This is why I love Austen so: not the romances, not the manners porn, not the “out of countenance”-ing, but this. Words to live by, Miss Eliza Bennet!
I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
Best Reads of 2011
It’s that time of year again, as 2011 draws to a close, when JJ picks her Best Reads books. This year’s been a bit of a mixed bag for me, and despite the spate of new and shiny YA titles with attendant romances and cool dystopian/fantasy/sci-fi settings that came out in 2011, the books that have stayed with me have been adult, YA contemporary (with literary bent), or even a bit of non-fiction.
What does this all mean? I have absolutely no idea. Am I getting a little fatigued with high-concept YA? I might be. There’s a lot of flash and pizzazz out there that’s pretty neat and awesome, but perhaps I’m more in the mood for something smaller in scope, something pure in its emotional simplicity. (This rather echoes my feelings about current Doctor Who, actually, but my thoughts about New New Who I will table for another day. I am, however, rather excited for this year’s Christmas special.)
Anyway, here’s a list I’ve cobbled together of the reads that have stayed with me. As per usual, they are not ranked but shoved into their own arbitrary categories.
Favourite Reads of 2011
Truly Magical: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Most Self-Indulgent Fangirl Read (That Is Also Full of Excellent and True Writing Advice): The Writer’s Tale by Russell T. Davies
My Feminist Bible: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
Just Rip My Heart Out Through My Gut, Will You? The Lovers Dictionary by David Levithan and Where She Went by Gayle Forman
Best New (to JJ) Writer: Nova Ren Suma with her novel Imaginary Girls
Most Swoonworthy: Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier
The Ones That Got Away: The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson and Legend by Marie Lu*
Favourite YA Couple: Alan and Sin from Sarah Rees Brennan’s The Demon’s Surrender
Best Book JJ Read Over the Holiday That Didn’t Make Last Year’s List: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
Most Absorbing Worldbuilding: Eon and Eona by Alison Goodman
Hottest Fictional Character EVER: Dr. Pellinore Warthrop from The Monstrumologist
Allison Rushby's six episodes in an original e-serial, pitched as DOWNTON ABBEY for the New Adult market where triplets, estranged since birth, are suddenly brought together and forced to compete for their inheritance, to Dan Weiss at St. Martin's, with Vicki Lame editing, for publication in 2012, by Sara Megibow at Nelson Literary Agency.
Exciting news! In-house Cap’n Sweet Valley has been working on an initiative to start publishing a series of e-originals that we are calling e-serials. What are e-serials?
An e-serial is a series of digital-only discrete dramatic novella-length “episodes” that advance an overall “season” narrative arc through 4-6 installments, published in at regular intervals at a low price.
We are conceptualizing e-serials as a loose bridge between a full length novel and a TV show. An e-serial episode is analogous to a one hour drama, one installment of a season of dramas. We’ve already started this experiment with The Sweet Life, which will be an e-serial featuring the continuing lives of the Wakefield twins–now 30 years old and living in California–and look forward to finding more stories to develop!
This is obviously a new and experimental format, but all the criteria for what makes a good novel still hold: high-concept hook, great writing, great characters. We’re excited to have Allison Rushby onboard with us for this!
Semi-Charmed Life by Nora Zelevansky
In Nora Zelevansky’s hilarious debut, Semi-Charmed Life, an Upper West Side naïf, Beatrice Bernstein, gets swept up in the seeming magical life of socialite Veruca Pfeffernoose, while ghost-writing her blog. Veruca’s glitteringly opulent world soon seduces Beatrice away from her own insular, arty family with a promise of fancy parties, travel outside Manhattan (gasp!), and one desperately cute guy. But when her new glitzy lifestyle starts to take on dark undertones, Beatrice has to decide who she is–once and for all. With her own magical touch, Zelevansky deftly explores the world of rarified Manhattan in this sparkling modern fairy tale of first love, finding one’s voice, and growing up.
I know I’ve been fairly quiet on the new adult front lately, but that’s mostly because we’ve been working, working, working with no real news to report. However! Here’s a tangible piece! When I last updated you on what we had acquired, it was title THE PFEFFERNOOSE CHRONICLES, but now it has a brand new, shiny title as well as accompanying gorgeous cover!
My colleague Vicki edited it (and I think she’s done a bang-up job). SEMI-CHARMED LIFE will be published in July 2012, and we couldn’t be more excited!
More news to come (on this, and other titles) later. We’ve been working, we swear.
YA as Genre or YA as Reading Level
Lately I’ve been mulling over a question that seems to crop up in a lot of what I read for both work and pleasure, namely whether or not a definition of YA exists. Of course YA exists, but what it is seems to be a fluid idea, shaped by many different considerations: age of protagonist, marketing concerns, and the most controversial of all–reading level.
This morning on Twitter I posed the question of whether YA was a genre, a reading level, or a marketing category and the responses I got were great. People had varying opinions, of course, but what struck me was that in this roiling, frothing discussion, general a consensus was rising to the top:
YA is not a reading level; it is a specific perspective and aesthetic sensibility.
Typical Work Day
- COLLEAGUE: Oh my god.
- JJ: What? Did you find another crazy copyedit note?
- COLLEAGUE: No, someone sent me a video of alpacas.
When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.Steve Jobs
This man was truly a visionary, and this quote tells me that Steve Jobs was as much an artist as he was a “tech guy”, and he showed us the beauty of design, which for him was an ethos as much as an aesthetic. It’s like how when physicists speak of the elegance of theories; art is in everything–it’s not a product but a way of living.
Their first touch was gentle, and in it Sumire could taste his hesitation and fear. That first kiss was a question, a request for permission, chaste and sweet and not a little shy. They broke apart for the space of a breath, noses still nuzzled against each other’s cheeks, their lips still clinging as though reaching for an answer.The Education of Sumire Min
“I…”
She captured that question before it escaped his parted mouth with her own, breathing her answer into his. He deepened the kiss, and she met his ardor with her own. For every little nudge she felt, she pressed back harder, and she felt his kisses like a wish from him, like begging, and she could only respond yes, yes, yes with her own longing. Yes, please, yes, yes, yes…
So I completely and utterly failed NaNoWriMo this year as I only managed to squeeze out about 18.5K. I don’t know how people can write more than 1000 words a day, every day. I just don’t. I burn out. On a good day I’ll get out about 1500 words, but the next day I’ll be reduced to 100 because my brain can’t function. So kudos to everyone to won this year!
But at least I managed to achieve one personal goal: which was to FINALLY write that damn makeout scene, excerpted here. So…huzzah?
10 Things 90s Kids Will Have To Explain To Their Kids
3. The black Power Ranger was black and the yellow Power Ranger was Asian because…we were so completely ahead of our time and beyond the capacity to even think in terms of something as inconsequential as race that… uh… I don’t know. Casting directors were racist in the nineties.
I beg to differ; casting directors are still pretty racist, actually. At least there was an Asian Ranger and a black Ranger back then.
Otherwise, the rest of this article is actually pretty hilarious. Tamagotchis! Beanie Babies! “I really, really wanna zig-a-zig ahhhhhhhhh.”
She was dumbfounded by what was being asked of her. It had been years since she knelt on the hard wooden pews of the Giraffe’s church, years since she had been asked to absorb, to translate, to understand the abstract. She had always been concerned with the tangible, the practical, the mundane; she had no use for God or metaphysics. She was a scholar of the corporeal, not of philosophy or, heaven forbid, POETRY.The Education of Sumire Min
I am WOEFULLY behind on my NaNoWriMo word count. Oh well.
Show Me Some Love
