October Reading Wrap Up

Boy was October a prime month for me in the reading department. Unemployment mixed with the high I’m still feeling from the YA Literature Conference earlier in the month made me a machine. In between sneaking candy from the Halloween bowl and doing some serious prep/rewatch for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, I managed to finish 8 books: 

All American Boys – Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

 

All American Boys
Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
September 29, 2015

Nothing will make you feel quite as ill-read as attending a two-day YA literature conference with a ballroom full of YA librarians and  booksellers. It’s something to do with the superpowers imparted on them at their knighting ceremony that allows them encyclopedic knowledge of absolutely everything – it’s very mysterious. I left with a notebook page full of TBRs and a tote bag full of books from the conference bookstore.

October Book Haul: Young Adult Literature Conference

I was lucky enough to find myself in a sea of librarians, booksellers, and authors this past weekend at the YA Literature Conference hosted by Anderson’s Bookstore in Naperville, IL.  The conference hosted some great panels, thoughtful and hilarious keynote speakers, and one mean bookstore. They had copies of every book published by the authors in attendance as well as some recommendations of their own.

The Serpent King – Jeff Zentner

The Serpent King
Jeff Zentner
Crown Books for Young Readers
March 8, 2016

This book has been on my radar for months but I – for some misguided reason – had yet to pick it up. I got to meet Zentner at a YA Lit. Conference this past week in Chicago, and when he pitched his book in a panel discussion as Friday Night Lights meets The Outsiders, I all but fell out of my chair. I immediately picked it up in the conference bookstore and read it the same night because I’m apparently a masochist.

Kids of Appetite – David Arnold

Kids of Appetite
David Arnold
September 20, 2016
Viking Books for Young Readers

I’ll preface this review with a disclaimer that The Outsiders is my favorite book of all time. At 13, it was the first book I ever finished and immediately went back and reread cover to cover. I’ve read it upwards of 20 times, and watch the film at least once a year, crying from the moment Ponyboy steps out of the movie theatre until he steps back out again. (Just to put things in perspective, I also cry from beginning to end of The Muppet Movie and the majority of The Goonies – if you can figure that one out please let me and my therapist know. We’re both really curious.)  That being said, I’m always wary when authors use Hinton’s book, as it has a tendency to be used as a kind of shortcut for character development. In the same way that a “reader-girl” is shorthand for moral goodness, a reference to The Outsiders is often used as a quick way of understanding that character as a misunderstood misfit or loner.