Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

Title: Looking for Alibrandi
Author: Melina Marchetta
Category: Fiction, Young Adult
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: Melina Marchetta is the bomb.

Summary: 17-year-old Josephine Alibrandi is forever in trouble with the nuns at her Catholic school, her grandmother, and her mother. So maybe it’s a good thing her biological father has never wanted to meet her.

Review: I thought it might be good to start with a note I wrote to this book:

Dear Book by One of My Favorite Authors,

I wanted to love you. I wanted to sing your praises like I have for your sisters. But I’m not sure we’re a good fit.

Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed our time together. It’s just that I probably won’t be calling you again.

Can we still be friends? Best,
Kelly

I loved parts of this book, but I didn’t fall in love with it on the whole. In this book as in Marchetta’s others, you can’t beat the romance story lines and the wit.

In general, though, I felt like this book lacked the subtlety that made my heart go pitter-patter while reading Marchetta’s two later novels. A lot of chapters seemed to end with a “moral,” and that wore on me. In addition, some of the dialogue came across as forced. At one point, Josephine apologizes to her mom, and I just couldn’t picture it.

Still, if you are a Marchetta fan—and I wholeheartedly am—you should read this, her first novel. It may not live up to the bar set by her other two novels, but it’s a good read nonetheless. Here, Josephine is sitting on stage at an inter-school event, preparing to deliver a speech:

Seated on my other side was Jacob Coote from Cook High.

Cook High is a public school in the city area. Because it’s the closest school to us, we don’t get on well with them. We think they’re better than them. They think we’re the biggest dags in the world.

When we were young, they would throw things out of their bus windows at us, and in Year 10, on the last day of school, Jacob Coote and about ten of his friends, male and female, blocked both entrances of a lane we cut through to get to our bus stop. Twelve of us were bombarded with eggs and rotten fruit and vegetables. Everyone said that one day we would look back on the occasion and laugh.

Very unlikely.

“What are you going to talk about?” he whispered in my ear.

I moved away, hoping nobody had seen him speaking to me. My friends think he’s gorgeous. His hair is brown, shoulder length, not cut into any particular style, and his eyes are green and they always seem to be laughing at you.

He grinned, and by the way his lips were twitching he looked like he was trying to control a laugh. I knew he recognized me from the lane.

“Didn’t I once squash two eggs against your glasses?” he asked.

“I’m flattered you remember. I tripped over a rubbish can, you know, and cut my hand on some broken glass.”

“Oh, come on. We were suspended for that. We didn’t go to school for six weeks.”

“Very funny. We had six weeks’ holiday after that.”

Your Turn: Have you ever read a book from one of your most favorite authors and not loved it?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

Did You Like This Book? Try:

• Saving Francesca—My rating: 4/5
• Tomorrow, When The War Began
• Queen Kat, Carmel & St Jude Get A Life
• More Recommendations from LibraryThing

On my kitchen counter, I have a stack of 14 books I’ve read but not yet written reviews for. They’re stacked in the order I read them because I always write reviews in the order I’ve read the books. But with 99% of my books coming from the library, that means I come up against library due dates.

Tomorrow, two of my unreviewed 14 are due back to the library. Those two happen to be my most recent reads. My brain is not happy right now.

I pulled the two books out from the bottom of the stack tonight. In the process, the book on the top launched itself right off the pile and onto the floor. I think the poor thing succumbed to the depression of being passed up for the latest hot young number.

Every time I pick up one of those two books with the intention of starting a review, I set it right back down again. And instead of writing the reviews so I can return the books due tomorrow, here I am pontificating about the odd habits of my brain.

Must. Write. Reviews. Now.

I think I’ll just pay the fine.

Your Turn

What does your brain insist you do in order? Or are you the type to jump around? And in your professional opinion, am I neurotic?

p.s. Would you change your answer if I told you that in the photo above, the fact that the bottom plate is pushed further in than the top plate bugs me to no end? And the utensils on the bottom plate aren’t exactly straight. And only one apple has its stem. And…

Photo by pinelife.

My original plan was to post my own personal Unsung YA Heroes list to celebrate my 1-year blogiversary. But just one post to celebrate an entire year of reading and blogging? No, that wouldn’t do. So I fired off an email to a few YA bloggers to see if they would join me in a coordinated blog blitz. The goal of the project would be to highlight YA books we love and think deserve more attention from the world of readers.

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!

Can you trust me? Compare our taste!

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?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

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

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!