1. I’ve never done a giveaway with such a huge amount of entrants before, and
2. I wanted to make sure the winners got one of their top three picks.

After a little game of musical chairs, I was able to accomplish #2 in all except one case!

So without further ado, here are the lucky winners, thanks to random.org:

1. Alexa Nagasue and a BONUS copy for Shesten Melder: Gamma Glamma by Kim Flores
   (A special thanks to the author for sending over an extra copy of an uncorrected proof so Shesten could get the bonus win!)
2. Annika Dalton: The Secrets of the Cheese Syndicate by Donna St. Cyr
3. Kat Drennan: My Life from Air-Bras to Zits by Barbara Haworth-Attard
4. Keira Gillett: The Thirteen Curses by Michelle Harrison
5. Lisa Gibson: The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth
6. Mary Bell: Unsigned Hype by Booker T. Mattison
7. Melanie Goodman: Border Crossing by Jessica Lee Anderson
8. Sabrina Horande: Trudy by Jessica Lee Anderson
9. Stacy Walker: Year of the Horse by Justin Allen
10. Susie Sharp: The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean

Congratulations, all! Details are on their way via email.

Photo by A Christmas Story House Gift Shop.

Related posts:

• Which Book Will Win? Dylan Fontaine vs. Leftovers!
• Which Book Will Win? Alligator Bayou vs. Evil?

But there’s one week out of the year where I am certain of my place in the world. And that’s Earth Week. I coordinate a week’s worth of events for more than 2,300 employees at our corporate campus.

We tried a new event this year, called Trash-to-Treasure. The idea is that you bring in items from home that you don’t want or need anymore, others do the same, and then everyone can browse the lot and take whatever they want for free.

It turns out free stuff goes over awfully well.

When Books Become Trash

At this event, we had a section for books needing new homes. I didn’t recognize most of the titles there, the bulk of which were romances. But three stood out to me:

1. Twilight
2. A hardcover thesaurus
3. A Word 97 user manual

#1 was gone even before the event officially started, snagged by a woman who looked to be in her mid-20s. She had already read the book but didn’t own a copy. Just as I was opening my mouth to sing the praises of The Hunger Games and Graceling, she scurried off with the bane of good writing and modern womanhood clutched to her chest. Damn.

#2 and #3 didn’t find new homes, so they got boxed up with all the other leftovers and taken to the Island of Misfit Books, aka Goodwill. I don’t have high hopes for the Word 97 manual, poor thing. The thesaurus may find a new home if it’s lucky.

What’s a Green Book Lover to Do?

Many unwanted books just sit on a shelf somewhere, not getting used or read or picked up for months, even years. That depresses the heck out of me. It’s one reason that I love sites like PaperBackSwap because the book you no longer want will end up in the hands of someone who does want that specific title.

But what of the old user manuals and thesauri? Is there any way to prolong their usefulness before chucking them into the recycle bin?

Your Turn

What do you do with misfit books?

And while you ponder that, I’m going to get started on the Biggest Review Backlog Ever. I hope the Earth will be okay with one less Sustainability Specialist for a while.

p.s. The Great Unsung YA 2010 Giveaway has ended, but in the craziness of Earth Week I didn’t pick the winners on Monday night. I will this weekend!

Photo by SpecialKRB.

It was so much fun that we’ll make the Week of the Unsung an annual event, each day focusing on a different genre. But there was just no way I could wait another year.

So in the meantime, I’m giving away copies of 10 of the top 12 most obscure picks from Unsung YA 2010. These books haven’t been made into movies, and they haven’t sold millions of copies. But what they lack in hype, they make up for in awesomeness.

A big thank you to all the authors and publishers who made this giveaway possible!

The Books to Win!

1. A Is For Angst by Barbara Haworth-Attard (also published as My Life from Air-Bras to Zits)
   Picked By: Erin Explores YA
2. Border Crossing by Jessica Lee Anderson
   Picked By: The Hate-Mongering Tart
3. The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean
   Picked By: Gaskella
4. Gamma Glamma by Kim Flores
   Picked By: Archimedes Forgets, Biblio File
5. The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth
   Picked By: Beyond Books
6. The Secrets of the Cheese Syndicate by Donna St. Cyr
   Picked By: The Hate-Mongering Tart
7. The Thirteen Curses by Michelle Harrison
   Picked By: Beyond Books
8. Trudy by Jessica Lee Anderson
   Picked By: The Hate-Mongering Tart
9. Unsigned Hype by Booker T. Mattison
   Picked By: Semicolon
10. Year of the Horse by Justin Allen
    Picked By: Arch Thinking

How to Enter

1. Fill out the Google form below by Monday, April 12, at 11:59 pm CST. Leaving a comment on this post does not enter you in the giveaway.
2. You can earn up to 5 entries per person:
   • Make a Promise (+1 entry)—Pledge to read one unsung YA book in 2010, and tell me the title. See the full list here or links to each blogger’s list here.
   • Link Back (+2 entries)—From a post on your blog, link back to this giveaway and mention what Unsung YA Heroes is. Feel free to also link to the wrap-up post.
   • Tweet (+2 entries)—Tweet about this giveaway.
3. Pick the top 3 titles you’d like to win. Wherever possible, I will honor the winners’ preferences.

U.S. and Canada entries only, please.

But Wait…There’s More!

This won’t be the only Unsung YA giveaway! I’ll update this post to link to other giveaways as they’re announced. If you posted an Unsung YA list (or even if you didn’t!), please join in with your own giveaway. It can be as easy as giving away a copy of an Unsung YA title you already have lying around the house. Then just drop me a line with the link to your giveaway post so I can list your giveaway here.

Below, I list the Unsung YA 2010 titles offered up in each giveaway, but giveaways marked with +++ at the end of the titles list are also giving away additional titles. Bonus!

• The Bibliophilic Book Blog—Ballad and Lament by Maggie Stiefvater +++
  Deadline: April 15
• Bites—Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin, Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side by Beth Fantaskey +++
  Deadline: April 6
• Bloody Bookaholic—Another Faust by Daniel and Dina Nayeri, Ash by Malinda Lo, Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe +++
  Deadline: April 18
• Everything To Do With Books—The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King
  Deadline: March 30
• I Heart Monster—The Faerie Path by Frewin Jones (part of the First in a Series Six-Pack giveaway), Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon +++
  Deadline: April 15
• in which a girl reads—Willow by Julia Hoban +++
  Deadline: April 17
• Karin’s Book Nook—City of Bones by Cassandra Clare +++
  Deadline: March 27
• Not Enough Bookshelves—Jellicoe Road and Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta +++
  Deadline: March 28
• Presenting Lenore—Genesis by Bernard Beckett +++
  Deadline: March 31
• Read Into This!—After by Amy Efaw, Perfect You by Elizabeth Scott +++
  Deadline: April 15
• Steph Su Reads—Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway, Good Girls by Laura Ruby
  Deadline: March 19
• This Purple Crayon—Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, The Singer of All Songs by Kate Constable, What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones
  Deadline: April 12
• T.V. and Book Addict—Absolutely Maybe by Lisa Yee, Thanksgiving at the Inn by Tim Whitney +++
  Deadline: April 1
• Wastepaper Prose—Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater +++
  Deadline: April 10
• wicked walker—Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers, Numbers by Rachel Ward, Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George +++
  Deadline: April 16

Related posts:

• An Unexpected Offshoot of Unsung YA
• Wherein 73 Bloggers Sing the Praises of the Unsung
• Free Books to Celebrate Nerds Heart YA

Just as I started to feel better, the fluey bits decided they wouldn’t be content to use my body as their own personal disco club and leave it crumpled on the floor like a dirty tissue. Oh, no. They had to leave behind a sinus infection.

But full disclosure: I don’t really know what I’m talking about because…

1. I’m delirious from a fever that’s lasted two weeks.

2. I haven’t seen a doctor yet. (I do that as a last resort, which is obviously well past now. But it didn’t hit me until Friday night during a dinner that I could not force myself to eat, when I blubbered to my husband that I shouldn’t have waited so long, and the blubbering just made me more congested. So I go on Monday.)

I’ve never been this sick for this long. So sick I’m not even interested in reading from my sick bed.

What I really want to be doing is posting about the Unsung YA giveaway I have all ready to go, but this is about the most I can bring myself to craft out of thin air. The sooner I get better, the sooner you get your fabulous giveaway.

Your Turn

What’s your favorite trick for getting over a cold/flu/sinus infection?

Or howzabout some tips for thanking a spouse who’s been taking care of the house plus a two-year-old all by his lonesome?

(Here endeth the whine.)

Photo by jamelah.

1. Look up a book title and see all ratings and reviews combined into one list. Example: See how Google Books combines reviews from Amazon, Goodreads, and a couple other sites. But I want them all—LibraryThing, Shelfari, Powell’s, IndieBound. Everything in one place, but with duplicate ratings/reviews from one user across multiple sites culled to just one entry from that user.
2. Enter my rating and review for a title in one place and have it automatically pushed to all the sites of my choice. Currently, I manually post my ratings and reviews on this blog, on LibraryThing, and on Goodreads. The gating factor is my time, so I haven’t been posting reviews to other sites like Amazon and Powell’s, even though I would like to.
3. Get recommendations for books I will probably love, based on the ratings of other users with similar taste as mine. LibraryThing’s recommendations are okay, but Goodreads seems closer to achieving this with their Compare Books feature because you can find users with similar taste based on ratings of the same books. But Goodreads is missing the step of then extrapolating a list from all similar users of recommendations for titles you might like.

Is This Too Much to Ask?

It looks like Google is continuing to add new features to Google Books, as recently as January. And they’ve already tackled the first item on my wish list in their Google Maps interface, such as how they aggregate restaurant reviews into one place. Could they be the first to cross the finish line on that feature?

Your Turn

Have you seen any of these features on my wish list? Tell me and make my day!

Would you be interested in using these features? Or do you have other features on your own wish list?

Photo by Spatch.

Related posts:

• My Top 10 Kindred Spirits on Goodreads

This word has never done anything to me to warrant this hatred. It’s just three little letters, for Pete’s sake.

I know I’m being neurotic, although I guess you already knew that. But still, I can’t get over it. I will forever hate this verb.

So what is it? Pad.

If a character pads down the hall, outside, inside, or into a room in socks, slippers, bare feet, or shoes, you can bet I’m cringing.

I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because the verb is so ubiquitous that it’s no longer fresh. But plenty of verbs are overused, and this is the only one that annoys me.

Your Turn

Are there any words that get under your skin?

Photo by mafleen.

Related posts:

• Review: Love You Hate You Miss You
• Tips

From a girl who thinks everyone should give YA a chance, I say: Hooray for YA!

Peter would like to post one YA list a month, and to kick it all off he asked a few book bloggers to recommend their top 2009 YA picks. Guess who got to submit one of her own picks?! Check it out:

The Best Young Adult Books of 2009

Your Turn

What was the last flashlight-worthy book you read?

Photo by margolove.

Related posts:

• The Great Unsung YA 2010 Giveaway
• The Best YA Books You Haven’t Read
• Wherein 73 Bloggers Sing the Praises of the Unsung

About 0.06 seconds after clicking “Send” on that first email, I hunted down my husband and found him in the kitchen blending pesto for dinner. I bounced on my heels and waited for the blender to stop.

“So I bet I can get 5 other people to post with me. 5 would be pretty cool.”

Whee, the blender went.

“But if I’m lucky, I could get 10. 10 would be really cool. Do you think I could get 10?”

Whee.

“Because double digits are like the universal measuring stick for whether you’re doing something good. If you don’t hit double digits, you’re just a weirdo.”

Whee!

“I hope people don’t think I’m a weirdo.”

Whee-uhh.

“Sweetie? Do you think I’ll get 10?”

And then you went and BLEW MY MIND.

As of last night, 73 bloggers had posted their own Unsung YA Heroes lists. Not to mention all the tweeters and authors and English teachers chiming in.

Congratulations to all the titles and authors featured in the last few days. May our blog blitz bring you new readers and happiness! And to all the TBR lists bursting at the seams, I am sorry. I didn’t foresee what this would mean for you. But maybe you could “misplace” a few of those bestselling titles that aren’t quite as awesome as these Unsung titles? Go ahead, I won’t tell anyone.

Now, onto the awesomeness that only spreadsheets can bring…

Top 10 Unsung YA Heroes

Out of the 494 unique titles picked, here’s a round-up of the most commonly picked titles across all the lists. When there was a tie in the number of times a title was picked, the more obscure title—that is, the one with the fewer number of LibraryThing members—won out.

10. How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

Picked By: Brooklyn Arden, Melissa Walker, A Patchwork of Books
LT Members: 99

9. Nothing but Ghosts by Beth Kephart

Picked By: Book Nut, The Hate-Mongering Tart, Melissa Walker
LT Members: 67

8. Destroy All Cars by Blake Nelson

Picked By: Brooklyn Arden, Melissa Walker, Reading in Bellevue
LT Members: 48

7. Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger

Picked By: Abby (the) Librarian, Dreaming Out Loud, Leafing Through Life, Lucy Was Robbed
LT Members: 495

6. Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

Picked By: Not Enough Bookshelves, Steph Su Reads, YAnnabe, Youth Services Corner
LT Members: 446

5. Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway

Picked By: MELIScellaneous, Reading and Rooibos, Steph Su Reads, Youth Services Corner
LT Members: 318

4. Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman

Picked By: One Librarian’s Book Reviews, Ticket to Anywhere, Write Meg!, YA Librarian Tales
LT Members: 238

3. Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers

Picked By: Melissa Walker, Not Enough Bookshelves, Sarah’s Random Musings, YAnnabe
LT Members: 182

2. The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King

Picked By: Annie, I Think, Lucy Was Robbed, Presenting Lenore, Sarah’s Random Musings
LT Members: 105

1. Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins

Picked By: Book Nut, LL Word, Semicolon, Worducopia
LT Members: 48

Top 1012 Most Obscure Picks

Out of those 494 titles, which books were the most unsung? Bonus: You get 12 picks instead of 10 because the 10th spot had a 3-way tie.

10. Border Crossing by Jessica Lee Anderson

Picked By: The Hate-Mongering Tart
LT Members: 12

10. Not a Swan by Michelle Magorian

Picked By: Archimedes Forgets
LT Members: 12

10. The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean

Picked By: Gaskella
LT Members: 12

9. Trudy by Jessica Lee Anderson

Picked By: The Hate-Mongering Tart
LT Members: 11

8. Gamma Glamma by Kim Flores

Picked By: Archimedes Forgets, Biblio File
LT Members: 10

6. Holy Moly by Leah Hayes

Picked By: Pop Culture Junkie
LT Members: 8

6. The Puzzle Ring by Kate Forsyth

Picked By: Beyond Books
LT Members: 8

5. The Thirteen Curses by Michelle Harrison

Picked By: Beyond Books
LT Members: 6

4. Year of the Horse by Justin Allen

Picked By: Arch Thinking
LT Members: 5

3. A Is For Angst by Barbara Haworth-Attard (also published as My Life from Air-Bras to Zits)

Picked By: Erin Explores YA
LT Members: 4

1. The Secrets of the Cheese Syndicate by Donna St. Cyr

Picked By: The Hate-Mongering Tart
LT Members: 3

1. Unsigned Hype by Booker T. Mattison

Picked By: Semicolon
LT Members: 3

Most Obscure List

Pop Culture Junkie
Alea’s picks averaged 44 LibraryThing members per title.

Longest List

The Hate-Mongering Tart
You might say Emily got into this project. Like, REALLY got into it. She picked 43 titles.

Most Unsung Author

We could take this in a couple directions: Which author had the highest number of unique titles crop up on our lists? Or, which author was picked by the most people? So to be fair, we have two winners in this category:

Elizabeth Scott
5 of her titles made the lists.

Melina Marchetta
Her titles were picked by approximately 10% of the bloggers who posted lists.

The Full List of Unsung Titles

…is here.

Your Turn!

Do you want to keep the Unsung fun alive?

• Did this project inspire you to add a title (or two or fifty) to your TBR list? How many did you add? And which ones? Hmm, I smell a topic ripe for a blog post! Or maybe a comment? (Thanks to Anastasia for this idea.)
• If you’re on LibraryThing, tag the titles you picked with the tag “unsung”. Then we’ll be able to use the unsung tag page to see all this fabulousness. (Thank you to Emily and Nicki for this suggestion!)

Do It Again! Do It Again!

Well…okay!

How does this sound? We’ll pick one week a year to be The Week of the Unsung. Each day, we will focus on a different genre—YA, middle-grade, picture book, graphic novel, even (gasp!) adult fiction. You can sign up for whichever genres you’d like, then post your Unsung lists on the appropriate days.

Thoughts? Ideas? More stats you want to see? Leave a comment to chime in!

Related posts:

• The Great Unsung YA 2010 Giveaway
• An Unexpected Offshoot of Unsung YA
• The Best YA Books You Haven’t Read

Update: Less than 24 hours since this post went live, we have 47 Unsung YA Heroes lists. Wow.

We’re extending the time to post your own list through Sunday. So read on, make your list, and come back here to link it up!

After the kid lit award announcements on Monday, I daydreamed about how those authors’ lives will never be the same. Their winning books will forever more sport a shiny badge, reserving them a spot on crowded bookstore shelves. And other books the authors write? “By Newbery Medal winner Rebecca Stead” certainly won’t hurt sales.

But the flip side of all this is that many wonderful books get published every year without registering a ripple, let alone a splash. And in the YA world specifically, the vast majority of great books don’t approach anywhere NEAR the fervor of Twil—er, The-Series-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. The Cybils help spread the love a little. As does the Nerds Heart YA tourney.

Even so, this is the fate of most great YA books:

1. Get published.
2. Get read by a few people that year, maybe a few more the next.
3. Get dumped on the bargain rack at the bookstore and start the descent into obsolescence.

It’s a damn shame, and we’re here to fix it.

Nobody Expects the Unsung YA Heroes Blog Blitz!

I teamed up with about 40 other bloggers to pick our favorite unsung YA heroes. These are YA books we love and think deserve more attention from the world of YA readers.

But how are we achieving this?

• Today and tomorrow through Sunday, you’ll find our picks on our blogs. Check out our lists! We bet you’ll find a few new-to-you titles you’re interested in reading. But we’re also secretly hoping you’ll think about your own unsung YA heroes and put together your own list. Because we’d really like to see it so we can read your favorites too. You’ll find links to all the lists and instructions for making your own at the end of this post.
• Tomorrow Monday, check back on my blog for a round-up uber-list of the titles that were most common across all our Unsung YA Heroes picks.
• If you’re on Twitter, you can follow all the Unsung YA Heroes scuttlebutt by watching the #unsungYA tag.

My Top 7 Unsung YA Heroes

7. The Key to the Golden Firebird by Maureen Johnson
I know what you’re thinking. My first pick is by a super-popular author like MJ? Before you run off to tweet about what a sham Unsung YA Heroes is, give me a sec.

This is the least-known of her 6 published titles, but it happens to be my favorite of hers. And I fear that most of her fans turn their noses up at this one when they find out it takes place after the main characters’ father has a heart attack. Who wants to read a downer like that? But MJ’s humor is the perfect counterbalance to the heavy topic, and you come away feeling like you ate a hearty spinach lasagna, rather than a bag of Skittles.

6. Cracked Up to Be by Courtney Summers
This debut novel connected with me on a deep level because I could see myself in the perfectionist main character. Parker has just made a mistake—a big one—and she’s not coping well. I’ve heard some people say they didn’t like her hard edges, but Parker made complete sense to me. Because us perfectionist people, we don’t so much like to make mistakes. It means we’re not perfect. And if you make us realize we’re not perfect, we will be mean. Just ask my husband.

5. How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier
In the city of New Avalon, most people have a fairy that helps them with something, like finding loose change or great clothes at bargain prices. Now, don’t you want to read it solely to get ideas for what kind of fairy you’d like to have? Cutesy fairy stories aren’t usually my thing, but this book has substance to back up the cuteness. And as a word geek, I loved the fresh use of language. If your brain hurt after Liar, this title will make it sigh out of pure delight.

4. Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta
Marchetta won the Printz last year for Jellicoe Road. I loved it, but I know that it didn’t connect with some readers. My advice? Try this earlier novel by Marchetta. It’s more accessible but still has all the charm and wit that makes me want to read this woman’s writing every day of my life.

3. Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
I am a little bit weird. I like to dip fries in ice cream. I twirl my hair while I’m thinking, then set the twirled strand between my lips while I type. I never know which side to put my head when hugging a friend/acquaintance, so more than once it has ended up looking like I’m going for their lips.

Okay, I will grant you that I’m a lot weird. But this collection of short stories is just the right amount of weird. These stories come in many flavors—funny, thought-provoking, creepy—and sometimes all three at once. The best part about a short story collection is that if you try one story and realize my weird barometer is out of whack, you can always stop and move onto the next book.

2. Jack Tumor by Anthony McGowan
Speaking of weird, how about a talking brain tumor? I know. I almost didn’t read this one when I got it home from the library and realized the premise, and we just established that I have a high tolerance for weird. Turns out this book is hi-freakin’-larious. I don’t often laugh out loud while reading. Jaded, I guess. I’m more of a smirker. But Hector and his talking tumor tickled some actual laughs out of me. Quite a few. This book will grow on you, trust me. And it could sure use the attention. Out of all of my picks, it’s the least well-known.

1. Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine
This is the kind of book I want to write. Not that I think it’s possible for me to do that or even that it’s close to my personal brand of style that I like to call “melodious crap,” but that’s a topic for another day. I think about this book at least once a week. If I’m at home when it happens, I wander over to the bookshelf and crack it open to reread whatever part I was remembering.

Rowan is a girl dealing with grief and a depressed mother when a mysterious boy comes into her life. But she isn’t huddled in a corner, sobbing til dehydration sets in. She’s getting on with her life. And it makes for a damn good read.

Check Out the Other Lists

I’ll update this list throughout the day and tweet when I add new ones, so follow me or watch the #unsungYA tag.

Use this form to submit your list URL to be included here.

Make Your Own List!

If You’re on LibraryThing

1. Visit your LibraryThing catalog.
2. Click the Rating column to sort by that column, which will put the 5 stars first.
3. Click the Edit sort order button, which is in the toolbar that’s right under the tabs at the top—the toolbar with the A, B, C,… buttons. The Edit sort order button is the one with two blue arrows.
4. Under Subsort by, select total members and click the Up button next to it.
5. Click the Sort button.
6. If you want, use the Search your library box in the upper right corner to narrow your search, such as to a YA tag you use.
7. In your catalog, start at the top with your 5 stars and look for any titles that have less than 500 members. To see number of members, look in the rightmost column and check the number next to the little person icon.
8. Record any titles with less than 500 members, and keep going til you’re happy with your list!

If You’re Not
If you use Goodreads or some other book-tracking site, they probably have an export feature. So use that, then create a free account on LibraryThing, import your information, and follow the instructions above.

If you’re not in the book-tracking habit, haven’t you realized by now all the fun that can be had by joining a site like LibraryThing? I’m sure you will discover an awesome feature or two that you can exploit in your book-related endeavors.

But if you’re really not in the mood to join, you’ll have to search titles one-by-one:

1. Visit the LibraryThing Search page.
2. In Works, enter a title you think might be lesser known.
3. Click the Search button. Don’t stop when you get the search results! That will show you only how many actual copies members have claimed, not everyone who’s added the title to their catalog (such as to a wish list or a to-be-read list).
4. Click the appropriate search result. If there are multiple results for the title, just click one. They’ll all get you to the same place.
5. On the work page, look for the table right under the title and author’s name. The first column is titled Members. Look at the number in that table cell. If it’s below 500, the book isn’t well known, so add it to your list.
6. Rinse, repeat, lather.

For the Geekiest of Us

This post is already approaching the realm of novella, but I know you might be wondering a few things.

Why LibraryThing? Why not Goodreads, Shelfari, etc?
LibraryThing makes it easy to see the “other members” stat right from your catalog. Goodreads has a “num ratings” stat, but it shows just the number of ratings for a specific edition of a title. The LibraryThing member count includes every edition of the title. I’m not familiar with Shelfari or any other sites, and in the interest of time I went with what I know.

Why 500 or less members?
Completely arbitrary, but we needed some sort of cutoff to use as a guideline. Some of us even included titles with a few more members, so it really was just a guideline. For comparison, the first book of the Twilight series has 25,974 members and The Hunger Games has 3,929 members.

Enough from Me!

Go check out those other lists. Demonstrate your YA studliness by pointing out how many of the titles you’ve already read. Laugh right in your TBR list’s face as you throw a slew of new titles at it. Disagree with our picks.

Better yet, make picks of your own!

Related posts:

• An Unexpected Offshoot of Unsung YA
• Free Books to Celebrate Nerds Heart YA
• Wherein 73 Bloggers Sing the Praises of the Unsung

But first I need more information from you lovely bloggers! So here’s a little quiz for you.

Do you…

1. Have a blog where you post book reviews?
2. Read young adult fiction?
3. Have a LibraryThing account where you rate the books you read?

If you answered “yes” to all 3 questions, please leave a comment with your LibraryThing member name.

Then I’ll contact you soon to share all the super-special-secret details!

Photo by bookgrl.

Related posts:

• My Dirty Little TBR Secret
• Unfinished: The Secret Life of Prince Charming
• 3 Ways to Get Me to Read Your Book Review