I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve spent the last two weeks glued to the best reality television in the world: the summer Olympics. I don’t even care what the sport is, who the athletes are, or what country they represent, I just enjoy watching people do amazing things. All of this is to say this biweekly roundup of links is a little less meaty than usual. And it may include non-book stuff. I don’t apologize for that.

• What does your favorite YA series say about you as a reader? My favorite YA series isn’t on the list, so I went through the offerings and actually, mine isn’t even close. Actually, it’s way closer than I’m willing to admit. 

• While I’m at it with lists, here’s one from Thought Catalog on 11 Books You Should Read if You’re a Woman in Your 20s. Warning: spoilers on one of the titles. Of the books on the list, I’ve read 2 and I have interest in reading maybe only 2 or 3 of the other ones. 

• Have you read any of the Top 10 Most Difficult Books yet? I read parts of both Spenser’s The Faerie Queen and Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, the first in a Lit Survey class in undergrad and the second as part of a creative writing class (because as much as it’s hard to understand, the language is something!). I perused the Woolf title on the list the few times it was assigned to me but I never actually read it. 

• A terrible plot twist into the real life of the people inside one of the better non-fiction I’ve read. It appears that Abdulrahman Zeitoun, who told his story of survival after Hurricane Katrina in the book Zeitoun (written by David Eggers and reviewed here), is on trial for attempting to murder his wife, her son, and another man. This is a really sad and even more tragic story.  

•  Joan Rivers is not immune to the challenges of having her book stocked. In fact, she was so irate about Costco choosing not to stock her new book, she handcuffed herself to a shopping cart to protest. I wanted to include a link from Sarah Rees Brennan in this bullet point too, but it appears the post she wrote this week about her forthcoming Unspoken not being stocked on the Barnes and Noble shelves is no longer on her blog. Although I have little sympathy for Rivers in this case, these examples highlight something kind of big, and that’s that not every book published will be stocked everywhere. There is probably a blog-length post here about how librarians, bloggers, and other book lovers have an opportunity/responsibility in spreading the word about books that matter. When it’s not on a bookstore shelf, it’s impossible to discover. But via word of mouth, readers can speak up and demand the titles, thus helping give them some space in the future. Ideally, at least.

• So NPR’s popularity contest ended, and here are the “100 Best-Ever Teen Novels.” It’s a super misleading title, since it should be called “Favorite Maybe-Maybe Not Teen Novels as Voted on by NPR Listeners.” Either way, that’s not the story here. For me, the real story is in this piece from The Atlantic, asking why female authors dominate YA fiction. I didn’t plan on reading the article, but then I did. It’s very poorly written and connects many things together it shouldn’t, and I walked away with this lingering and problematic thought: if YA books are about optimism, joy and escapism and they are the books that feature female MCs so prominently, what does that say about females in adult mainstream fiction? I do not think that was what the intended message was but that is what I walked away with and have been chewing on for days. 

• Are we too nice on social media? Are we giving up critical reviewing and criticism in favor of being cheerleaders? Note those are two separate links, but the first refers to the second. When I read these, I rolled my eyes. First, the suggestion that readers cannot be both fans/supporters of writers and then still read with a critical eye is insane. It sure makes readers look like they’re one-dimensional and suggests that they can’t separate art from artist. I was glad to see this very thoughtful response from Salon about how social media isn’t killing books or reading culture at all. I’d argue that social media has made me a more critical reader, connection to authors or not, and I think it’s incredibly important to be supportive and encouraging if you believe in a person, whether or not you always find their art works for you.     

• Have an idea for a 2,000-4,000 word short story and you’re unpublished? Saundra Mitchell has a hell of an opportunity for you then, as you could have your work published in the anthology she’s editing for next year called Defy the Dark. All of the details are on her blog. 

• Did you know it is FREE to attend this year’s Kid Lit Con? All of the details are here. Also, you still have a few days to get in a proposal for a presentation, too. I submitted one with one of my dream co-presenters so fingers crossed! If you’re in the NYC area or can get there, I highly recommend this event. It is, hands down, my favorite conference. 

• I can’t find the original source for this one, and it might be Scott Rader himself. Are you a big TV watcher? Here’s a neat infographic on books you might like, based on television preferences. 

• Ever looked at a gallery of paintings that feature books or reading? Well you’re in luck. Tor has a nice collection up on their blog for your visual enjoyment.

• I’ve been thinking about this post since it went up early this week, and I think it was really brave of Justin to write it: what is your librarian identity (and even if you’re not a librarian, this post is relevant to identity more broadly). 

• I’m not sure I buy into all of the conclusions and assumptions that come up in this piece, but it is worth the read and worth thinking about: why do female crime writers explore such gruesome topics? The suggestion is it’s about something ingrained in women and fear and violence, but the takeaway I got was that women should stop because it will make them and male readers more immune to violence. Also we really have to stop using the word “porn” to describe anything that is visual, gritty, or somehow taboo/outside our cultural norms. It devalues the word itself and what it is truly meant to be. 

• Can I remind you to nominate titles you’re passionate about for consideration of any of YALSA’s book awards? I explained why earlier this year, with links to make it happen.  Don’t forget about the Reader’s Choice awards, either. My Reader’s Choice nomination is already on the list!

• Rather than bombard you with a ton of bullet points to interesting non-book related stories, I’ll round up all the things that caught my eye in one place. And yeah, most are Olympics related. Here are Olympic gymnastics as told through Legos. If you missed out on Samuel L Jackson’s Olympics tweets, here are some of the real gems. Then there’s this, my favorite piece to come out of the Olympics/gymnastics: why McKayla Maroney is not a mean girl. I have admired her since the start because she wears a game face and competes with a fierceness that is hard not to respect. But what that story does is really get to the heart of it: she defies what we expect of a female athlete, particularly someone so young. She expressed sheer disappointment in her shortcomings and did so without disrespecting someone who did better than her. While she got a ton of slack for her appearance and in her supposed attitude on the medal stand, it wasn’t because she was angry. It was because she was disappointed in herself. It’s something we don’t expect to see.          

Now I ask a favor, if you’ve made it this far! I’m working on my portion of a presentation for YALSA’s YA Lit Symposium. If you’re aware of any dark contemporary YA being published between November of this year and March/April of next year, I’d love to hear from you. You can comment here or contact me privately.

I won’t lie: there’s a lot of links this week. A little bit of everything. And if anyone’s curious, I haven’t forgotten about Audiosynced this month; it’ll be up and live tomorrow.

• I don’t think this is a new story and I feel like I’ve linked some iteration of it before, but in the event you missed it, a good book can change you. I still don’t know if there are any books I can point to and say that it changed me. Impacted me, sure, but changed me? I don’t know. I still wonder about the quantity of books vs. the ability to cause change. 

• Let’s compare book covers with the movie posters of the book’s film adaptation, shall we? Some do it better than others, that’s for sure. I wish they’d had all of the covers of the books to compare since that’d be interesting to compare, too. 

• I couldn’t get through this because of how much the pop ups and slow loading required of my patience (there’s an intro to a link, right?) but here’s a quiz about whether or not you’re as well read as the average 10th grader. Judging by the first book, I’m far from as well read as possible.

• Have I ever talked about how much I love Franz Kafka and The Metamorphosis and how I devoted probably half of the papers I wrote in college to that story? Or that I made art from it? Or wrote haiku about it? Anyway, I love it because it is so bizarre. As enjoyable as the story itself is this fun pie chart about The Metamorphosis.

• Matthew Jackson, who we’ve had guest post here a few times, has a great piece on Blastr that features seven classic Marvel comics before they were made perfect by editors. 

• YA author Erin Bowman tackles the age old question (in infographic form): is a dystopia or not? We liked this chart because it sort of fit in nicely with Kimberly’s post about whether a book is a dystopia or straight up science fiction.

•  Over at McSweeney’s Comic Sans makes its case for being a font worth knowing.   

• This is by no means a new post, but it popped up on Twitter last week and I thought it was neat enough to share again: 23 band names inspired by literature. I didn’t know a lot of these. 

• Amy Reed raises a really interesting question over at the Writers Read blog: is there such thing as literary YA fiction? I absolutely agree with her assessment of Adam Rapp’s The Children and the Wolves falling into that category if there is such a category (and I think that there is). I believe this year, more so than many years in recent memory, has had a lack of real literary YA titles being published. The field’s been a lot more about commercial fiction. Can you think of any other literary YA from this year? Or favorite literary authors? This seems like a rich topic. 

• I know I shouldn’t be skeptical about this, but I am because I feel like this same “agreement” was made when I was a teenager. A teen girl petitioned Seventeen magazine to stop digitally editing their images. She won and the magazine agreed. I think it’s awesome she did that and fantastic Seventeen agreed. I hope they hold up their end of the bargain now! 

• Kat Rosenfield talks about nine books that feature dead protagonists. I’ve read all but one of these.      

• Funny Tumblr alert: You Chose Wrong. The endings where you didn’t get to continue the adventure. Either you will get this or you won’t. But it is amusing. 

• The Wisconsin Library Association Children’s Book Award Committee picked their winning title for this year, as well as their honor titles. I’m sharing because I’ve read the winner (go me) and because I am so happy to see more love for Geoff Herbach’s Stupid Fast. Also, because I’m still paranoid that Ashes is going to happen any time soon, thanks to Ilsa Bick. Also, blue covers are the Wisconsin thing.

• Check out the segue into the next link then, which is an interesting post written by Bick about whether or not YA books are more “powerful” than other books. I think she raises a really interesting and valid point. I don’t just say that since she was kind enough to link back to one of my posts, but because I do think there is a tendency to over-inflate the power of YA books. They’re powerful to those who read them in the same way that adult books are powerful to those who are passionate about adult lit. In other words, no type of book is more “powerful” than another; all books are powerful in the hands of the right reader by their own merit. 

• Another HuffPo post to share, and this time, they’re looking at 16 characters and their Myers-Briggs personality type. For a long, long time, I always registered as an INTJ, but over the last couple of years, I’ve become a much harder INFJ. This is particularly amusing when you note what the book is for INTJ. If you know your MB or you take the test, do you agree or disagree with the characteristics? I do. But I think that your MB can change over time says as much about the fluidity of personality as whatever the description of your type is, too. Not related to books, though, is this great blog post about what it means to be an INFJ, if anyone else is and ever has that feeling they’re alone. You’re not.

• Books that Goodreads readers believe should be best sellers (even though they aren’t — at least not yet). Some good picks, I think. But don’t people want their favorite books to always be best sellers? I know I do. 

• The Chicago Tribune on book trailers. I’ll leave that at that. I know the three of us here have a lot of thoughts on book trailers and what does and does not work. There’s been a post in the making for months. 

• So, Tracey Neithercott is one of my critique partners, and I harbor such a love for her blog and the way she talks about writing and reading. This week she posted a roundup of some of her most popular/unpopular posts, and they are worth reading if you are at all interested in writing or thinking about writing. She was one of the forces behind those awesome “Go away, I’m reading” book covers you may have seen — and don’t worry. The link to those is in this collection. 

Via last week’s Postsecret.

• Ever wondered about licensed tie-ins to tv and movies and what that sort of work involves in the publishing side? I liked this look into that side of the business over at Pub Crawl.

• Did you know that Wednesday was red head appreciation day? I’m a red head! It always makes people comment (and yeah, it’s naturally red, even though I like to play with different shades of red via a box once in a while). Anyway, here’s a story on famous red head characters in kid lit. You know, I always hated Mallory Pike. But I guess that was because when I was reading BSC books, I was blonde (little known fact: I was born blonde and was blonde until high school where suddenly my hair turned red — how does that happen?). 

• And to end this biweekly roundup of interesting reads around the internet that don’t involve that three-letter-word-I-can’t-stand, Sarah Andersen has a fantastic post asking what about the teen readers?  

• Actually, one more thing. The Robbins, Illinois library recently had their AC unit dismantled and stolen. Robbins is an incredibly poor and tough community to live in. This loss is huge and devastating to them and to those who use their library. I grew up only 15 minutes from Robbins, and it’s one of those towns where you just know things aren’t easy, where places like the library are truly places of refuge, especially for kids. If you can, please consider making a small donation to the fundraiser to replace their AC. I do truly believe this kind of thing can make the difference in someone’s life — there’s a reason it was stolen in the first place.  

I’m sorry but this week, I don’t have a new Lana Del Rey video to show you. Perhaps you could go revisit the last one?

It’s been a quieter couple of weeks in the book world, presumably as everyone is gearing up for Book Expo America. Or they’re preparing for the end of school. Or they’re cowering under their desks in anticipation of summer reading club starting. There have been some good things to share, though, so grab a drink and enjoy. (After writing this up I realized that my initial statements of these last couple of weeks being quiet was sort of wrong — there is a LOT here).

• If I may first start by sharing the week’s incredible contributions to the Unconventional Blog Tour? I’m absolutely blown away not only by the posts everyone wrote but also the response we got. I read on one of the blogs that linked up to the tour that they were interested in this since it was blogger-driven and without any goal behind it except to educate and to share. If my experience of reading these posts is any indication, I’d say it was successful. I want to spend a special shout out to Kate Hart’s post, which came in later in the afternoon yesterday — not only is it informative about the importance of citing your sources, the graphical representation is PERFECT. If you’re teaching anything about citation, I think you might have a new tool, courtesy of Kate.

• The ladies at Crunchings and Munchings have shared a post of YA inspired apparel, food, and more. Anyone else remember playing The Baby-Sitters Club board game to death as a kid?

• Andrew Karre explains why the YA doom-and-gloom sorts of articles exist. Of all the blog posts to come out of the profanity non-story, this is the best.  I saw someone on Twitter mention that the YA community is trolled hard, and it’s hard not to believe that.

• I haven’t had a legitimate reason to link to anything related to The Jersey Shore (which I love without shame) but now I do! Guess who is getting a comic book? And not just getting a comic book, but starring as the superhero? No, it’s not Snooki. It’s The Situation. Oh and does it ever look riveting. I am not usually a fan of The Situation (he’s the bottom rung on my ladder of Jersey Shore characters) but I might have to pick this one up. Just….because. Thanks to Matt for giving me the heads up on this one!  

• Stephen King’s forthcoming Joyland looks like it will be the thing of many nightmares to come. Small towns and carnies. Let me tell you where I live and what I fear. 

• Lest you think I only link to articles in The Atlantic when they annoy me, I’d like to link to this week’s edition of YA for Grownups and applaud it for asking current authors to talk about what they’re recommending for summer reading. 

• Blogger/reviewer Wendy Darling finally says something about the really crummy interaction she had with an author and agent that started 2012 off to a rocky start for book reviewers. I really wish she’d broken this up into a couple of posts because there are two big things discussed: the actual interaction and fallout thereafter, and then there’s the discussion of what it is book blogger reviewers DO and should be ABLE to do. I’ve been really burned out on blogging — reviews in particular — lately and have been very open about this. Her post nails a few reasons why I’ve felt that way. For the most part, book blogging is a thankless thing with immense pressure to produce and produce quickly. And when you do put your thoughts out there, sometimes what you get back makes you regret doing it either responses which are completely inappropriate or responses which just…don’t exist at all. Ahem. Anyway, read Wendy’s post. Oh, actually, my other comment about her post is this — while this incident is clearly an instance of an author and agent putting people to task about down voting her review, I think it’s important to remember that what people choose to do is their own prerogative. If an author suggests down voting reviews, for example, the people who do that are choosing to do it themselves. That’s not authorial control.

• Have you ever been charged with creating a classroom or organizational library and have no idea where to start? Check out Sarah’s post about how she built her classroom collection, how she organizes it, and what she does to let her kids have at the books. Sarah has another post you should read if you’re interested in teen perspectives on covers. A couple weeks ago, she shared what her YA Lit students thought of YA covers; this time, she asks her freshmen their thoughts.

• Over at Pub(lishing) Crawl, Mandy Hubbard talks about the backdoor to publishing, which is through working with a packaging company. I have a lot of opinions on book packaging companies. I understand them and think they have a real value to many writers as a means of getting a foot in the door and honing skills. But I always question the passion behind the books and stories themselves. They’re products, rather than art. And something about that makes me sad.  

• Read this one for 2 reasons: gay relationships are called dark and edgy (unintentionally, I’m assuming) and because it doesn’t say YA books are ruining our world. 

• The nearest chain bookstore to me is about an hour drive, but we have a really neat used book store in town I don’t get to check out nearly enough. I went last weekend with my best friend, though, because we’re both huge cookbook nerds, and we spent a good portion of the morning poring over vintage, outdated, and downright disgusting ones. So when I saw this post of 11 Vintage Cookbooks on Mental Floss, I fell in love. I’m a tiny bit disappointed neither of my books my friend ended up buying made the list, because this and this are GEMS.

• YALSA apologized for locking down their award lists without telling anyone. It’s sincere and pretty transparent, which I appreciate, but their arguments are still terrible and illogical. The comparison to a database is terrible — we pay to be members of YALSA and we pay to attend meetings where these lists are created. WE don’t get paid to make them. We PAY to make them. Also, if you gave them your email, now you’re on their campaign mailing list. Congrats.

• Greg Rucka on why he writes strong female characters. I love this because he emphasizes that being a strong female character doesn’t mean they’re not flawed. Quite the opposite. They should be flawed. But because they’re smart and savvy, they know this and work with it, rather than against it. 

• Looking for a book or two to read this summer? Amazon’s Omnivoracious has a roundup of many of the publications who have posted their own list of summer reads. I’m adding the list published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with 99 of their summer picks.

• France apparently has some scary children’s books.  

• I found this article too long to read through, but the point of it is something I’ve thought a lot about: are books getting too long?  I admit to being really turned off by the trend for very long YA books. Most of the time, it feels like too much is being packed into the story when it could be trimmed down so the story actually shines through stronger. We don’t need to know everything. Just give the essentials. For me, the perfect books are those falling in the 250-350 page range. They’re long enough to get the whole story and short enough to not bog me down in minutiae I don’t need to know. Of course, this isn’t always the case because there are many long books I’ve enjoyed, but this trend of length is starting to wear on me.

• When I lived down in Austin, Texas, my favorite place in the city to go to was BookPeople. I can’t express how much I miss that book store. Turns out, they’ve started a blog run by their teen corps, and it is worth keeping an eye on if you have an interest in what teens who read think about books.  

• This is not even book related but I am sharing because I am in shock! What happened to the original Power Rangers? This show was my life when I was younger and may have been the reason my best friend broke her arm with me once. Why the shock, you ask? Well, one of the cast members died in 2001. And I’m just hearing about it now. Is it now insensitive to slide in that I’m hoping a copy of the DVD of the original episodes (due out in August) shows up at my house? Because I do.  

That should cover things for a couple of weeks, I think. And as a note, we’re going to be running our Twitterview a little late this month, to account for taking part in the Summer Blog Blast.