slaughterhouse90210: “Stopping was death. Stopping meant you’d given up and turned the keys of the world over to other people. The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn’t do it any longer.” —Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings In case you’d forgotten that Maris is a completely inspired genius.
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slaughterhouse90210:

“Stopping was death. Stopping meant you’d given up and turned the keys of the world over to other people. The only option for a creative person was constant motion—a lifetime of busy whirligigging in a generally forward direction, until you couldn’t do it any longer.”

—Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

In case you’d forgotten that Maris is a completely inspired genius.

harperdesignbooks: Whovians, rejoice! We’re THRILLED to finally share with you the stunning cover for our upcoming book, Doctor Who: The Vault, which goes on sale October 29th! The Vault is the ultimate, official, visual celebration of 50 years of the BBC cult hit Doctor Who filled with unseen and iconic material, photos, artwork, and production papers from the previously untapped BBC archive as well as from private collections. We at Harper Design are all such huge fans of the show. We’re really excited about this project and can’t wait to share more about it as we get closer to onsale! Pre-order your copy now: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million Can I tell you all how excited I am that my company is publishing this beautiful, beautiful book? When fandom and work collide…
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harperdesignbooks:

Whovians, rejoice! We’re THRILLED to finally share with you the stunning cover for our upcoming book, Doctor Who: The Vault, which goes on sale October 29th! The Vault is the ultimate, official, visual celebration of 50 years of the BBC cult hit Doctor Who filled with unseen and iconic material, photos, artwork, and production papers from the previously untapped BBC archive as well as from private collections.

We at Harper Design are all such huge fans of the show. We’re really excited about this project and can’t wait to share more about it as we get closer to onsale!

Pre-order your copy now: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million

Can I tell you all how excited I am that my company is publishing this beautiful, beautiful book? When fandom and work collide…

lazybookreviews:

Okay, here’s the baby and I fighting over the new Rob Sheffield memoir.  Did you read “Love Is a Mix Tape”? Terrible title, great book. Well, the new one is “Turn Around, Bright Eyes,” and I’m enjoying it. Not as much as “Love Is a Mix Tape,” because that book is crazy, crazy good, but this one is also great, and he describes the experience of being miserable really well.

Also, seriously, this is a really high-quality baby video.

Best baby video on the internet.

The Rumpus Interview With Miracle Jones - The Rumpus.net

mraclejones:

I don’t know what is going to happen to print publishing. People in publishing take publishing very seriously, probably because in order to get their jobs, they had to kill a lot of good, creative people who did not take publishing very seriously.

Miracle, babe, shhhhhh about all the people I killed to get this job!

(But really you should go read the whole thing.)

Look, I promise I’m not gonna turn my blog into a marketing vehicle for my job, but I need to do a public service and tell you to go buy this book. It is creepy and funny and unsettling and just generally a ridiculously polished debut. If you like your fiction with a hefty dose of dark humor, or have an affinity for stories about sailors (past, present, and future), or just happen to like alpacas, don’t miss it. I’m still thinking about it and I read it in January. Also, I’m making it my personal mission this year to champion short story collections, and if you don’t know where to start, this is the perfect place (and when you’re done, you can come to me for more recommendations!).
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Look, I promise I’m not gonna turn my blog into a marketing vehicle for my job, but I need to do a public service and tell you to go buy this book. It is creepy and funny and unsettling and just generally a ridiculously polished debut. If you like your fiction with a hefty dose of dark humor, or have an affinity for stories about sailors (past, present, and future), or just happen to like alpacas, don’t miss it. I’m still thinking about it and I read it in January.

Also, I’m making it my personal mission this year to champion short story collections, and if you don’t know where to start, this is the perfect place (and when you’re done, you can come to me for more recommendations!).

Inter-racial couples in YA

alexbracken:

adventuresonpaper:

I’m really liking The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken but…

I’m guessing Ruby and Liam are going to be the romantic couple of the book. And I just wonder why Ruby wasn’t paired up with Chubs? Why does the white girl have to fall for the white boy or vice versa? 

Am I just picking up the wrong books? Are there inter-racial romantic relationships in YA books that I’ve missed?

I hope you don’t mind me jumping in here to answer your question and explain a bit about how I make these kinds of narrative decisions. I also want to open this up for others to chime in with reading suggestions. I don’t want you guys to feel like I’m constantly peering over your shoulder, but this is a topic that I’ve been thinking about quite a lot over the past few years, so I hope it’s okay that I’m joining the conversation. I think this is a really valid question and one that needs to be raised over and over again.

The reason Ruby and Chubs aren’t together is because their characterizations just aren’t compatible in that sense. Really, that’s it. One of the reasons why they become such close friends is that they have very similar dispositions and goals. Whereas, what attracts Ruby to Liam is the fact that he has the complete opposite outlook on their future (aka  hopeful versus their Team Reality brand of pessimism) and he’s warm and open when she’s been denied that for so long. It’s my feeling that in relationships, partners should complete each other, rather than reflect one another. Chubs is lovely once you get him on your side, but his grouchy, closed-off protectiveness is one of his defining traits (he’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to writing a tsundere character), and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice that aspect of him to make him more romantically compatible with Ruby. These characters are real people to me, with fully fleshed out lives, and it’s very, very, very difficult for me to change their core traits once they’ve popped up in my head and start talking. Ruby and Chubs’ friendship is one of my favorite elements of the whole series, and is just as important as her relationship with Liam. My goal was to portray a true male-female friendship without any sort of romantic entanglements, which I think there’s also a lack of in YA novels.


I try really hard to be sensitive and all-inclusive when it comes to portraying different ethnicities, not to mark them off an imaginary checklist, but because it’s natural and realistic and important to acknowledge that the population of this country is not one enormous blanket of white. There’s no arguing around the fact that Liam could have been another ethnicity, but the decision to make him caucasian came from the fact he was actually born in (spoiler!) West Virginia, which is something insane like 96% white. I couldn’t really change his place of birth, either, because he needed to be from WV to complete what is arguably the most important thematic arc in book 3 that I really can’t get into without S-P-O-I-L-E-R-S. I like to think I’m fully in control of my story development, but some things like this really do shake out through coincidence. 

It’s actually sort of strange that this popped up on Tumblr when it did, since I’m drafting book 3 and finally delving into Liam’s backstory. You may have noticed he doesn’t like talking about it, largely because of the memories he has of his biological father who really, truly, was an abusive asshole. He never specifies this in TDM (for a number of reasons, mostly because it would have felt incredibly unnatural for him to qualify it), but his much-beloved stepfather/personal hero, Harry, is African American, meaning, yes, his sister was biracial. And actually, the romance between Harry and Liam’s mom is so damn wonderful and swoony I want to tell you every detail about it right this second instead of making you wait until Fall 2014. 


More than ever, I think the YA community is recognizing the need for diversity, especially in main characters—it’s something I think about all the time as I work through and identify my privileges and those racial default settings that many people aren’t even aware of when they sit down to write. I wish I could say I was perfect on that front, but I know I’m not and I’m always willing to have it pointed out to me so I can learn from it. I hope you guys are never afraid to engage in dialogue with me or other authors about this. We should all be asking these kinds of questions.

 I totally agree with you that there’s a shortage of YA novels portraying main interracial couples at the heart of the story.  I’m hoping others will chime in with a few more suggestions for you, but here are the big ones I came up with off the top of my head. I know there are more, but it’s super late and I have major conference brain (TLA starts tomorrow—woooo):

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE by Beth Revis

DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth (someone correct me if I’m wrong, but

Simone Elkeles’ books

LEGEND by Marie Lu

NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL by Justina Chen

ELEANOR AND PARK by Rainbow Rowell

Cassandra Clare’s Infernal Devices series

Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy

In which Alex is really smart about race in YA.

Source: adventuresonpaper

The 51-year-old King, who spoke Tuesday to the Bookworm Club at The Villages retirement community northwest of Orlando, said he didn’t realize he had been nominated for a Pulitzer. He learned that he’d won from a friend’s text that said: “Dude. Pulitzer.” The New York City author thought it was practical joke.

The Orlando Sentinel interviewed Gilbert King after his Pulitzer Prize win and this might be my favorite part.

Aside from, y’know, winning a Pulitzer.

“Dude. Pulitzer.”

(via harperperennial)

catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
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catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
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catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
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catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
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catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
Zoom Info
catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
Zoom Info
catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
Zoom Info
catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
Zoom Info
catsandthelaw: So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey HOLY MOTHER. There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.
Zoom Info

catsandthelaw:

So much lust for the Folio Society edition of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. Illustrated by Peter Bailey

HOLY MOTHER.

There’s no way I can justify spending $185 on this, right? Like, not even with my tax refund money? I… oh my god I want to.

(via fuckyeahbookarts)

Source: catsandthelaw

darienlibrary: yaybuttons: just-a-skinny-boy: Guys. It’s a book mark that marks your spot in the book. I get not being able to remember the exact page number but not knowing where you left off on the page? Tsk tsk Wait a second. Do people actually stop reading in the middle of a page? If I stop reading in the middle of a page it’s because I’ve suddenly realized it’s my subway stop or someone has called me or my doorbell is ringing. I certainly don’t have time to strap a bookmark into my book and line up a rubbery index finger. If there are people who stop reading right in the middle of a page, I would like to know those people. I bet they have exciting personalities! I always stop reading in the middle of a page! If I finish a page, I feel compelled to flip to the next page, and if I stop reading at the beginning of a page, I always have to flip back to the previous page the next time I pick the book up to remember what I was reading. It’s easier for me to remember what was happening if I stop in the middle. These are things I think about now, I guess.
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darienlibrary: yaybuttons: just-a-skinny-boy: Guys. It’s a book mark that marks your spot in the book. I get not being able to remember the exact page number but not knowing where you left off on the page? Tsk tsk Wait a second. Do people actually stop reading in the middle of a page? If I stop reading in the middle of a page it’s because I’ve suddenly realized it’s my subway stop or someone has called me or my doorbell is ringing. I certainly don’t have time to strap a bookmark into my book and line up a rubbery index finger. If there are people who stop reading right in the middle of a page, I would like to know those people. I bet they have exciting personalities! I always stop reading in the middle of a page! If I finish a page, I feel compelled to flip to the next page, and if I stop reading at the beginning of a page, I always have to flip back to the previous page the next time I pick the book up to remember what I was reading. It’s easier for me to remember what was happening if I stop in the middle. These are things I think about now, I guess.
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darienlibrary:

yaybuttons:

just-a-skinny-boy:

Guys.

It’s a book mark that marks your spot in the book.

I get not being able to remember the exact page number but not knowing where you left off on the page? Tsk tsk

Wait a second. Do people actually stop reading in the middle of a page? If I stop reading in the middle of a page it’s because I’ve suddenly realized it’s my subway stop or someone has called me or my doorbell is ringing. I certainly don’t have time to strap a bookmark into my book and line up a rubbery index finger.

If there are people who stop reading right in the middle of a page, I would like to know those people. I bet they have exciting personalities!

I always stop reading in the middle of a page! If I finish a page, I feel compelled to flip to the next page, and if I stop reading at the beginning of a page, I always have to flip back to the previous page the next time I pick the book up to remember what I was reading. It’s easier for me to remember what was happening if I stop in the middle.

These are things I think about now, I guess.

Source: just-a-skinny-boy