Aaaaand we’re back!  We didn’t necessarily intend to take such a long break, but with stressful life events happening for all of us (including the welcoming of the newest little Readventurer), it’s been quite a while since we did an Odds & Ends post. 

Conveniently, it looks like we’ve returned just in time to wrap up a ton of major awards!  The Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz awards were all announced last week, going to The One And Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen, and In Darkness by Nick Lake, respectively.  Numerous other awards and honors were awarded as well.  Publisher’s Weekly has a great review of the major awards given to children’s and young adult literature here.  (I was personally very excited to see one of my favorites, Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets of The Universe, win a few awards.)  Another of our favorites from 2012, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, was given the William C. Morris Award last week!  Congratulations, Rachel!

YALSA’s 2013 Best Fiction For Young Adults and The Rainbow Book List were also published.  And remember when Flannery spent months tirelessly reading young adult sci-fi and fantasy for the Cybils awards?  No?  Well, she does.  The Cybils shortlists were announced earlier this month and the awards will be presented in February.

There was also a lot of talk last week in the book blogger world about plagiarism, with several bloggers reporting personal incidents of being plagiarized and how they dealt with it.  We really appreciated Sarah’s very professional and informed advice over at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves.

In book-related movie news, the film version of The Spectacular Now premiered last week at Sundance. (Ha!  I almost wrote “debuted.”  I fail as a movie blogger.)  It also looks like the film version of The Fault in Our Stars may be coming to the big screen sooner than expected. Yesterday, the casting was announced for Rose, Lissa, and Dimitri in Blood Sisters, the movie based on the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. Mark Waters (of Mean Girls fame) is on board to direct. 

We were very excited to read that Amy Poehler will be publishing an “unconventional memoir” next year, which apparently will be “an illustrated, non-linear diary full of humor and honesty and brimming with true stories, fictional anecdotes and life lessons,” according to publisher It Books.  I’m intrigued at the possibility of illustrations but I personally am really hoping she’ll narrate an audiobook for it.

Speaking of illustrations, Jezebel did a piece this week on the hideous "makeover" of several covers to classic books. One thing's certain: We won't be buying any of these versions.

Here are some wonderful interviews with some of our favorite authors from last week:

• Margo Lanagan talks with Radio National (a podcast).
  
• A fantastic interview with Ursula K. Le Guin over at The Millions.
  
• A Q&A with Rainbow Rowell over at Publisher’s Weekly.
  
• Melina Marchetta gives us a tidbit from the Jellicoe Road script (eeeeeh!) and posts a Q&A she did for Quintana of Charyn.
  

And, (saving the best for last) Flannery had the wonderful opportunity to attend ALA Midwinter over last weekend, where she met a few great people and picked up a few great books.  She's here to tell you all a bit about it.  Take it away, Flannery!

So, for several reasons I am not going to do a recap of going to ALA midwinter, but I did go to the exhibits portion of it as I live in Seattle and I wanted to see what it was like. I was ecstatic to spend a lot of time with Rachel from The Reader's Den (who I'd met before) and Arlene from WinterHaven Books (who I've known online for years but had never met in real life). I had a blast chatting, going out to meals, and walking the aisles with them, even though they are so much better at networking than I am. While they were chatting amiably with reps about upcoming books they were excited about, I told a HarperCollins rep all about how I loved Stuart MacBride and how in one of his books the serial killer grinds people up in an animal slaughterhouse. Because that's the kind of thing I do. I picked up a few ARCs that I knew Tatiana, Catie, and/or I would be interested in reading/reviewing and had (I think) three books signed by authors that I will read/review as well. I know I am always curious, as a reader and as a blogger, what ARCs are  out in the wild and I actually sit and watch book haul videos on Youtube with a pen and paper to write down titles that sound or look interesting. I hope someone does do a book haul video of the books they picked up, but here at The Readventurer, I'm just going to tell you about the ones I have ants in my pants about:

All three of us are total Sara Zarr fangirls so I was ecstatic to find an ARC of The Lucy Variations, as I know Catie, Tatiana, and I all want to read it. (I wonder if Sara is doing the audiobook?) I am also very excited about that book because it features a piano player--not that I am any good on piano but I like reading about musicians. One of my favorite reading experiences last year was I Hunt Killers, for which I made a 4-quadrant graph in my review. I was chatting with a rep at Little Brown about an upcoming blog tour we are participating in for one of their titles and she asked me what I am most excited to read of theirs and I think we're all friends here and you know how excited I get about serial killer books. Blahblahblah, she put an ARC of Game in my hands and I almost french kissed it. Graph, part deux, here I come! I still have yet to read any Margo Lanagan books but I did attend an event of hers and she is absolutely lovely and so is her writing style. I'm certain I'll enjoy Yellowcake, which is a selection of short stories. It was released in Australia in 2011 (I think) but it won't be released in the US until this spring. A Corner of White is a similar tale--published in Australia already but coming to our market in a few months. I am a bit nervous about this one, as I find Jaclyn Moriarty to be one of the funniest writers in YA. Will I like her more serious stuff? Time will tell. (but my kindred spirit Nomes loved it, so I bet I will) Last but not least is the sequel to Insignia, Vortex, which won't be released until July. I bet you didn't even know I'd read Insignia! Well I did, when I was part of the Cybils panel on YA sci fi/fantasy. I had so much fun reading that book and it will kill me softly that I have to hold off on reading/reviewing it for a few months. Weeeelll, I guess I could just read it and then review it later. 

It's hard to judge books on their jacket copy, covers, author recognition, etc. I'm equally sure that I should've done a lot more research on publisher Spring/Summer catalogs. Here are just a few books I hadn't heard anything about but that piqued my interest because of publisher pitches (I don't have all of these):

I would also be over the moon to read the new (and last) Maeve Binchy book but I was too intimidated to pick it up. All the publishers I spoke with were seriously lovely and knowledgeable about their books and I kept thinking that it must be hard to try to pitch your books to people. Buzz words for one person are sometimes turn-offs for another reader. (e.g. some of my buzz phrases are things like "serial killer," "rehab," "depressing," "makeover," "heavy," "witty,"  and "epistolary") Nevertheless, I have tons of new books on my radar and absolute intent to review everything I now have in my possession. A sincere thank you to all the librarians present for allowing me to be an enthusiastic interloper at their conference (or ignoring my presence altogether) and to the publishers for being amazing (or letting me creep around their book piles like Gollum). 

Other fun highlights include meeting and chatting with Kelly from Stacked, Kirsten Hubbard, Sarah Enni, Lenore Appelhans, and Kristen Kittscher, having someone read my name on my badge and realize that we shared a mutual best friend (mine from college, hers from graduate school), and getting blisters on the pads of my feet from walking so much.

We are supposed to be preparing for Christmas, but erotic YA is all everyone has been talking about this week. Simon & Schuster UK is exploring (exploiting?) a new erotically-charged genre of fiction for teenagers that has been described as “Judy Blume for the Fifty Shades of Grey generation”. On the one hand, the publishers claim that their goal is to  produce  “escapist romances, featuring young women, the same age as the readers, exploring their first sexual desires and their first sexual experiences,” on the other, people behind this idea say this - “Young Adult publishers have been looking with envy at Fifty Shades knowing we couldn’t do anything like that. Everybody was trying to work out what would be the next big thing,” so, basically, everything is about $$$$$.

In the same way, our response to this development is two-fold - we would love to see more YA which portrays sex honestly and positively, but at the same time, if it's all about giving something sexy to the women who read YA  and also enjoy some fictional BDSM, isn't it better encourage these readers to seek out adult lady porn rather than eroticise fiction that is supposed to be aimed at teen readers and portray their experiences? What are the chances that such novels would even have teen readers and their needs in mind? And when does reading about minors exploring their sexualities, in explicit, erotic ways, by adults become creepy and voyeuristic?

There are two very eloquent responses to this news which are very much worth reading:

Sex, YA Books, and Some "E" Words - by Kelly at Stacked.

And Sex in Mainstream YA - Teen Erotica & The Importance of Good Sex by Ceilidh over at The Book Lantern.

Another post that should not be missed is Laura's I Love... YA at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves. We all can relate to her experiences with discovering and falling in love with teen fiction.

And here is a sweet ode to romance novels - Don't Hide Your Harlequins: In Defense Of Romance. Again, many of of us have been at some point or are fans of this genre of sadly ill repute.

Finally, the last but not least, an interview with our favorite Melina Marchetta on Jo's blog Wear the Old Coat - On Writing: Melina Marchetta on Heroines. Obviously, for us every tiny insight about Melina's writing process and every tidbit of information about her new and old characters is a pleasure to read about.

I know this isn’t really book-related, but I think after the heartbreaking news of yesterday, we could all use this list:  26 Moments That Restored Our Faith in Humanity This Year.  Make sure to give your kids a couple of extra hugs today.

There were quite a few book-related and very thought-provoking posts this week, so I’m just going to jump right in:

Over at The Hub, YA Librarian Annie Schutte has a very comprehensive post about the various forms of whitewashing that she has encountered on YA covers, titled “It Matters If You’re Black or White: The Racism of YA Book Covers.”  In it, she cites many examples of the misrepresentations of race, cover-tinting, and obscuring of features that sometimes occur when publishers attempt to market books featuring people of color (perhaps under the assumption that Caucasian readers will not be interested if they don't see themselves on everything?).  Diana Peterfreund, author of one of the books cited in Schutte’s post, responds to the accusations that her cover has been whitewashed:

“When you pick up the For Darkness book, you know what kind of story you are getting. And though her skin tone is lighter than described, she is not depicted as being a different race than she is in the book. That I would have a real problem with….”

And she goes on to say:

“And sometimes, readers just want something to bitch about. I have a friend who hand-picked the Asian-American model on her cover, only to get an email from a (white) reader that the model “wasn’t Asian enough.”

I guess I should fess up here that I was probably one of the main readers bitching about the cover of For Darkness Shows the Stars.  And while I’m glad that the author loves how the cover turned out, I still don’t feel like it at all represents the pages inside.  When I look at the cover, it makes me think of a space opera featuring soul-searching angst and willowy girlie-girls.  I'm not the only one who saw that cover and assumed that her story was "Persuasion in Space", either.  Peterfreund even chose to address that assumption on the book’s FAQ page, due to so many readers misinterpreting the stars on the cover.  And yes, I do think that the model pictured looks entirely Caucasian; whereas, Peterfreund’s description of her made me think she was Asian or Hispanic.  So I guess I have to stand by my bitchery.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, Foz Meadows talks about the importance of sex positivity in YA novels, for girls in particular – to which I basically want to give a standing ovation.

The Wall Street Journal had a very interesting article last week about pen names and why they’re often used by female authors to disguise gender.  According to research cited by the article, “four out of five men said the last novel they had read was written by a man. Women were almost as likely to have read a book by a man as a woman….”  This study and others have apparently encouraged publishers and writers to use male pen names – under the assumption that male readers will turn their noses up at any book penned by a female author.  So, apparently we’re just going to force female authors to cater to a subset of the reading population?  And probably perpetuate the root of this problem in the bargain (ie, the prejudice that some men have against female authors)?  Yay.

Over at Stacked, Kelly has some interesting discussion points about the nomination process for the Morris Award, in which only debut novelists are eligible.  Should self-published works be considered or not?

And in somewhat related news, Hugh Howey’s Wool series became the latest self-published work to be acquired by a major publishing house (Simon & Schuster).

Lastly, this bit of news is very exciting for my younger self: Caroline Cooney will be publishing the final installment (I didn’t even know there were sequels!!) of the Janie Johnson series next year.  Many of you will probably remember The Face on The Milk Carton as required reading in the seventh grade – or if not, then surely you recall the fantastically horrible movie starring Kelly Martin?

That’s all for this week!  Stop by and let me know what I missed!

Just as this post is getting published, the first Readventurer face-to-face meeting is in progress (hopefully). Yes, Catie is generously braving the looong ride from VA to NC to visit moi (Tatiana).  There is hardly anything more exciting in the blogging world than meeting  someone you've been talking with virtually for years, so yes, I am pretty ecstatic.

In other scant news this week, Huffington Post poses an alarming question - Could Selling A Used Book Become Illegal? Granted, the case they present is a tad squeaky - a student seems to have made quite a bit of money selling used foreign editions of textbooks to US students, but still 1) why is it not enough for publishers to get paid once per book? and 2) what about sites like Fishpond, which many of us have been using to buy Aussie books? Are those illegal too?

This is not only a holiday season, but a book awards season as well. Morris announced its finalists the other day. (This award honors a book written for young adults by a previously unpublished author.) Unlike with the National Book Awards finalists this year, we actually have read and liked some of these books (3 out of 5!).

Melina Marchetta gave us hope of the next book, and it looks like it is going to be about Jimmy Hailler!

If you are a fan of Kristin Cashore, you might appreciate this look into her writing process of Bitterblue.

Did you ever suspect that ALL popular YA is essentially fanfiction? Book Riot has developed a (conspiracy) theory.

And now, the rest of the news that can be grouped due to their relative smuttiness:

The Bad Sex Award Winner 2012 was announced. (Feel free to enjoy multiple gems at the end of the article, in a slide show).

E. L. James was named PW's Publishing Person of the Year. Haha. It's unclear if anyone benefited from something as unsavory as refurbished fanfiction quite as handsomely as James. But we are more interested in having a bit of fun instead of celebrating James' "achievements:

On the other hand, the success of Fifty Shades will put 5K in the pockets of EACH Random House employee this holiday season. Not bad at all.

…Huff huff huff…sorry for the late entry this weekend, folks!  I was assigned to write the Odds & Ends post this Saturday, but I was busy all day yesterday preparing and serving miniaturized foods:

So you can understand my predicament.  Luckily, Flannery and Tatiana are very forgiving (as are you, I hope).  Without any further delay, here are the highlights from last week:

The Readventurer’s own Tatiana got a bit of attention last week in a very interesting discussion about subtlety (or lack thereof) in Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue.  Malinda Lo picked up the threads and wrote a couple of intelligent and balanced posts titled “Heteronormativity, fantasy, and Bitterblue – Part 1” and “Heternormativity, fantasy, and Bitterblue – Part 2.”  While I know that Tatiana wasn’t trying to say that there were “too many” homosexual couples in Bitterblue (rather, she was commenting on the fact that she felt the in your face messages in Bitterblue were overpowering the characters, plot, and mystery), I think that the ensuing discussion was incredibly interesting to read.  Make sure to check out those posts!

Kelly from Stacked also made me think last week with her post about genre classifications – “Defining Contemporary, Realistic, & Historical Fiction”.  I admit that I tend to be pretty relaxed and casual with my genre classifications (probably because I’m not a librarian) but Kelly’s post really made me think about what separates a realistic work from a contemporary work.  Very interesting stuff!

In publishing news, Simon & Schuster formed a partnership with Archway publishing to create a self-publishing unit.  But what will that entail?  Over at Medium, blogger Kathleen Schmidt breaks it down in a post titled, “Buyer Beware”.

It’s getting close to the end of the year – here are a few exciting announcements for 2013:

• Some photos were released from the set of Catching Fire this week (Jennifer Lawrence in a wet suit!).

• In somewhat related news, The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins announced that she’ll be publishing an autobiographical children’s book in 2013.

• Trish Doller announced the new title of her 2013 release on her blog.
  

And all of the Courtney Summers fans (us included), will have to wait just a bit longer for the release of All the Rage.  Summers announced this week that the publication date will be delayed from the fall of 2013 until the winter of 2014.  Personally, it makes me very happy that she’s going to take the time to perfect the book instead of releasing something that she’s not comfortable with.  Looking forward to 2014!

And now I’m off to eat about three more cherry pies, a dozen doughnuts, two croissants, and a whole birthday cake (what?  It all fits on the palm of my hand!)

As the holiday season is picking up full speed, the publishing world seems to be less and less eager to stir up drama. We expect that the weeks to come will be quieter and not as news-filled, just like this past lazy Thanksgiving week. And anyway, who has time to make outrageous statements online when there is so much eating and shopping and decorating to do?

The few posts that did catch our eyes this week are:

Kelly's as ever insightful  and thoughtful post Some thoughts on "new adult" and also "cross-unders." We've talked about "new adult" category so much this year, and yet there is more and more to think about, and the category still hasn't caught on as a legit publishing trend.

Another favorite blogger of ours, Sarah, has a lot to say on the subject of GQ's latest foray into readers advisory "Reading Man's Guide to Dirty Books." Our question is, how good and smutty those men-written book recommendations are if none of us ever heard of them, and surely among the three of us we've sampled plenty of smut? Plus, if these recs are in any way similar in their portrayal of sex to the latest Bad Sex in Fiction nominees, then well... no wonder we are not interested:

Back to Blood, by Tom Wolfe: "Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle's own lips and maw — all this without a word."

Hot stuff!

And as we continue this sex in fiction topic, here is another 50 Shades hilarious exercise in hypocrisy -
Publisher cracks whip over 'Fifty Shades' spin-offs. Infringement, haha!

Over at Publishers Weekly you can read a very interesting recap of a panel called “Pop Culture Publishing: Young Adult Megahits.” The participants of this panel discussed what makes a magahit and what effects YA megahits can have on publishing and entertainment industry as a whole.

In conclusion, and this is almost becoming a tradition here, in our Odds & Ends posts, some quick links to news about our favorite authors:

Here you can see Laini Taylor's photographic inspirations for Days of Blood and Starlight. (We want to go there.)

Patrick Ness announced his next book. And so did Lili Wilkinson. Now, if only her books were readily available in US and didn't cost so much to get from Australia! We still haven't gotten our hands on Lili's previous release - Love-Shy.

Stacia Kane has a small holiday present for all of us, fans of her Downside Ghosts series - a snippet from a novella (from Terrible's POV!) which is to be published around Christmas.

Margo Lanagan has not one, but two short stories available online. Here is The Sky Swam from her upcoming collection Cracklescape. And a podcast of The Goosle.

Enjoy!

Writing these Odds & Ends posts for the past nine months or so has really brought home to me how cyclical some of these bookish “issues” really are.  The publishing industry is dying.  X, y, and z will be the death of great literature and “real” book criticism is a thing of the past.  Nobody reads anymore, and if they do it doesn’t count because everyone knows that e-reading isn’t “real” reading.  And of course, our very favorite outcry: the young people!  They don’t read enough/they read too much!  Their books are too dark/not dark enough and they are severely lacking in boys/girls/flying sparkly unicorns!!!

Aaaand so on….

This week The Book Lady’s Blog perfectly captures our frustration with “10 Bookish Conversations I’m Totally Over.”

Malinda Lo also responds to last week’s outcry against YA literature’s abandonment of boys with her post titled “YA Fiction and the Many Possibilities of Manhood” – a very insightful article about the fluid nature of gender and “manhood.”  We tend to think that YA literature already has many, many books that describe the experiences of boys and will appeal to boys (spoiler alert: not all of these books are written by men!  Shocker!).  Look out for our wall of books that will appeal to the boys of YA – coming next week!

The Weeklings also has this hilarious “lit-erotic photo spread” of the Dudes of YA, which you should all definitely check out.

Shannon Hale also responds to claims that Twilight is damaging to young readers.  I personally (Catie) can see both sides to this argument, and the comments for the article contain some really interesting discussion points.  Personally, I don’t think it’s necessary to censor any type of literature from young people.  Twilight may not represent what I would consider a healthy relationship, but I think it’s a great jumping off place for a discussion about what constitutes a healthy relationship.  What do you guys think?

The Kansas State Public Library has started a campaign in the social media-verse against the pricing and lending policies of major publishers for libraries, criticizing the elevated pricing, lending caps, and restrictions that most major publishers place on public libraries.

‘Tis the season for best-of lists and here are a few that came out last week:

• Amazon’s Best Books of the Year
  
• Library Journal’s Best 2012 YA Books For Adults

• And of course, the National Book Award winners were announced.
  

In very exciting news, Kathleen Duey announced that she’s finished with the third book in the Resurrection of Magic series and that it has officially gone to her editor!  I know Tatiana and I will be eagerly awaiting that release and probably begging all around town for an ARC of it.

In other exciting (?) news, Gillian Flynn has signed a deal for an as yet untitled young adult book.  Are we excited about this or perhaps a little nervous?  Hopefully she won’t tone down her dark side for YA.

Here are a few great interviews from last week:

• Alpha Reader interviews Courtney Summers (and she talks a bit about All the Rage!).

• Laini Taylor shares five writing tips over at Publisher’s Weekly.

• Moira Young talks about the Dustlands series over at Shelf Awareness.
  

And finally, for all of our artsy friends – do dream of designing the covers for your favorite books someday?  (Looking at you, Trinity and Noelle!)  Simon & Schuster is running a contest right now to find a new design for the anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, and has extended the deadline for submissions until December 7th!  So get right on that!

First things first: Congratulations to us all - the elections are finally behind us. No matter what your personal pick was, to be sure, you are happy for it all to be over as much as we are.

What evidently isn't over is the practice of writing absolutely inane articles about YA, articles with sweeping conclusions and generalizations not backed up by actual reading of any YA literature, except Twilight, of course. In her article almost menacingly titled YA Fiction and the End of Boys Sarah Mesle (who, by the way, teaches YA literature), speculates that while YA opens the doors for the discussion of what it means to be a good woman (your usual Bella/Katniss dilemma), it doesn't talk at all about what it means to be a good man (only Edward and Jacob models are at hand to go by). She also seems to regret that her preferred type of masculinity (the one found in 19th century lit aimed at young adults) is not represented enough in contemporary teen novels.

We are not going to argue that there are many unhealthy male role models that exist in girl-oriented YA fiction, but to say that there are no teen books that explore how to be an honorable, brave man is just an indicator of Mesle's poor familiarity with contemporary YA. You should check out Phoebe North's post YA and Boys and the Problem of Limited Historical Context, where she disagrees with Mesle's arguments quite nicely. We, The Readventurers, on our side should probably start working on our next Wall of Books, this time dedicated to YA books with boy appeal. Because no matter how often people like Mesle talk about the lack of books for teen boys, all they prove is that they don't make any effort whatsoever to actually seek them out and instead build their arguments around a couple of the most visible bestsellers.

If you are interested in ever-living Amazon-is-a-killer-of-all-good debate, there is a couple of articles you might find entertaining. The New York Times'  Booksellers Resisting Amazon’s Disruption talks about how booksellers have been standing in the way (and it appears rather successfully) of Amazon's efforts to break into serious book publishing. And The Guardian's Book publishers have long been playing into Amazon's hands explores the history of publishing, noting that if anything is disrupting the publishing industry, it's the publishers themselves who over the years have made themselves more vulnerable to Amazon's takeover:

"The funny thing about the publishing industry is that long before it was really threatened by the internet it was busily rearranging itself so as to make it more vulnerable to it. The process was vividly described by sociologist John Thompson in his book Merchants of Culture, the best account we have of what happened to publishing. As Professor Thompson tells it, the transformation of the industry occurred in three phases. In the first, the retail environment changed as large chains (Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, Borders et al) supplanted independent bookstores. This created a new phenomenon – the mass-market hardback. Second, a new breed of aggressive literary agent appeared, poaching authors and leaning on publishers for unsustainable advances for the aforementioned hardbacks. And finally, large public corporations (think Bertelsmann, Pearson, News Corp) started acquiring the smallish publishing houses that once constituted the bulk of the industry, in the process transforming something that was once based on private ownership, long-term thinking, the nurturing of authors and backlists into an industry driven predominately by the obsession of stock markets with short-term (ie quarterly) results."

Have you ever wondered if our beloved The Hunger Games trilogy would succeed if published today? io9 asked various publishing people for an opinion. If there is any lesson to be learned from this article , it is that publishing seems to have a sheep-like mentality with the majority working in it preoccupied with chasing  trends and over-saturating the market with poor imitations of bestsellers and not at all with searching for originality and quality. Special eye roll goes to:

"Says Laurie McLean with Larsen Pomada Literary Agents, "I believe The Hunger Games might well be lost in a sea of YA dystopian thrillers today, especially if it followed a book like Divergent by Veronica Roth, which is better written with a more intricate and interesting story." She adds, "There's a lot to be said about being first in a new trend.""

Divergent? Really?

Some small book news:

If you are a fan of Maria Snyder's Study books, rejoice, there will be another Study trilogy.

Britney Spears might become a YA writer too.  Another masterpiece a la Tyra Bank's Modelland (current average Goodreads rating of 2.86)? We shall see.

Helen Fielding is writing the 3rd Bridget Jones novel. 1) It is unclear yet how Fielding's previous attempt at writing this 3rd book, that was published in a series of columns in The Independent in 2005, will factor into this novel and 2) Hasn't this ship sailed already?

Good news for Outlander fans. Looks like the TV show will be made indeed. Considering that it will air on Starz, we can be sure all smut will remain intact, right?

If you have already read Days of Blood and Starlight, or are planning to, you should check out Laini Taylor's short but meaty blog tour. All stops are full of awesome insight and teasers.

Do you remember those horrid, book-destroying DIY decorative projects we love to talk about? Well, Flannery found one that we can totally get behind.

This week the east coast of the U.S. got hit by the dreaded Frakenstorm and two of us were huddling for cover, so this may be a short wrap-up.  We sincerely hope that all of our readers made it through the storm safe and sound and we’d like to send out our hope for those of you who are still without power.  We hope the power gets turned on for you this week so you can have warm water and refrigeration and light and most of all an internet connection so you can visit The Readventurer and give us more hits. Kidding, kidding.

To start things off, I’d like to throw out a list of really fun, happy-making things.  With Frankenstorm behind us and this seemingly never-ending election ahead of us, I think we could all use it.

Book Probe Reviews had an interview with Melina Marchetta this week.

Kathleen Duey tweeted the following (squee!):

And re-posted this from her archives – about her use of “bad” language in her YA books.  It’s an older post, but a great one.

Here's an update from a story we linked to last week about a “lack” of portal fantasy on the market right now:  Sherwood Smith review’s Andrea K. Host’s portal fantasy, Stray.

Geeky Gadgets profiled “the invisible book end.”  How does it work?  And more importantly, will it damage my precious babies?!!

Jennifer Stevenson discusses the possible differences between porn and erotica over at the Book View Café

And finally, the following awesome quote from Nick Hornby’s Shakespeare Wrote For Money made a few rounds this week:

“They’ve been very disorienting, these last few weeks. I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence I’ve discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of.”

And now that we’re all smiling, here are a few more newsy stories:

Fast Company profiled the “literary incubator” company Paper Lantern Lit founded by former YA editor Lexa Hillyer and YA author Lauren Oliver.  Apparently they are setting themselves apart from book packagers by actively seeking talented authors to write their preconceived, pre-plotted, pre-outlined stories.  And this is different from book packaging…how, exactly? 

Author Steve Webble posted about his experience with having one of his reviews deleted by Amazon this week – a review he posted for a friend’s book.  Upon questioning Amazon, they responded by citing a portion of their review policy: “We do not allow reviews on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product.”  We can’t say that we’d be sorry to see less author/author, overly positive, quid pro quo type reviews out there but how far will Amazon actually take this?  Will all reviews written by authors be deleted?  Will all authors be considered to be producers of a “directly competing product”?  From the comments, it appears that a few other authors have had all of their reviews deleted as well.

And I think that's enough newsy stories for this week.  Have a great weekend everyone, and be safe!  Stop by and tell me about all the news I missed out on while my power was out!

This week was a bit low on actual book news, so this edition of Odds & Ends will be heavy on links on various... random stuff.

The "big" news of the week is that, apparently, younger Americans still read and use libraries a lot, refuting all the criers who've been telling us that literature is dying, young people are not reading, ebooks are killing publishing, etc., etc.

The other news is not much of a news item, or rather, not publishing news many of us truly care about - Penguin and Random House are in talks of a merger. But it sure became an inspiration for a great book nerd memes - #RandomPenguin and slightly less popular #PenguinHouse.

There is more random (and penguin) creativity here.

On a more serious note, you should check out these clever and thoughtful posts:

Dear Author has a great follow-up to the recent Jon Stock controversy, dissecting why the culture of authors stalking and intimidating reviewers in the name of "customer service" is wrong (yes, evidently this has to be explained again and again) - Ladysplaining the Value of A Literary Culture for Commercial Fiction.

Sarah at Clear Eyes, Full Shelves invites us to discuss the topic of the necessity of "new adult" category.

There is also a curious discussion going on in the world of fantasy lovers -Portal Fantasy: Threat or Menace?  (Portal fantasy - think Narnia, Alice in Wonderland, even Harry Potter where a character from the real world steps into a secondary fantasy world.) According to this post, literary agents participating in a panel claim that nobody accepts and publishes such stories anymore, that good portal fantasies haven't been in print for a decade.

"They explained that portal fantasies tend to have no stakes because they're not connected enough to our world. While in theory, a portal fantasy could have the fate of both our world and the other world at stake, in practice, the story is usually just about the fantasy world. The fate of the real world is not affected by the events of the story, and there is no reason for readers to care what happens to a fantasy world."

Really?! we want to exclaim, flipping through our copies of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and even Dreamfever. Someone is out of touch. But read the discussion anyway. If nothing else it's a great insight of the minds of the agents.

And, speaking of literary agents, if you ever dreamed of becoming one, Pub(lishing) Crawl has advice for you - this week's How to Become an Agent, Part 1: The Way In and How to Become A Literary Agent in 2 Easy Steps. Good news: you don't have to have a fancy literary degree to become one. Bad news: prepare to work for free in the beginning.

And now, the warning of the week: Amazon or any e-reader manufacturer has every legal right to wipe out your purchased ebooks.