Di's Soapbox

June 29, 2010

I'm back from the Annual Conference of the American Library Association that was held in Washington DC. As always it was well worth attending with great programs and wonderful networking opportunities.

As a fan girl it was outstanding. I saw several of my favorite authors and discovered new ones. John Green gave me a hug in the exhibits which impressed my husband and grandson to no end as they know him as one of the awesome Vlog Brothers not as the author of Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. Saw Libba Bray of Going Bovine fame a couple of times on the sidewalk and hotel lobby (she was with her very cool husband agent, Barry Goldblatt) and then heard her humorous, touching, and profound Printz speech. Was priveleged to chat at dinner with Paolo Baciagalupi, author of Ship Breaker, Julie Ann Peters - Luna, Cherie Priest - Boneshaker, Brandon Sanderson - The Way of Kings. Dom Testa, Cory Doctorow, and Jane Lindskold were there too but I was too far away to really visit. At breakfast I lucked into sitting between David Gill author of Soul Enchilada and Rita Williams-Garcia National Book Award finalist and author of numerous great books.

I had one major disappointment at ALA. I have always loved finding new authors and in fact starting in 1996, the first year of this website, I started what I called the Rats Saw God award named after the first winner. It was a totally unofficial award, I just picked the best first novel I read each year. When Bill Morris, a man of enormous stature in the children's and young adult publishing world left a bequest in his will to YALSA a real award for a YA debut novel was established. It is an important award of major significance. The policies and procedures of the award specify that "the winner and short-listed book authors are invited to attend an award ceremony at the ALA Annual meeting, following the announcement of the award at ALA's Midwinter Meeting." I was really looking forward to that event and it didn't happen. At Midwinter I had attended the announcement where there was a lovely reception but none of the authors were present.

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I've been on Twitter for a while now and often find it usefull. I seem to use it and GoodReads the most. I also like Shelfari but LibraryThing has deleted my account again.

Genrefluent is your headquarters for information about Readers' Advisory and genre fiction for adults and teens.

Here you will find reviews on novels in a variety of genres including, crime, science fiction, adventure, thrillers, romance, fantasy, horror, paranormal, historical fiction, westerns, and romance.

Took off the Amazon widget because of their very weird censorship thing but all my reviews are still here or at GoodReads. Check the widget at the top right for Books of the Week

Click on the teen page for reviews written by teens of current novels . There you will also find links for teen reviews of books nominated for YALSA selected lists.

Don't forget to read the free Reader's Advisor Online Blog to keep up with what reader's advisors will want to know every week. And, if your library hasn't tried one of the free trials of Reader's Advisor Online, please do. I think it is the best electronic RA tool in existance. I particularly love how well it works for fiction reference which is often one of the steps required when performing reader's advisory.

Check out Good Reads to see some of my other recent reads. Lots and lots of wonderful books have been coming my way lately so expect to see more here in the next few weeks.

Remember there is a search box at the bottom of this page. If you click on Genrefluent it will search this site. Check for reviews and teen comments on your favorite books or for suggestions of good reads.

My latest book, Fluent in Fantasy: The Next Generation (co-written with fantasy diva Bonnie Kunzel) came out last January.

Some of the reviews written by "my" teens and some of my own reviews are included in The Ultimate Teen Book Guide. It's pretty thrilling to be in a book with so many of my heroes.

Happy reading.

Last week's note.