A Quick Update

Apologies for the radio silence. Here are some snippets as to why I’ve been quiet lately.

1. AWP Boston 2013 – I was extremely lucky to attend several panels at AWP this year. I met Jane Yolen, Arthur A. Levine (editor of Harry Potter!), David Levithan, Lucy Christopher, and many others. Because of this unique opportunity I was able to ask them for their definitions of the YA genre. Yolen paused, Levine was silent, and Levithan and Christopher took a beat before answering. All essentially said the same thing: a novel about a young adult protagonist experiencing first encounters on an amplified level.
2. Fine-tuning my graduate thesis idea — I’ve finally narrowed down my thesis idea and my program director loves it. It’s a very unique idea, with probably very little research in the field, so it’ll be fresh and new (and hopefully published!). I won’t go into details, but it’ll involve: YA, gothic, and classic literature.
   
3. Distracted by movie/TV casting – Did you hear?! Delirium, Divergent, and The Fault in Our Stars have been cast!
4. Distracted by publications – CASSANDRA. CLARE’S. CLOCKWORK. PRINCESS.
5. Graduate coursework in general – It’s quite consuming.

You have a lot to look forward to once I get some down time. Are you interested in learning what panelists had to say about the publishing industry, agents, and YA literature at the AWP conference? News on the industry (independent bookstores on the rise, chapter books, ALA awards, etc) will be up soon as well, and some book reviews too.

I’m not dead.

Awards, Bestsellers, and E-books, Oh My!

Apologies for the lack of posts. I’ve since taken a trip to NYC and adopted a kitty from a shelter.

On to some book news!

1. NBCC Finalists Announced — 2012 National Book Critics Circle finalists were announced Monday. There are 30 finalists across 6 categories, including Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Tom Reiss’s The Black Count, and Allan Peterson’s Fragile Acts.
2. Wanna know which titles dominated in 2012? I’m sure you can guess quite a few of them. Big Names Dominated Bestsellers in 2012 contains all the sales information as well as the lists of the Top 10 Books within 10 categories.
3. Prepare to be launched into a literary Italy with Dan Brown’s Inferno on May 14! Make all the jokes you want — I’m really looking forward to this one. Lost Symbol was ehhh for me, but the other Robert Langdon books were intriguing. Probably because it was set in Europe. And now we’re looking into Dante’s Inferno? Yes, please!
4. Scholastic Report Finds More E-book Reading Among Children — This is to be expected, as the current generation is growing up with easy-access technology. However, the stats are incredibly fascinating. More boys are reading, and more teenagers are making the switch from print to digital.
5. 2013 Edgar Nominations Announced — Check out the selections from the Mystery Writers of America, with Best Book, Best First, Best Fact Crime, and many more!

John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” Named Best Fiction

Time Magazine named YA author John Green’s book The Fault in Our Stars the number one best work of fiction in 2012!

If you’re wondering why sales of young-adult books are up, even with all the challenges the publishing industry is facing, it’s because of novels like this one.

…The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, one of the most genuine and moving ones in recent American fiction, but it’s also an existential tragedy of tremendous intelligence and courage and sadness.

He was ranked ahead of JK Rowling, Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, and the Booker Award winner Hilary Mantel! Congratulations, John Green!

DFTBA, Nerdfighters!

Goodreads Choice Awards Winners 2012

They’ve been announced!!! Congratulations!!!

Best Fiction was JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy — no surprise there. Gillian Flynn’s best-seller Gone Girl won Best Mystery & Thriller. Of course, Fifty Shades Freed by EL James won for Romance, and Veronica Roth defended her title by winning both Goodreads Author and Best Young Adult Fantasy for Insurgent. The winners for Best Young Adult and Best Paranormal Fantasy makes my heart flutter: John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and Deborah Harkness’s Shadow of Night!

I have a few predictions for next year! Is it too early? Regardless, I’m sending out my opinion.

Although not every author posts about a book they have due out in the following year, especially a first-time author, I do believe that Cassandra Clare and Lauren Oliver will have to fight for “Young Adult Fantasy” (since apparently dystopians are also called fantasy). Clare will publish her final in the Infernal Devices series, Clockwork Princess, and with the upcoming movie for her Mortal Instruments series there will be plenty of talk about her Shadowhunter world throughout 2013. Oliver is quite successful as well, and her final book in the Delirium trilogy, Requiem, is due out in March.

And I bet, in the Children’s category, some version of Diary of a Wimpy Kid will appear. It just has to. That series is through the roof with children.

Final Goodreads Choice Awards Round!

Place your final votes for the best books of 2012 at the Goodreads Choice Awards!

Goodreads Choice Awards Round 2

Popping out from the Cave of Overworked Graduate Student to remind you to vote!

Semifinals are underway!

Goodreads Choice Awards Now Open for Voting!

Go here to vote! Some of my predictions were correct, too!

Prepare to feel torn in the various categories. It was difficult to decide between books.

Also, to any of my fellow east coasters, are you okay? Philly experienced near black-outs (thankfully I still have power) and hundreds of fallen trees from the winds, but the most damage is in NJ, NC and NY. Check in! Let loved ones know you’re okay!

Goodreads Choice Awards 2012

It’s that time of year! Goodreads will be hosting the annual Goodreads Choice Awards starting Tuesday, October 30.

The Categories

Fifteen books will be nominated in twenty categories, which include Fiction, Mystery & Thriller, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Romance, Memoir & Autobiography, History & Biography, Nonfiction, Food & Cookbooks, Humor, Graphic Novels & Comics, Poetry, Young Adult Fiction, Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction, Middle Grade & Children’s Books, Picture Books, and Goodreads Author.

The Voting Rounds

1. Round One — October 30 – November 11 — Voting will be open to the fifteen books across the twenty categories, as well as write-in votes.
2. Round Two — November 12 – November 18 – The top five write-in votes will join the original fifteen, making 20 options across 20 categories. Additional write-ins no longer accepted.
3. Round Three — November 19 – November 27 – Slashed in half, voters will choose from ten books across twenty categories. Make your vote count!

Winners will be announced December 4.

Which Books I Predict Will Be Nominated

I’m not a prolific reader, but I’m basing my predictions (in a handful of categories) for the nominations based on what I enjoyed and what I saw, as a bookseller, flying off the shelves.

1. Fiction: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
2. Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (I really don’t want this to happen, but I predict it will)
3. Memoir & Autobiography: No Easy Day by Mark Owen
4. Young Adult Fiction: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
5. Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction: City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare
6. Middle Grade & Children’s Books: The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan

Log on tomorrow and start voting!!!

Which books do you hope to see? Which books do you predict will be nominated?

NPR’s Best YA Novels

I’ve moved into my teeny tiny studio apartment on the east coast, started my new (semi-new…I’m a transfer) job yesterday, and looking forward to graduate school beginning in a month!

Enough about me – on with the book news!

Your Favorites: 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels – NPR

It’s almost a cliche at this point to say that teen fiction isn’t just for teens anymore. Just last year, the Association of American Publishers ranked Children’s/Young Adult books as the single fastest-growing publishing category.

Which is why we were only a little surprised to see the tremendous response that came in for this summer’s Best-Ever Teen Fiction poll. A whopping 75,220 of you voted for your favorite young adult novels, blasting past the total for last year’s science fiction and fantasy poll at, dare we say it, warp speed.

And now, the final results are in. While it’s no surprise to see Harry Potter and the Hunger Games trilogy on top, this year’s list also highlights some writers we weren’t as familiar with. For example, John Green, author of the 2012 hit The Fault in Our Stars, appears five times in the top 100.

I was one of the thousands that participated in this poll, and I’m very pleased to see that all the ones I voted for had made the list! Check this out! Add them to your to-read list on Goodreads!

ALA Hands Out First Adult Prizes – PW

ALA Hands Out First Adult Prizes – Publisher’s Weekly - Andrew Albanese

A committee of librarians has done what Pulitzer Prize officials could not do this year: they selected a winning work of fiction, giving the first-ever Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction to Irish novelist Anne Enright for her book The Forgotten Waltz (W.W. Norton). Robert K. Massie, meanwhile, took home top honors for nonfiction for Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Random House).

Thank you, American Library Association! Click to find out more about the awards and the runners-up!