and twisting my expectations. I also give bonus points to this book for developing a story without a romance in it, which is a rare find, and I think the story is stronger because of that choice.

One of the trends I’m noticing in YA this year is that of survival, of living despite feeling like there’s reason not to, and it’s been fascinating to see how this theme plays out across genres. I’m thinking there’s a great potential book list sometime in the future on this very topic.

Review copy received from the publisher. All These Lives will be available June 5.

So You Want to Read YA?: Guest Post from Sarah Andersen

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This week’s “So You Want to Read YA?” guest post comes from Sarah Andersen.

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Sarah teaches high school English in Clio, MI.  She’s passionate about reading and hopes to foster this same passion for reading in her students.  You can talk books with Sarah on her blog Y.A. Love  or on Twitter @yaloveblog.  (I’d like to note the lovely photo of Sarah there cuts off the person she’s next to, which is Lisa McMann).

I’ve been avid reader of YA for six years and a high school English teacher for five years. Connecting my students with great books is one of my passions, but I also love introducing YA to teachers, librarians, parents, etc. YA has grown in popularity since I started teaching, which is really exciting because it continues to provide books for every reader. 
I love reading YA, and I have my favorite topics and genres, but I read it with my students in mind. I’m constantly trying to balance what I read and make sure to include books dealing with sports, problems at home, relationships, fantasy, etc. because I have readers with diverse tastes in my classroom. Since this is how my brain works when I’m picking out books, it made sense to me to focus this post on the most popular titles in my classroom right now. I’m breaking it down according to what the guys and girls are reading. These titles are often big hits with my reluctant readers as well. If you’re a teacher/librarian/parent or even a teen, and you’d like to start reading YA but don’t know where to start, these are the titles I recommend beginning with. 
What The Girls Are Reading:
**Many of these books deal with love and relationships, but it’s what my girls are usually looking for.

Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers (Goodreads): I positively love Courtney Summers. Cracked Up to Be and her other books, Some Girls Are and Fall for Anything, have grown in popularity just this year. Parker, the main character, is suffering and feeling responsible for something horrible, but she hasn’t told anyone about it. Consequently, she’s been acting out and her personality has completely changed. Quite a few of my students look for edgy reads about characters with real problems. They also want a character they can connect with emotionally and personally. Almost every single one of my girls that’s read Cracked Up to Be enjoyed it and went on to read the rest of Courtney Summers’ books.

Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler (Goodreads): Personally, my favorite book by Sarah Ockler is Fixing Delilah, but my girls (my reluctant girls in particular) love this book. They like the romance, the first love, and the friendship between Anna and her best friend Frankie. Even if readers haven’t experienced a loss like Anna or Frankie, they’ve most likely had a best friend that’s helped them through a problem or that they’ve gotten into a big argument with. The summer atmosphere gives the book a light-hearted feel while dealing with big issues. 

Forever by Judy Blume (Goodreads): Forever is classic YA originally published in 1975. It’s an excellent example of first love and the ups and downs of relationships. There’s quite a bit of sexual activity in Forever, but my girls always tell me that yes, there’s a lot of sex, but that it teaches girls that relationships don’t always last forever. Many of my girls in class are head over heels in love with someone. I like knowing that there’s a good book out there for them to read after a break up, or if they’re in one of these relationships. I don’t hand them this book to burst their bubbles. I hand them this book because the characters feel the same way they do. Forever by Judy Blume is almost always a winner for my reluctant girls in class.

I Heart You, You Haunt Me by Lisa Schroeder (Goodreads): Novels in verse are becoming increasingly more popular in my classroom. Many of my students start with Ellen Hopkins, but Lisa Schroeder’s novels are quickly gaining popularity. I Heart You, You Haunt Me is the most popular choice. Many of my girls will walk into my room telling me how quickly they read this book and how much they loved it. One of my students is in my YA Lit class right now because she wants to enjoy reading. She was at a complete loss for where to start and which books to read. I Heart You, You Haunt Me was one of many books I set aside for her, and she ended up reading three of Lisa Schroeder’s four books in a week! The imagery in this novel is beautiful, and for so few words, readers really connect with the characters and the story. 

**Other Popular Titles: Hold Still by Nina LaCour, Other Words for Love by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal, The Boy Book by E. Lockhart, Exposed by Kimberly Marcus
What The Guys Are Reading:
Right Behind You by Gail Giles (Goodreads): This has been a “homerun” book for so many of my boys. It’s usually the first couple pages that hook them because we learn that Kip set another child on fire when he was nine. We don’t know all the specifics right away, but it’s enough to keep my students reading. Kip has lived a rough life after this incident including a name change, moving out of state, etc. He’s a vulnerable character with a tough shell. The boys in class can relate to him for a variety of reasons including being angry for one reason or another, being afraid to open up, living a rough life, and more. also gives readers a chance to understand a character unlike themselves and learn to empathize with people like Kip.
Trapped by Michael Northrop (Goodreads): Many students have imagined what it would be like to get trapped in school, but Trapped actually allows the reader to experience it. Many of my reluctant boys enjoyed Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, but they haven’t read or enjoyed a book since. Trapped has been a winner for these boys. They enjoy the suspense and wondering whether anyone will survive. Plenty of my girls in class have enjoyed Trapped as well.

Paranoid Park by Blake Nelson (Goodreads): The mystery in Paranoid Park really grabs my guys in class. I guess it doesn’t hurt that the main character is responsible for killing someone, even though it was self-defense. The story revolves around the character’s guilt and his indecision whether or not he should turn himself in. Paranoid Park has grown in popularity this year because many of my boys in class have been sharing it and discussing it.

Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach (Goodreads): I’m always searching for books with humor because I’ve been told that I don’t have enough “funny books” in my class library. Stupid Fast is a gem of a book that’s humorous, but also tackles family issues and fitting in. Felton is authentic and easy to relate to. He’s trying to handle his mom checking out and falling into a deep depression, his annoying little brother, becoming a good football player, and falling in love for the first time. It’s an all-around fantastic book that I can’t recommend enough.

**Other Popular Titles: Purple Heart by Patricia McCormick, Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn, Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson, Gym Candy by Carl Deuker

You can like what you like

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No one has the right to tell you what you read. What you choose to read is your right and yours alone.

Reading is a process, not an end result. (1)

 

One of the things I love about reading is how much it allows me to connect with other people who also enjoy reading. But more than that, I’ve discovered the more that I read — and not just books, but blog posts, newspapers, magazines, comics — the more I’m able to think about the things I’m reading and the more I’m able to draw connections among different stories and worlds. The more I’m also able to help other people connect to the things that would give them a great reading experience.

I read with a critical eye, even when I’m reading “fluff” material. But never for one second does that mean I think everyone reads with the same level of intensity that I do nor that I can’t separate the critical portion of my brain from the part that wants to enjoy a story. I can find satisfaction in reading a story at the story’s level.

Sometimes — like right now, actually — I find myself reading through books that have made gads of lists for being poorly written, for spreading terrible messages about any number of topics I’m passionate about, for being nothing but bad books. And you know, sometimes the joy is in that exactly: dipping into what is little more than junk.

Sometimes, too, I find myself connecting to a story on a level I never expected to. Earlier in the year, I read a book that tapped into something I’d packed away a long time ago, and I found myself revisiting some pain I thought I’d never think about again. It wasn’t a book about that issue at all. It was a book about something else entirely.

I love to pick up a literary tome periodically, too. But not because I’m trying to balance out the YA reading I do or because I’m trying to make myself smarter or a better person for doing so. I pick them up because I’m interested in the reading experience.

Because I am interested in reading.

I have a huge problem with the notion of a guilty pleasure. If something brings you pleasure, there should be no guilt associated with it. The reason people find themselves talking about guilty pleasures is because someone has taken their right to enjoyment from whatever it is that they like doing. It’s because someone has asserted themselves as an authority, as a person with privilege, and cast judgment upon an activity.

No one has the right to tell you what you should or shouldn’t like.

Regardless of what your education level, your financial status, your job, your haves-and-have-nots in life, what you choose to spend your free time doing is your choice and your choice alone. But more than that, it’s your responsibility to respect that for yourself and respect that for others, too. You should never feel guilty for what you enjoy, and you should never make anyone else feel guilty for what they like, either.

We all go to reading for different reasons, be they for entertainment, for information, for understanding craft and story, for escape from the world, for connection to the world (your own, pop culture, or any other definition of world). Sometimes a book can bring all of these things at once and sometimes, a book does one and does it really well.

Let me say this because I think it’s important and essential and gets missed in many discussions of reading and the power therein: I believe there are people who don’t like reading. And I do not, even for a second, think they’re wrong. I think there might be books perfectly tailored for them, but if someone is not interested in reading, I’m not going to force them to be a reader. That puts me in a position of power and privilege, suggesting to someone that their interests and disinterests are wrong.

They’re not wrong. Their interests aren’t any less valid than mine.

They’re just different.

When someone in a position of huge trust — such as a librarian — suggests that there is a right way and a wrong way to read or that there are right things or wrong things to read, they’re exerting false authority. They’re using their opinion and their belief to belittle and shame someone else. They’re saying that it’s not okay to like what you like.

These people are abusing their power.

But more importantly, it doesn’t matter what your background is. There is never an okay time to shame someone for what they’re reading (or what they’re not reading). There’s never a need to make an argument about whether what someone is reading is good or not or whether it aids in their intellectual development. That doesn’t matter. Reading is an activity sought out because it brings something to someone. That we become obsessed with trying to define what that something is is in and of itself the problem.

This goes to a bigger issue worth touching on: we live in a world where the louder you are and the more you talk, the more perception of power you have. Where the more you produce, the more you’re valued. It’s unfair, but it’s true. We’re a world that focuses heavily on the notion of product and of end result and one that shies away from thinking about or exploring process in and of itself. We want a tangible outcome, a defined start and finish. In being this way, so much of the beauty in the act of doing something is overlooked and devalued. So often we chide ourselves if our process to do something takes a long time or requires more than we expected. Rather than allowing ourselves or others to allow the pleasure in the act of doing, we reward based on the result.

Reading is a process, not an end result.

While we can walk away with something from what we read, what matters to those who are readers is the act in and of itself. There are no better options when it comes to reading. There are only other options. There is no shame in liking what you like and there is no shame in enjoying reading for what it is: an action.

Want to read more about how it’s okay to like what you like? Spend a little time with Liz’s post and Sarah’s post.