
…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:
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.
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!)