Kimberly Hirsh

1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD] 
8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
10. Fearless, Tim Lott
11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
16. Getting Things Done, David Allen
17. Y: The Last Man - Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
18. Y: The Last Man - Cycles, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
19. Y: The Last Man - One Small Step, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
20. Y: The Last Man - Safeword, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
21. Y: The Last Man - Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
22. Y: The Last Man - Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
23. The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
24. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd
25. 300, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
26. Organizing from the Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern
27. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three: Sons of Entropy, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder 
28. A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray 

 Nominations for the third annual Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (the Cybils) will be open Wednesday, October 1st through Wednesday, October 15th. The goal of the Cybils team (some 100 bloggers) is to highlight books that are high in both literary quality and kid appeal.  The Cybils were founded by Anne Boles Levy (http://dadtalk.typepad.com/book_buds_kidlit_reviews/) and Kelly Herold (http://kidslitinformation.blogspot.com/). 

This year, awards will be given in nine categories (Easy Readers, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fiction Picture Books, Graphic Novels, Middle Grade Novels, Non-Fiction Middle Grade/Young Adult Books, Non-Fiction Picture Books, Poetry, Young Adult Novels). Anyone can nominate books in these categories (one nomination per person per category). Nominated titles must be published between January 1st and October 15th of this year, and the books must be in English (or bilingual, where one of the languages is English). To nominate titles, visit the Cybils blog (http://www.cybils.com/) between October 1st and 15th. A separate post will be available for each category - simply nominate by commenting on those individual posts. If you are not sure which category to choose for a particular book, a questions thread will also be available. 

Between October 16th and January 1st, Cybils panelists (children’s and young adult bloggers) will winnow the nominations down to a 5-7 book short list for each category. A second set of panelists will then select the winning titles for the different categories. The winners will be announced on February 14th, 2009. 

The Cybils lists, from long lists to short lists (http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/finalists/index.html) to the lists of winners (http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/2007/02/the_2006_cybils.html), offer a wonderful resource to anyone looking for high-quality, kid-friendly books. The Cybils team has worked hard to balance democracy (anyone can nominate titles) with quality control (two rounds of panel judging by people who focus on children’s books every day). We do this work because we consider it vital to get great books into the hands of children and young adults. 

How Can You Participate?

We think that the Cybils nominations will be of interest to parents, teachers, librarians, writers, and teens. If you have a blog or an email list or belong to a newsgroup that serves one of these populations, and you feel that your readers would be interested, please consider distributing this announcement (you are welcome to copy it). The Cybils team would very much appreciate your help in spreading the word. And if you, or the children that you know, have any titles to suggest, we would love to see your nominations at the Cybils blog (http://www.cybils.com/), starting on Wednesday. Thanks for your help, and stay tuned for further news!

Jen Robinson (http://jkrbooks.typepad.com)
Literacy Evangelist for the 2008 Cybils

I love a good love poem. I wish I could express what my criteria for that is.

So, here, abbreviated, "The Bait" by John Donne.

Go here for the full poem.

The first stanza reminds me of Catullus’s Poem 5:
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus
Rumoresque senum severiorum
Omnes unius aestimemus assis

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love,
And let us value the gossip of all
The too-severe old men at only a single coin.  

(That’s my loose translation.  Adapted for modern readers, because they aren’t familiar with ancient currency, generally.)

I feel like if I summarize even the first little bit of this book for you, I will spoil some important and suspenseful plot point, so I will give you just some bizarre thematic/scenic details instead. This book is about a teenage girl with supernatural powers. It is also a gothic thriller. It is also a sort of feminist manifesto. It has no perfect characters, which is refreshing. And there is one very cool teacher in it.

I listened to the audio book of A Great and Terrible Beauty, and while I enjoyed it fine for the first seven (of ten) discs, it wasn’t until disc eight that things really got exciting for me. From that point on, though, I was riveted. Please understand: it is a good book all the way through. It just took me that long to get to the point where when I was doing other things I’d think, "Gee, I wish I were listening to A Great and Terrible Beauty."

More exciting to me than the book itself, though, was a bit on the last disc where Libba Bray herself read from her diary of the experience of writing the book. Hearing the enthusiasm in her voice, especially about her research, made me very excited about reading and writing. And hearing about the volume of research she did made me realize that perhaps one of the reasons I consistently have trouble finishing writing something is that I never seem to fully immerse myself in the world of my writing. (Except with fanfiction. This is never a problem for me with fanfiction. I lived in the world of Buffy for four years, and have been in and out of it ever since.)

Anyway, I highly recommend this book for anyone who is fond of gothic thrillers or complex characters.  It does have a steamy bit, so I would say more mature readers are the ones to whom I’d give this book.

Book: A Great and Terrible Beauty [affiliate link]
Author: Libba Bray
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Original Publication Date: March 2005
Pages: 403
Age Range: Young Adult
Source of Book: Library

1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD] 
8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
10. Fearless, Tim Lott
11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
16. Getting Things Done, David Allen
17. Y: The Last Man - Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
18. Y: The Last Man - Cycles, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
19. Y: The Last Man - One Small Step, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
20. Y: The Last Man - Safeword, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
21. Y: The Last Man - Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
22. Y: The Last Man - Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
23. The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
24. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd
25. 300, Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
26. Organizing from the Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern
27. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Three: Sons of Entropy, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder 

1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
   2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
   3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
   4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
   5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
   6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
   7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD] 
   8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
   9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
   10. Fearless, Tim Lott
   11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
   12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
   13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
   14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
   15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder
   16. Getting Things Done, David Allen
   17. Y: The Last Man - Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
   18. Y: The Last Man - Cycles, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
   19. Y: The Last Man - One Small Step, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
   20. Y: The Last Man - Safeword, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
   21. Y: The Last Man - Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
   22. Y: The Last Man - Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
   23. The Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
   24. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd
   
   When I include graphic novels in my reading list, I’m almost caught up to my 4 a month goal.  If I can get through 12 books in September, I’ll be totally caught up.
   
   
   

I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but I want to talk quickly about something I’ve run into in a couple of books that upsets me. It’s odd because I can’t quite place why, and it seems like such a silly thing to get upset over.

I’ve read more than one book where a vampire encountered a human, and they fell in love, and then the human ended up a vampire.

This upsets me.

Because usually in these books, one of the reasons the vampire loves the human so much is their humanness. At least since Anne Rice started writing about vampires, there’s been a sense that immortality makes you jaded. Life takes on a tarnish when you live it long enough, and the magic seems to go out of the world. But when vampires love humans, I think they regain that magic and vitality that, being undead, they can’t quite get themselves.

I hate it when in a book where this is an essential plotline, they then turn that human into a vampire. And most vampire books I’ve read fall into this trap. In all genres: horror, chicklit/romance, YA.

But it’s such an odd thing to feel. It’s an absolute disgust, and I recognize it in myself and think, “That’s so silly.”

All I can figure is that I identify heavily with remarkable human girls/women, because I like to think that I have a somewhat unique passion and vitality, and I fear it being taken away by becoming jaded and cynical. (It’s funny; I’m very cynical in some ways, but not at all in others.)

Do you have any thoughts on the matter? Pleasing not to spoil New Moon, Eclipse, or Breaking Dawn, as I haven’t read them yet and might ever.

Comments may contain spoilers for Christopher Golden’s Shadow Saga.

Readergirlz Videos!

So exciting, because now I can see slayground in video on my computer, and it’s almost like being there with her! (I like to pretend she’s talking just to me.) I actually am having to stop and pace myself so I don’t run out of Little Willow video.

Makes me so happy.

If you’re on Facebook, please be sure to become a fan of Guys Lit Wire and encourage male teen readers you know to do likewise!

www.facebook.com/pages/Guy…

1. Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, Karen Kingston
2. Craft, Inc., Meg Mateo Ilasco
3. Indigara, Tanith Lee
4. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
5. Jessie’s Mountain, Kerry Madden
6. Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson and Glenn Yeffeth, ed.
7. Valiant, Holly Black [Audio CD]
8. The Twelve Kingdoms - Volume 1: Sea of Shadow, Fuyumi Ono
9. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
10. Fearless, Tim Lott
11. Erec Rex: The Dragon’s Eye, Kaza Kingsley
12. Bronx Masquerade, Nikki Grimes
13. Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
14. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, Peter Walsh
15. The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book Two: Ghost Roads, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder