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Title: Outwitting Writer’s Block: And Other Problems of the Pen
Author: Jenna Glatzer
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: I bought this book before my book buying ban went into effect, and I’m trying to make progress on the small physical TBR list that is my bookshelf. (In sharp contrast to my virtual TBR list, which is just plain overwhelming.)

Summary: Advice from a screenwriter and playwright on what to do when you find yourself staring at the dreaded blank page.

Review: This book is a good collection of practical ideas for when your writing life seems to be stuck in park. A lot of the tips you’ve probably heard before, but it’s nice to have them handy in one place.

I appreciated how the author included lots of quotes and advice from other authors on how they cope with a blank page. It’s also chock full of writing prompts, which always help to get your fingers out of the no-fly zone. For example:

Write about a secret you accidentally didn’t keep.

The humor was a little on the goofy side, which I didn’t exactly love. Sometimes it felt like the lines were delivered with a wink and a nudge. Still, a few lines got a chuckle out of me.

I’ll leave you with one of the tips I liked. It’s from the section about how to carve out writing time when you have a family who can’t seem to live without you for more than 5 minutes at a time:

If you have an office in your home, find something to hang from the doorknob, such as a red scrunchie or a do-not-disturb doorknob hanger, to signify that you are inside and working.

Your Turn: What do you do when you can’t seem to get the words out of your head and onto the page?

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days—My rating: 3.5/5
• Writing Down the Bones
• On Writing Well
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Title: The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things
Author: Carolyn Mackler
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: One blogger I follow, Jessica, loved this book, while another, Emily, didn’t think it was all that great. I wanted to see where I’d fall.

Summary: 15-year-old Virginia is fat. Her mother judges her, her father judges her, and everyone at her Manhattan private school judges her. Except for a boy named Froggy.

Review: Virginia is a girl whose spunk inspires you to root for her. The story interested me enough to keep reading, but in the end I didn’t love the book.

This is another case where a character’s young voice wasn’t my thing. I’m considering going back to plot all my book ratings against the main character’s age to see if I find a trend. Any excuse for another spreadsheet!

I also want to try another book by this author—one with an older protagonist—and see if I connect with it better. Any suggestions?

Moving onto my writerly education, here are some lessons reinforced while reading this book:

• Show don’t tell—The show/tell see-saw felt a little lopsided. Poor Show got stuck at the top dangling her legs.
• Tone down the drama—The ending tended toward melodrama. Lots of crying. Sometimes, less is more.
• Watch for adult sayings—For as young as the voice felt, there were a few times when I felt like the author’s adult sensibilities leaked through to the main character, such as in the quote below.

I feel awful that I stormed out of her office last week. I know she only wanted to help me, but I guess it struck a raw nerve. As they say, the truth is always the hardest thing to hear.

That last sentence sounded odd to me coming from a 15-year-old.

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Fat Kid Rules the World
• Speak—My rating: 5/5
• Looking for Alaska—My rating: 5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Title: Twenty Boy Summer
Author: Sarah Ockler
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: The cover and the title made it look like a light read, which I was in the mood for after a string of not-light books.

Summary: Anna is getting what she’s always wanted—a summer vacation at the beach with her best friend Frankie. Frankie comes up with a game to find summer romance by meeting a new guy every day, and she convinces Anna to play too. But Frankie doesn’t know that Anna already met the guy she wants—Frankie’s older brother Matt, whom Anna can’t let go.

Review: This is what I get for not checking any reviews of this book or even the jacket blurb before I started reading it. Because it’s not exactly a light romance, like I had expected.

But it turns out that fact is what I like best about the book. As I read, my throat was thick with Anna’s grief for Matt and the guilt she felt for wanting to move on—and even worse, for actually moving on.

The ending tended toward melodrama in parts, but overall this one was a good read.

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• The Chosen One
• Prada and Prejudice
• Breathing
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Title: The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them and The Treasure Map of Boys: Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon–and me, Ruby Oliver
Author: E. Lockhart
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: The Boyfriend List was a good read, so I wanted to finish out the series.

Summary: Ruby Oliver just started her junior year, but she still doesn’t have much to speak of in the way of friends—and definitely no boyfriend. Not only that, but the one boy she wants to move into the BF column? Roo’s former girlfriend who’s slowly warming back up to a friendship with her happens to have a crush on that same boy.

Review: The rest of this series made for quick, fun reads. The two issues I had with The Boyfriend List—too many footnotes and a confusing story timeline—did not crop up in these two books.

Just pure, clean fun. Well, except for the flirty bits and also the kissing.

This exchange between Roo and her crush Noel made me smile. Someone at school called Roo a slut, and she’s telling Noel about it over an afterschool pizza.

“I wish I’d responded to the slut thing, though.”

“What is there to say?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ‘I prefer tart’?”

“Tart is nice. It’s a pastry.”

“Maybe I could reclaim the word slut,” I said. “Like gay people have reclaimed the word queer, so it’s not a whatever.”

“Epithet.”

“Yeah. I could run around with signs. ‘Slutty and Proud!’”

“Sluts of America Unite!”

“Exactly.” I took a sip of my pop.

“Your mom could wear a T-shirt: ‘I’m proud of my slutty kid.’” Noel fished around in his backpack for a pen. “Here, I’ll design you a slut logo.” He found a ballpoint and started to draw on a piece of notebook paper. A sketch of a woman wearing a superhero cape, glasses like mine and a strange pointy bra.

“I don’t think I ever told you that none of the stuff people say about me is true,” I blurted out.

“About the boyfriend list?”

“I was never with all those guys.”

Noel shook his head. “I wouldn’t care if you were.”

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Did You Like This Book? Try:

• The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things
• An Abundance of Katherines—My rating: 4/5
• Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

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Audience Pick!

Title: The Bermudez Triangle
Author: Maureen Johnson
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: Because you told me to!

Summary: Mel, Avery, and Nina do everything together, and they always have. But the summer before senior year, Nina goes to leadership camp, leaving Mel and Avery to figure out how to be the Bermudez Triangle minus the Nina Bermudez side.

Review: I am officially caught up on all of MJ’s novels. More, please! (No, fo rilz. When is her next coming out?!)

This one wasn’t my favorite of hers, but it was an enjoyable read. Alternating points of view made it hard for me to settle in and fully connect with any one of the main characters.

But who cares when they’re packaged in MJ’s unique brand of funny? Sometimes, I am seriously concerned for that woman’s mental health. I truly hope she is, in fact, sane and healthy in the head because if one day we find out she’s got some rare brain condition, I’ll feel awfully bad for laughing at the early warning signs.

In this scene, Mel, Avery, and Nina are going to see a movie. Mel and Avery took off in one car together, leaving Nina with their new friend from work, Parker, whom Nina doesn’t know at all.

Parker and Nina were left staring at each other.

“I guess I’ll follow you,” he said. “Unless you want to ride in the Roach.”

“The Roach?”

Parker pointed to a corroded red VW Bug with a taped-up back window.

“Why do you call your car The Roach?”

“She will outlive us all,” he explained, swinging his key ring around his finger. “In the end, it’ll just be some rocks, Styrofoam, and my car.”

“Right,” Nina said. “I’ll just take my car.”

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Did you like this book? Try:

• Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List
• Devilish—My rating: 3.5/5
• Girl at Sea—My rating: 2.5/5
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing