Thank goodness, past week was much calmer than a few before that. It doesn't mean vigorous discussions haven't been going on, but the absence of obvious crazy helped to keep the tone of all these discussions at a reasonable level.
A couple of interesting topics surfaced in the aftermath of the mess created by the well-known-in-the-worst-way bully site.
Cuddlebuggery launched a series of blog posts that give advice on how to preserve your online anonymity and safety. So that no crazy people could use your unwittingly exposed private information to harm you in real life.
And, it looks like Goodreads is reacting to the scandals as well, it is in a cleanup mode, with fresh plans to modify its review policies. From where we stand, it sure looks like Goodreads, instead of effectively enforcing its existing policies (which should have eliminated much of the nastiness in the first place), is going in the direction of Amazon, making interests of select few authors with fragile egos and plenty of free time to watch each and every review their priority. Hurray? Hmm, we'll see how it turns out. Vacuous Minx has a few thoughts on this development too.
In the world of YA, our primary area of interest, NPR needs you to vote on the list of 100 best ever teen novels. We are curious as to what we all are going to end up with. Leaving voting to the public doesn't necessarily mean that best books will make it on the list. Can we hope that at least books like Fallen and Hush, Hush stay off of it? Pretty please? Fingers crossed, the whole process will be less controversial than the process of modifying that infamous 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader compiled by Bitch magazine a year and a half ago.
Clear Eyes, Full Shelves' Sarah reminds us all that not every book which is not adult is YA. We agree that it is astonishing how many adult readers (including those who write for major publications like Guardian and The New York Times) have no understanding of what makes a book a YA book, and that ignorance leads them to writing various stop-reading-children's-books nonsense articles and generally look down on any adult reader interested in books written for teens.
(Via YA Highway) Justine Larbalestier dispels the myth that YA Novelists Are In It For The Money. We definitely agree that the vast majority of YA writers are in it because they simply love writing for teens. But we also know of a few who view YA market as a cash cow ready for milking and who think writing for teens is a task requiring limited mental effort, because these teens can't appreciate good writing anyway.
If you want to stay away from books and authors like that, you might find it very useful to follow Stacked Kelly's advice on how to educate yourself to know more about YA books available to you and start reading beyond the books that receive publishers' marketing support and gain bestseller's status. We can't stress enough the value of perusing publishers' catalogs and reading reviews in professional publications (Kirkus can be a very good source of information) to discover quality YA fiction.
A couple of interesting topics surfaced in the aftermath of the mess created by the well-known-in-the-worst-way bully site.
Cuddlebuggery launched a series of blog posts that give advice on how to preserve your online anonymity and safety. So that no crazy people could use your unwittingly exposed private information to harm you in real life.
And, it looks like Goodreads is reacting to the scandals as well, it is in a cleanup mode, with fresh plans to modify its review policies. From where we stand, it sure looks like Goodreads, instead of effectively enforcing its existing policies (which should have eliminated much of the nastiness in the first place), is going in the direction of Amazon, making interests of select few authors with fragile egos and plenty of free time to watch each and every review their priority. Hurray? Hmm, we'll see how it turns out. Vacuous Minx has a few thoughts on this development too.
In the world of YA, our primary area of interest, NPR needs you to vote on the list of 100 best ever teen novels. We are curious as to what we all are going to end up with. Leaving voting to the public doesn't necessarily mean that best books will make it on the list. Can we hope that at least books like Fallen and Hush, Hush stay off of it? Pretty please? Fingers crossed, the whole process will be less controversial than the process of modifying that infamous 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader compiled by Bitch magazine a year and a half ago.
Clear Eyes, Full Shelves' Sarah reminds us all that not every book which is not adult is YA. We agree that it is astonishing how many adult readers (including those who write for major publications like Guardian and The New York Times) have no understanding of what makes a book a YA book, and that ignorance leads them to writing various stop-reading-children's-books nonsense articles and generally look down on any adult reader interested in books written for teens.
(Via YA Highway) Justine Larbalestier dispels the myth that YA Novelists Are In It For The Money. We definitely agree that the vast majority of YA writers are in it because they simply love writing for teens. But we also know of a few who view YA market as a cash cow ready for milking and who think writing for teens is a task requiring limited mental effort, because these teens can't appreciate good writing anyway.
If you want to stay away from books and authors like that, you might find it very useful to follow Stacked Kelly's advice on how to educate yourself to know more about YA books available to you and start reading beyond the books that receive publishers' marketing support and gain bestseller's status. We can't stress enough the value of perusing publishers' catalogs and reading reviews in professional publications (Kirkus can be a very good source of information) to discover quality YA fiction.
