List-O-Rama: Beginner's Guide to Awesome WTFery

/
List-O-Rama: Beginner's Guide to Awesome WTFery

A couple of weeks ago, I detailed my favorite fictional Awesome WTFery. I love explosions, random ghosts and fake relationships with a possibly unhealthy passion. Much of my love of WTFery manifests itself in my movie and television watching, but it creeps into books too. 

Are you wanting to delve into a big of Awesome WTFery escapism? Here are a few I dare you not to secretly devour.

The Lux Novels by Jennifer L. Armentrout (Entangled Teen)

Why It's Awesome WTFery: Hot aliens live in West Virginia, hijinks ensue. 
Bonus Points: Sex-Positive YA; No Love Triangle

I just blew through the first three Lux novels by Jennifer L. Armentrout, and while I'm not normally ​one to be embarrassed by my reading, I'm not exactly proud of not being able to put these books down. The plot of these (marginally) sci-fi young adult urban fantasy romance series is incredibly absurd and has continuity issues, but damn... the plot just moves along at a swift clip and Armentrout manages to make the reader care about snarky teen book blogger Katy and her good-looking pain-in-the-ass alien neighbor Daemon. 

Amazon | Goodreads

Read More

Links + Things: Algonquin's Young Reader Imprint, The Fringe Book and a Year of Verse Novels

/
Links + Things: Algonquin's Young Reader Imprint, The Fringe Book and a Year of Verse Novels

This week, I have a bunch of interesting news, ranging from an intriguing new young adult and middle grade imprint and a free download of one of my favorite light-hearted romance novels.

Links

Algonquin Launches YA/YR Imprint (Facebook)
Algonquin Young Readers, launching Fall 2013, is a new imprint of Algonquin Books dedicated to publishing works of the same literary merit and enduring qualities that are hallmarks of the Algonquin tradition.

Algonquin Books has released some interesting and well-performing fiction in the last few years (including the Water for Elephants), and this week they announced that they're launching an imprint focused on middle grade and young adult titles, Algonquin Young Readers. This is pretty intriguing, and it sounds like they're taking a literary approach to their acquisitions (they're posted on their Facebook page, linked above). 

The one that piques my interest the most is Sara Farizan's If You Could Be Mine, which is about a lesbian teen in Iran, where being gay is punishable by death. (There's a preview up on Scribd.)

I'm excited to see where they go with this imprint, since I do think there's a market for more literary-minded books for young people.

Read More

Short + Sweet Holiday Reads

/

Are you a book-loving introvert who finds the intense socialization required of holiday celebrations overwhelming?

Would you rather have your nose in a book than spend your time decking the halls (whatever that means)?

Me too. 

To help you get in the holiday spirit without any actual social interaction, here are some recommended reads. None of these are heavy, so if you hit the mulled wine (please, not egg nog—that stuff is vile), you should be able to get the gist of these quickie stories.

Jaci Burton’s Kent Brothers Series (Carina Press)

I discovered this series about three brothers in a small town in Missouri through the first Carina Press holiday anthology, after reading rave reviews of Shannon Stacey’s contribution. The three brothers run a construction business together and while romance is at the center of each of the stories, my favorite scenes are those featuring, Wyatt, Brody and Ethan—their good-natured bickering and teasing (which can be amusingly mean) actually sounds like the sort of conversations real guys have. The most recent, The Best Thing, clocks in at around 35,000 words and is my favorite in terms of reading like a complete story. I’d recommend reading these in order, just to get a sense of who all the characters are, but it’s not necessary. (eBook only)

Read More