Armchair BEA: YA and I

YA is Armchair BEA's prompt of the day.

I almost missed YA.  Seriously, when I was in high school the first couple Harry Potter books were taking the world by storm, but I was beyond this young witches and wizards stuff by then.  I had started to trod the hallowed halls of high school (Ha!), and with those days came carte blanche to finally read whatever I wanted.  I considered myself a Reader with a capital "R," and I was ready to eschew all this "stupid kid stuff" to spend my long, hot summer days with frightfests by Stephen King and Dean Koontz.  Digging into John Grisham's legal thrillers and the freshly minted Oprah's Book Club titles was way more enticing to me than reading about high school horrors and romances among kids that reminded me of the annoying teenagers I walked the halls with every day.  I couldn't wait to be out of high school, and I certainly didn't want to spend my free time reading about it.

Luckily, my life and times on the interwebz wouldn't let me put this whole wealth of YA in the rearview.  Rather, day by day friendly Bookcrossers and then bloggers convinced me of the merit of this body of work I was so eager to leave behind.  By the time I was in college, I was already backing away from Dean Koontz's laughable metaphors (sorry Dean, but I think even you make fun of your metaphors now) and James Patterson's two page chapters (and I thought YA might talk down to me??) in favor of the very Harry Potter books I was "too good for" in high school.  I loved them so much that they may have, on occasion, actually made me late for work at my summer job slinging dishes in a nursing home dietary department (no great loss there).

Since then, I've lost myself in numerous YA books of the highest quality like...

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Did I even need to say it?)
Sparrow Road by Sheila O'Connor
Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
Open Wounds by Joseph Lunievicz
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

....and so very many more excellent reads. 

Truly, truly I owe Bookcrossers and bloggers a great debt of gratitude for bringing me back to what has become one of my favorite categories of books.  A category that can hardly be called a genre because it seems to cover all genres.  Now I read YA when I'm looking for a break from the occasional slog of interpreting literary/contemporary fiction because I know I can count on YA for solid reads that dabble in any of a few genres with relate-able characters that won't ask me to leave my brain at the cover to enjoy them.  Great YA authors today are writing books that ask important questions that will give young adults (and the crusty old grown-ups who read their books) food for thought all delivered with quick pacing and fantastic characters that render those books completely unputdownable. 

My bookshelves and my Kindle are both loaded down with YA, and I couldn't be happier to be young again, if only in the books that I read.  How about you?

Armchair BEA: Introductions

Good morning, all!  I thought a little bit about the week that starts today and reconsidered my verdict that I'd be too busy to participate in Armchair BEA.  I probably won't have a post for every day or anything, but I'm excited to use the time that I do have to meet some new bloggers and reconnect with some old ones, especially since I've been so lax in my blogging for quite a while up until recently.  I'd sure like to make a go of this (more serious) blogging thing again, but it gets to be awful boring if you're not hanging out with the best part of book blogging - book bloggers.  Anyway, today is for introductions, so without further ado...

1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging? Where in the world are you blogging from?

Hi, I'm Megan, and I've been blogging here at Leafing Through Life for almost seven years now.  I got into blogging because, in the fall of 2007, I'd just returned home to Pennsylvania from Boston where the best-paying steady job I could get was at a Borders bookstore (RIP).  When I got back, I had no job, and I missed spending my days in the company of books and bookish people.  I wondered if I could review every book I read just for kicks, and I saw a handful (back in the very olden days of book blogging - LOL!) of bloggers were doing just that.  So, here I still am, except now I have a decent job in healthcare that monopolizes more of my time than I'd like, but I'm still blogging it out here in Bloomsburg, PA.

2. Describe your blog in just one sentence. Then, list your social details -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. -- so we can connect more online. 

Leafing Though Life is a collection of the honest book reviews and laughable life-related ramblings of a busy thirty-something who buys many more books than she reads.

Now, for shameless social media self-promotion, here's my...

Twitter
Goodreads
LibraryThing
Instagram

I'm always look for new friends.  LT is the more comprehensive listing of my library.  I'm a late-comer to Goodreads, but I'm trying to be more social.  And I just luff Instagram, even though I forget and neglect it too often.

4. What was your favorite book read last year? What’s your favorite book so far this year?

This is the hardest question, I read so many great books last year.  In adult fiction?  Brewster by Mark Slouka or Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden.  In YA?  I finally read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green last year and loved them as much as the hype would suggest.  This year? Honors go to Whistling in the Dark by Lesley Kagen. 

8. Share your favorite book or reading related quote.

Well, I really love the one that's in my blog header:

"She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become insubstantial in the face of the fiction she's been absorbed in."

After You'd Gone - Maggie O'Farrell

Have you ever felt that way?

9. If you were stranded on a deserted island, what 3 books would you bring? Why? What 3 non-book items would you bring? Why? 

Books: 

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, because then I'd finally have to buckle down and read it, right? 
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, because I've been meaning to read it for sooo long.
The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen, because I'm not a re-reader, but I'd like to revisit this one.

On the practical side:

Food and water, for obvious reasons.  And a gigantic vat of sunblock to protect my pale Irish skin from that big desert island sun.



(P.S. Yes, I'm a "word person," but really, I can count.  I was supposed to pick 5 out of 10 questions, and I used ArmchairBEA's numbers, of course!)

Armchair BEA: The Way of the Future

As Armchair BEA draws to a close today, we're wrapping up a great week by getting and giving some tips about blogging so we can all stay energized and enthused about books and blogging well into the future. 

First, I'll dive right in and give a few.  Here are the three most important lessons I think I've learned in my blogging.

1. It doesn't have to be all about the books all the time.  - Okay, maybe some people are purists about their book blogs, and they never want to hear about anything else.  As for me (and others, I've heard), I want to know the person behind the book reviews, too, so if you've got a hankering to tell us all about your bad week at work, the amazing vacation you just arrived back from, the cooking/knitting/quilting project that is your pride and joy, what your crazy Uncle Joe said to you just last week, etc. feel free to share.  Books are great, but I love blogs that have books and a personal touch.

2. Don't overcommit.  - I'm still working on this one and pretty much failing.  There will come a time, if you write good thoughtful reviews for a long time, network with just the right people, and/or just get plain lucky that perhaps your e-mail box will find itself full of review copy offers.  Maybe you'll also be slurping up titles at NetGalley at an alarming rate.  Bottom line?  Review copies are great and a fun perk of book blogging, but there is too much of a good thing.  You will be tempted to say, yes, yes, YES!  But don't let it get to the point where you feel like you're always reading out of obligation even if the books are great and you've got the best of intentions.  Oddly enough, review copies, if not handled with care, can suck the fun and passion out of blogging much faster than you'd guess, and when it's not fun, it's just work, and really, who needs more work to do??

3. Don't forget to hang out with the nice other bloggers.  - The backbone and the best part of book blogging is and always has been commenting and community.  Don't get so caught up in trying to get a post up every day that you forget to pay your blogging buddies a visit and occasionally go out of your way to discover some new would-be blogging buddies.  We all need to feel like someone's reading all this typing, right?  ;-)  For me, it's easy to drift too far to one side or the other, only reading and commenting or only focusing on a getting content up on my own blog.  Never stop trying to find the balance, unless, well, you've already found it, in which case, you should probably draw me a road map to balance in the comments...

And, now, a question for you, good readers.  I've been blogging away here with more or less consistency since the end of 2007, and honestly, I'm starting to feel like I'm saying all the same things all the time.  Occasionally, I'm afraid I might even be boring myself.  Maybe it just feels that way, but it's hard to shake the scary feeling that I'm just...I don't know...beating a poor, dead horse.  That said, how do you keep things fresh and exciting?  I'd love to hear what you do when you feel like your blog is kind of cruising along on average-y auto-pilot, and you want to breathe a little life into it. 

Armchair BEA: Best of 2012?

For me, aside from the fun of hanging out with all your friends from the computer, the big fun of BEA is the anticipation of all the new books coming out that could be the next big, exciting thing!  I've been enjoying poking around all the BEA galley guides and looking for the books that are supposed to be big at BEA, books that, if I was there, I'd definitely be angling for copies of.  I've narrowed it down to 5 for today's purposes even though there are so many I'd love to have in my hands. 

Future favorites?  We'll see!  

The People of Forever are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu (Hogart/September)  - Shani Boianjiu's riveting debut is a revelation-the story of three girls who grow up in a small Israeli village and join the Israeli Defense Forces at eighteen, where they experience a typical coming of age at the same time as preparing for the ever-present threat of war. Yael trains marksmen and flirts with boys. Avishag stands guard, watching refugees throw themselves at barbed-wire fences. Lea, posted at a checkpoint, imagines the stories behind the familiar faces that pass by her day after day. They gossip about boys and whisper of an ever more violent world just beyond view. They drill, constantly, for a moment that may never come. They live inside that single, intense second just before danger erupts.

In Sunlight and In Shadow by Mark Helprin (HMH/October) - Mark Helprin's enchanting and sweeping new novel asks a simple question: can love and honor conquer all? New York in 1947 glows with post-war energy. Harry Copeland, an elite paratrooper who fought behind enemy lines in Europe, returns home to run the family business. In a single, magical encounter on the Staten Island ferry, the young singer and heiress Catherine Thomas Hale falls for him in an instant, too late to prevent her engagement to a much older man. Harry and Catherine pursue one another in a romance played out in postwar America's Broadway theaters, Long Island mansions, the offices of financiers, and the haunts of gangsters. Catherine's choice of Harry over her long-time fiancé endangers Harry's livelihood and eventually threatens his life.Entrancing in its lyricism, In Sunlight and in Shadow so powerfully draws you into New York at the dawn of the modern age that, as in a vivid dream, you will not want to leave.


Every Day by David Levithan (Knopf/August) -  Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.  Every morning, A wakes in a different person's body, a different person's life. There's never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.  It's all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with-day in, day out, day after day.

Gold by Chris Cleave (July/Simon & Schuster) - Gold is the story of Zoe and Kate, world-class athletes who have been friends and rivals since their first day of Elite training. They’ve loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, consoled, gloried, and grown up together. Now on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, both women will be tested to their physical and emotional limits. They must confront each other and their own mortality to decide, when lives are at stake: What would you sacrifice for the people you love, if it meant giving up the thing that was most important to you in the world?

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner (July/Simon & Schuster) - For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.  Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood—the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.  

Any BEA books you're looking forward to?

                     

Armchair BEA: Introductions first!

Well, this is weird.  It's Book Expo America time, and I'm not there.  I was there last year and the year before that and had an absolute blast meeting bloggers, picking up ARCs of the hottest new books, and networking with all kinds of publishing people.  While I wish like heck I could be there this year, the finances aren't there and the timing's not good, so here I am, bittersweetly watching all the tweets of those many who are on their way to a week of bookish awesomeness.  Rather than sitting back and being vaguely depressed all week, it seemed like a much better idea to enjoy the pleasures of Armchair BEA.  Sure, it might not be quite the same, but it's quite a bit cheaper, I didn't have to pack, and I've heard I'm not even required to wear pants to participate.  As it so happens, I am wearing pants, but you probably don't even care about that - yes, I could get used to this whole Armchair BEA thing.  As the kick-off for the event, we're interviewing our own selves and then getting out and about to visit the rest of the crowd.  So, without further rambling (okay, there's much more rambling), I give you an interview with....me!

Please tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? How long have you been blogging? Why did you get into blogging?

I'm Megan.  I've been blogging here at Leafing Through Life since October 2007, which seems like eons ago in blogging time.  Okay, it seems like eons ago in normal time.  Book blogging started for me when I came back from a six-month stint living in Boston, where I spent several enjoyable months working at the Downtown Crossing Borders (RIP :( ), with people who knew about and enjoyed books as much, indeed sometimes more than I did.  When I came back to Pennsylvania, I found myself jobless, aimless, and short of bookish companionship.  I've always been one for creating projects for myself, and I'd seen a few book blogs around.  I missed writing, and I thought it would be a grand experiment to try and review every book I read for a year.  Or 5.  ;-)

Tell us one non-book-related thing that everyone reading your blog may not know about you.

Since my aimless, jobless autumn of 2007, I have indeed managed to acquire gainful employment in the least bookish area I could find (unintentionally, of course).  I work in a surgical pathology lab giving case numbers to things like your appendix or your gallbladder or whatever when they are delivered out of the operating rooms of a pretty major Pennsylvania health system.  It's a sort of job I never knew existed, much less thought I'd ever be working at, being kind of a word nerd and a pretty major science-phobe.  I have to admit that the job I stumbled into is definitely interesting, but it definitely leaves me with a major need to escape into the bookish once I escape it.  Another reason I'm still plugging away in blogland at this much later date. =)

What are you currently reading, or what is your favorite book you have read so far in 2012?

I think I might talk about "best ofs" tomorrow, so, right now, I'm reading The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner, a re-release of a would-be American classic coming of age story.  It's a little young to be a real classic in my opinion, but it definitely reads like it could be one.  I'm also casting aside my book monogamy law (reading multiple books at one time doesn't really work out for me, usually), to read Stephen King's The Stand for Trish's readalong (The Stand...along!).  It's my first readalong.  So far, so good.  =)

Which is your favorite post that you have written that you want everyone to read?

Oddly, some of my favorite posts I wrote in response to (now defunct) Weekly Geeks prompts.  I mean, there's the one about the the magazine problem of yore, and the one where I wrote the mean letter to W. Somerset Maugham.  But, uh, I do actually like books from time to time as evidenced by the annual Leafy Awards which are hopefully as entertaining to read as they are to write.

(I think the point of this 5 question exercise was for this to be short and sweet.  As it happens, I am neither short nor sweet.  Okay, I'm kind of short, but not on verbiage.  What I mean to say is FAIL.  Also, I'm going to skip the fifth question because I'm kind of thinking you might want to have time to visit bloggers that aren't me today, too.)

If you're stopping by from Armchair BEA today, please do leave your link.  I look forward to visiting as many of you as I can after my liberation from giving case numbers to the tonsils and the gallbladders and the appendixes (appendices?) and everything later today!