Be More Bookish - Week 7, Assignment 4

I decided to check out Teens@Random and Little, Brown Books for Teens specifically so that I could compare and contrast my idea of a great publishing company's teen website and a poor one. The Random House site feels like a PBS Kids games page from 2003, which is the last thing I want to see if I'm a teenager looking for a book. It seems patronizing and looks juvenile, and while it functions perfectly fine I can't help but believe that if I were a teen using it I would feel entirely pandered to. Aesthetic is important for these kind of websites, doubly so when you're trying to engage teens and young readers. I also found many broken links on Teens@Random. When I tried to open Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials featured page it simply directed me to the Random House home page. A few other featured sites I tried, including The Maze Runner series and the Fallen novels directed me to a page saying that the page had moved. It redirected me to a new homepage, but not to anything containing actual information about these series. Many, many problems.

Little, Brown Books, on the other hand, is killin' it. The website is simple, attractive, and strikes a great balance between teen and adult aesthetics. It does, however, lose out in terms of interface. When you go under the "Books" section for Random House, it immediately takes you to their new releases, with options to browse the rest of their bibliography be genre. Little, Brown Books has their titles sorted alphabetically with no option to browse by any other criteria, a feature which is effectively made superfluous by a search bar function. The content for Random House is also superior, they have a "Fun" page on their site which includes interviews with authors, video links, quizzes and polls, and a message board community. By contrast, L.B.B. has a simple but functional "Videos" page and a Tumblr-based community called NOVL. In terms of content, Random House definitely wins, but it's hard for me to get past just how ugly it is. For that reason alone, I'd rather look at Little, Brown Books all day.

Be More Bookish - Week 7, Assignment 3

I followed STACKED, a really interesting blog run by two librarians and an editor, and Squeetus, the personal website of author Shannon Hale of Ever After High and Austenland fame. STACKED is awesome, first of all, and one of my new favorite blogs to frequent. Not only is the writing clever, but the book reviews are very concise and informative. They also do themed series, like About The Girls, where they opened a dialogue about sexism within the YA industry. In the series they don't review books but they do discuss them within the context of the larger theme. Some other sections of their website include author interviews and a Readers Advisory Week where other librarians and bloggers wrote posts offering their own advice about RA. Really cool resource, needless to say I'm into it.

Squeetus has some similar themes, because it is the personal blog of author Shannon Hale and she writes a lot about how media is marketed for girls and what it's like being an author (and a woman) of books aimed at both genders but only getting recognized for writing books for girls.

But she also blogs about what its like being a mother, offers advice to schools and libraries about what makes a great author visit from the author's perspective, and provides updates and sneak peeks of her upcoming work to her fans. Also, and this is my favorite part, she has a SUPER comprehensive section of her website devote to offering advice to aspiring writers on topics beyond how to write compelling character or how to create a good story. She talks about how to get noticed and find a good agent, and has an article called "What I Wish I'd Known," which is just a list of things she wishes someone had told her when she was starting out. Honestly, I think this was my favorite assignment. These two websites are great and are immediately going in my bookmarks.

Be More Bookish - Week 7, Assignment 2

So I guess the main point of contention I have with these articles is that the one from 2012 (Who's buying teen books? Lots and lots of adults.) from the Christian Science Monitor feels pretty outdated. The question of whether lots of adult are reading YA novels may have been a burning one in 2012, but in 2015 it's not much of a conversation as the answer is an obvious and overwhelming "yes." To be honest, I don't think I ever stopped reading YA, and I wasn't even really aware that it was a classification until I started working at the library. The first YA series I started reading after entering BCPL was The Hunger Games, and like everyone I was hooked pretty much immediately. More than the author of the article herself, I relate strongly with Angelina Benedetti, who's quoted in the article reminiscing about when she first realized her mistake in ignoring YA and discovered that there is something extremely satisfying about reading it. Of course, the author goes on to say that one of the reasons why adults might enjoy Young Adult fiction is because it presents less of a challenge than a literary novel and may "offer a relaxing experience for an adult reader tired from commuting, working all day, and taking care of kids," which is endlessly condescending and makes it difficult for me to lend her writing credence.

It's interesting that the two articles I read could have been written in direct opposition to one another. Meg Wolitzer, the author of the New York Times article A Not-So-Young Audience for Young Adult Books, approaches the topic from the perspective of someone who enjoys and has consistently enjoyed YA novels her entire life. Wolitzer even goes so far as to quote from another article written by Ruth Graham, claiming that reading YA as an adult is something worth being ashamed about, so even though Molly Driscoll didn't write the article that Wolitzer is quoting, she and the real author obviously have a lot in common in their opinions of the topic. Wolitzer's evidence is compelling; she writes about the "kid lit" book club she's in, cites the impressive (and often literary) careers of the other members, and points out the growing number of so-called adult authors that have written books aimed at YA readers. Her goal is to demonstrate that Ruth Graham's hasty dismissal of YA books is an outdated point of view based on misinformation and unsubstantiated criticisms. Perhaps the most flawed argument that she draws attention to is Graham's notion that, because we can't read every book before we die, our time is wasted on YA. For my perspective, her arguments falls into the same trap that many critics and readers do, which is to operate under the assumption that there is some sort of master list of literature that is worth reading. If you ask me, a book's worth is entirely based on what the reader gets out of it. 

Be More Bookish - Week 7, Assignment 1

UH this is amazing. Can we just do a bunch of these?

Be More Bookish - Week 6, Assignment 3

The three sub-genres I wanted to examine closer are dystopian fiction, chick lit, and Christian urban fiction. I don't have any experience with these genres, the one possible exception being dystopian fiction since I have read The Hunger Games. Still, I really enjoyed finding some examples of these types of books to check out in the future.

Dystopian fiction:
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigulpa                          Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

1984 by George Orwell

Chick lit:

Jessica Z by Shawn Klomparens                         My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

One Day by David Nicholls

Christian urban fiction:
And You Call Yourself a Christian by E.N. Joy               The Choir Director by Carl Weber

Momma I Ain't No Saint by Angel

For the genre mashups section of this assignment, the first thing that came to mind was Joss Whedon's prematurely cancelled space western Firefly from 2002. The show explored the ideas of rebellion vs. incorporation by including former soldiers in the cast who had fought as Browncoats (rebels) in the war against the Alliance (union) to avoid their home worlds coming under the Alliance's control. Many of the planets that the crew frequented were on the Outer Rim, barely developed frontier moons with a small number of settlers trying to scratch out a living from the dirt. The crew of the ship Serenity were noble criminals who found ways to turn a profit while still standing up for themselves and the underdog, an idea which is certainly reminiscent of plenty of Western fiction.

Continuing with the Western theme, I've recently been reading and enjoying The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher, a genre mashup that takes the occult horror of the H.P. Lovecraft mythos and sets it in a small town in the Old West. This has been really working for me, as the horror and supernatural elements create new and interesting challenges for these somewhat prototypical Western character to face, but it still pays homage to the John Wayne or Clint Eastwood figure that the reader knows is going to manage to come out on top. All of the superstition and folklore that we expect from Western books is here, but intertwined with the dark, twisted flavor of H.P. Lovecraft.

Be More Bookish - Week 6, Assignment 2

The Prezi chart is really well done, and I can definitely see it being a valuable tool for teaching genres and sub-genres. The only thing I was surprised to see was that the Native American sub-genre was categorized under Westerns, and the example given was War Dances by Sherman Alexie, a collection of short stories, essays, and poems examining what it means to be a Native American today. I can't say I agree with the classification, as to me it hearkens back to "classic" and uncomfortable depictions of Native Americans in old Western films and books. Sherman Alexie in particular, I would argue, writes literary fiction occasionally bordering into offbeat humor with some elements of magical realism or surrealism. Of course, that's a minor grievance with the exercise and the Prezi display can hardly be faulted for how we classify certain authors and sub-genres.

Be More Bookish - Week 6, Assignment 1

I think Romance is probably the only section in our library that I've never taken a book off of. I try not to be prejudiced, but I think it's pretty clear that I do suffer from some preconceptions and bias in the romance department. I will say, though, that even with my preconceptions and bias and limited knowledge I still managed to be surprised by the sheer amount of

that they talk about on Heroes and Heartbreakers. That's not to say that that's all that's offered on the website; I was also pleasantly surprised to read a lot of articles and interviews dealing with some very poignant current events and addressing sex positivity and body shaming. The sex positivity articles were both the least and most surprising things I noticed while following the blog: least because, well, everything I read was about sex, but also most because I wasn't expecting the tone of acceptance. For a genre that seems to feature mostly straight heterosexual coupling between strong (time-tossed) men and frazzled (yet sensual) women, the community is surprisingly open minded.  It was nice to see, and I will freely admit that I was also surprised and impressed with the level of discourse I saw in the articles. I definitely fell victim to my prejudices going into this assignment back in week 1, but I'm happy to report that I often found myself genuinely absorbed in the articles and summaries I was reading on Heroes and Heartbreakers. I'm looking forward to giving some of these books a chance.