How Powerful Are Reading Social Networks?
In 2006, posts about a new reading network starting popping up. Goodreads, a place where readers could go to catalog their reading habits, seemed like a fancy, web 2.0 version of a reading journal. And since I’ve never been good with recording my reads, I gave it a miss. But Goodreads has stuck around–and flourished. I’m now a member, along with over 4,400,000 other people. That’s almost as many people as the entire country of Norway (4, 827,038), Ireland (4,450,446)....
Read MoreLauren Oliver’s Before I Fall Takes A Huge Risk–& I Like It
Full disclosure: I kinda-sorta know the author of this book, Lauren Oliver. Since reading Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, I’ve stayed away from most novels with the reliving-the-past-learning-to-accept-death theme. Every now and then, a new title does pique my interest–the buzz around Gayle Forman’s If I Stay landed it in my to be read pile (though I’ve been studiously ignoring it every time it gets close to the top) and a few recommendations for Jay Asher’s...
Read MoreThe Masque of VS Naipaul @ The NRI
I have waited nine years to see VS Naipaul. The last time he was in town, he was fresh from his Nobel win, and I was still star-struck from my introduction to his work in a postcolonial lit class. I bought tickets the day they went on sale. Unfortunately for me, Joe took ill (or so he claimed!) about half an hour before the talk, and I didn’t make it. Lucky for me, Naipaul is a prolific author much sought after on tour, so I did get to see him recently. My latest NRI piece reflects on the...
Read MoreMixed: Two Books on Multiracial Kids, Two Different Takes @ PopMatters
I have a new review up @PopMatters, about two recently stumbled across books on being mixed race that spoke to me as a parent and a biracial kid. Here’s the intro: My son is not biracial—not in the true sense of the word. He’s only a quarter Indian, just enough to have my dark eyes and hair, and hopefully some facility with Hindi. Chances are, he won’t marry an Indian, though it’s possible he’ll fall for someone half-Indian, or quarter Indian, as mixed race couples become...
Read MoreReading Kidlit: In Defense of Animal Fiction, part I
Animal stories are everywhere. Many classic tales are animal stories, from Aesop’s Fables through Charlotte’s Web. Yet there’s an idea in kids’ publishing, out there on blogs, in classes and speeches, that animal fiction is no longer marketable, and has gone the way of the cute little bunnies in Watership Down. Despite the naysaying, though, animal stories continue to show up in bookstores–Erin Hunter’s Seekers and Warriors, Kathy Appelt’s The Underneath, and Brian Jacques’...
Read MoreWriting YA: If It’s Paranormal, It Needs A Villain, Right?
Over the weekend, I read Sarah Mlynowski’s Magic in Manhattan series. Although technically not on the lookout for more books–the stack by my bed is about four feet high–I’m a sucker for remainder shelves the way some people (okay, me) are suckers for lost puppies. Every book deserves a home, and books 1 & 3 looked so funky yet so lost and forlorn among old cookbooks and craft sets that I just had to bring them home. Here’s the Booklist blurb for Bras &...
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