Author Bio - Laura Hillenbrand

This week we're reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which is technically a biography, not a memoir, but it was a book that had been only TBR pile for way to long, and this was really the only month that it made any sort of sense.

But on the flip side, that means I can tell you a little more about Hillebrand without spoiling the book.

Hillenbrand has two books to her repertoire, Seabiscuit and Unbroken, both of which have been made into movies.  They've also both been best sellers, so whatever she's doing as a non-fiction writer, she should keep it up because it's obviously working out really well for her.  The two books combined have sold over 10 million copies. (I feel like now is where I insert a statistic of "that's enough to circle the earth ten times!" but I don't actually have such a statistic.  I'm sure someone could figure it out though.)

Hillenbrand was born in Fairfax, VA (which, I want to point out, is pretty much near where I live.  So that's awesome.) and was the youngest of four kids.  She went to college in Ohio, but ended up dropping out due to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, something she still suffers from.

Currently she lives in Washnington, D.C., keeping much of the time to her home due to her condition.

Blog to Book

There are a lot of books that started out as just humble little blogs.  Our book this week, Hack by Melissa Plaut is one of them.  She started her blog (newyorkhack.blogspot.com), where she documented all of her stories in her cab.  Eventually, culminating them into a book.

So what makes a blog good enough to transition into a book?  Well, as much as Alex and I love our blog, it would be a terrible book transition.  We, for one, talk a ton about other books, so the copyright laws would be a nightmare to get around, and, let's face it, while there are some quirky fun things in here, and our reviews are (we like to believe) original, for the most part, our material is a lot of informational stuff we get from other places on the internets.  We frequently (and loudly because we don't want people to sue us) proclaim that we pull our information from places like Wikipedia and the authors pages and the like.

However, Hyperbole and a Half, which we reviewed awhile back, transitioned very well into a book.  Not only does was it original in the sense that it was taking from her every day experiences, it was also original in the sense that she was using a lot of poorly drawn web comics to get her point across about some very serious topics.  It's probably why not only was her blog hugely popular, but so was her book.

What If?, the book we reviewed just last month, is another one that transitioned well.  Though not a true blog to book, it was based off of Randall's web comic xkcd.

The key seems to be originality.  A lot of the blog to book authors are talking about their lives, or putting their everyday lives down in the blogs.  Their every day lives also happen to usually be pretty interesting.

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Review me Twice - Raptor Red by Robert T. Baker

Alex always seems to pick interesting books for us, and I was excited to see what she was going to for sci-fi month.  I had never even heard of this book (though, apparently it's kind of a big deal.)  I don't read a lot of dinosaur literature because, frankly, there's just not a lot out there.  I've read Jurassic Park and The Lost World and that's pretty much where it ends.

Raptor Red is a different beast entirely.  It's very much one of those non-fiction novel type books.  The book itself is based in fact.  Bakker has done a ton of research on these animals and the book is probably a pretty accurate portrayal of what life was like for a Utahraptor.  But we can't ever actually know for sure.  It's all a big educated guess, so it sets it very firmly in the fiction section of the library.

The book was well executed and interesting to read.  I feel like I learned a lot about dinosaurs without feeling like I LEARNED, laboriously, about dinosaurs.  But, as interesting and fun as it was.... it was still a book about dinosaurs, that were meant to BE dinos, not humanized characters.  So I found myself growing kind of bored at times because I couldn't really connect with the characters.  There are parts that I should have been sad and I just kind of wasn't.

I'm glad I picked it up, but I won't ever read it again.

Everything Cassy said, exactly. I can't really identify with a dinosaur (or any character, even) whose entire purpose is surviving and mating. So while everything was interesting and informative and definitely unique - I've never read another book like this - I didn't feel very invested in the protagonist. Although, I did feel more invested than I would have been in the hands of a less skilled writer, so that's something.

I love when fiction like this is heavily anchored in fact, but there's one very easy trap to fall into. I first noticed it in the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel... the author seems to want to make sure they put every bit of their research to good use in the writing. So even if it doesn't really matter exactly what that plant she stepped on is good for, we're going to hear about it. Possibly for a paragraph, or a page. Bakker's execution of this seems more natural, so it's not nearly as much of a problem. For example, one chapter begins with saying the raptor doesn't want to bed down in moist earth, and no raptors do, because they evolved in a dry climate and too much moisture encourages fungal growth which is bad for them. Interesting, related to the plot in the sense that this is the reason she doesn't want to sleep in the mud, and possibly a little more info than we strictly needed, but then we move on to bigger and better things. I think the difference is probably that dinos were Bakker's first thing, then writing, whereas Auel started with writing and then started the research on primitive humans. Either way, it's not a deterrent for this book; I just thought it was interesting to note.

Author Bio: Robert Bakker

Chances are pretty decent that the first time you heard Robert Bakker's name, it was here:

In this scene of Jurassic Park, Dr. Alan Grant is trying to find a seat in one of the Jeeps without having to sit next to either of the kids, but the boy (Timmy... classic 1990s boy name) is a huge fan of Dr. Grant's work, so he's following him around asking questions about his theories. He references a couple other sources, including "this one book by a guy named Bakker..." Well, that guy is this week's author here on the blog.

He actually gets referenced again in The Lost World, since this guy (Dr. Robert Burke) is supposed to be an affectionate caricature of him:

And this is really Bakker:

Bakker has been publishing studies on dinosaurs since 1968. He advised Jurassic Park, published his seminal work (The Dinosaur Heresies) in 1986 (which presented evidence to support his theory that dinosaurs may well have been warm-blooded), and is currently the Curator of Paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Bakker was born in New Jersey in 1945. He's an ecumenical minister, and doesn't believe that religion and science are mutually exclusive. To him, the Bible is a moral guidance system, not a literal timeline of events, and does not disprove evolution or geologic history.

A friend of mine suggested Bakker's novel Raptor Red when he found out that I'm a big fan of the Jurassic Park trilogy, and that's why I chose it for us to review this week. It's told from the viewpoint of a Utahraptor (which is actually what we think of as Velociraptor, thanks to the Jurassic Park movies... Velociraptor was closer to the size of a big turkey, whereas Utahraptor was the height of a rather tall human).

Local Authors

Local authors can be really cool things because, well, they're people you recognize and support your community and basically you're really proud of them for being published.

What's more, a lot of local authors can actually be WAY more famous than you think that they are.  Our author this week, Randall Munroe, is actually a local author for Alex and I.  He went to college with both of us, and Alex actually knew him (he was the roommate of a boyfriend of one of our friends.)  Though he no longer lives in the area, Christopher Newport is where he got his start.

David Baldacci has written a ton of books that pretty much always land on the NYTimes best seller list.  He writes about a book a year and he lives in Northern, VA!  Which is why, every time he has a new book out, my Barnes & Noble is the first stop on his signing tour!  He's been in the store a bunch of times and is very active in the community.

Kwame Alexander is a local author.  Who is Kwame Alexander you might ask?  Well, he is this year's Newbery Award winner!  And he lives just a hop skip and a jump away from the Barnes & Noble store.  The name of his book is The Crossover, a basketball book written in verse.  He is currently residing in the Reston, VA area.

Who are some local authors in your area?

Review Me Twice: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I want to tell you guys really quick that Cassy got a little mad at me for picking this book. I had no idea she disliked it so much, so I'm going to go ahead and apologize for making her think about it again.

Then, I'd like to add my name to the list of people who dislike this book. It's not all that bad, I guess, but it's certainly not for me. I can't stand slogging through books where people talk like they're... characters in classic literature, I guess. Sure, I know the words; I have a great vocabulary. (Thanks, Mom, for reading with me throughout my childhood!) But it's a chore to read a conversation in a book like this.

Beyond the word choices, though, which I can easily chalk up to this being written in a different time, I just dislike these people. Every last one of them is either a spoiled brat, reacts to a normal situation in a ridiculously overblown way, or pushes their nose in where it doesn't belong. I thought I liked Nelly, the housekeeper who tells the story of most of the book, but when I realized her part in the story she's telling, I noticed that I don't really like her either.

So to sum this up: I don't like it, I'm sorry I made myself read it, and I'm sorry I made Cassy re-read it.

I hate this book.  I don't just kind of hate this book, I REALLY hate this book.  And this isn't just I read it this one time and if I give it another chance I might like it, no, this book and I have a long standing relationship of distaste.

I have read this book four times now, and I still can't stand it.  The first time I read it was in high school, then twice (IN THE SAME YEAR!) in college, and then once again now.  I'm reading this book I can't stand an awful lot.  In fact, I would probably say that this is my least favorite book of all time.

For one, everyone has the same freakin' name, and it took me three readings of the book to figure out which Catherine was which and which person was which and it was miserable and if I have to make a graph to figure out the characters of a book, you're doing it wrong.

What's more is that it's supposed to be the greatest love story of all time, such unrequited love!  But I hate Catherine the older.  She's whiny and manipulative and just a general jerk which, really, I think just makes her deserve Heathcliff who is an even BIGGER jerk and is like that nerd who never got over being bullied in high school and takes it out on everyone twenty years later.

Only he takes out on people who don't deserve it, which makes me hate him even more, and he never really redeems himself.  And since he's a little slime ball, he ends up turning all of the younger generation into spoiled, self-entitled brats I can't stand either!!

Really, the only person in the entire book who has ANY sort of redeeming qualities is Edgar Linton.  He married Catherine the older, was father to Catherine the younger, and doted on both of them like there was no tomorrow.  He was generally a forgiving man, as long as you gave him a reason to forgive.  Sure, he started out a little annoying and mean, but what teenager isn't?

Author Bio: Emily Bronte

It's the month of romance here at Review Me Twice, and we're kicking things off with Wuthering Heights, the only novel written by Emily Bronte, the third oldest of the Bronte siblings.

She was born in 1818 and died in 1848 at the age of 30. When she was 20, she was a teacher for a short time but the stress was too much and she returned home to be a stay-at-home daughter, doing things like cooking and cleaning, but also learning German and piano. She and Charlotte went to a school in Belgium, where they decided to publish some of their work under male pen names (Emily chose Ellis Bell).

She published Wuthering Heights in 1847 in London. Many people believed it to have been written by a man because of its violence and passion. A letter from a publisher indicates that Emily intended to write a sequel, but no evidence of the sequel has ever been found.

Her death was most likely caused by unsanitary conditions, especially drinking water, and she had lost so much weight by the time of her death, her coffin was reportedly 16 inches wide, and the man who built it claimed to have never made a thinner one for an adult.

On that cheery note, let's look forward to a month full of romance!

It's An Epidemic

No Safety in Numbers in all about epidemics and spreading disease and people dying via a virus, so I figured I would give you some other great books that are based on viruses.  It's not really sometimes we read a lot of in this blog, so you're going to get some stuff we haven't see before!

The Birtchbark House is one that I read in college and is probably one of the best Native American literature books I've read.  Right up there with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.  It follows the year of a Native American family in 1847.  We see them building their summer home, dealing with preparations of the winter and all of it is told through the eyes of Omakayas.

So why do I recommend this for an epidemic book?  Well, there is a huge smallpox outbreak and there is a large part of the book where Omakayas is dealing with not only her own sickness, but the sickness of her family and tribe members.  It's moving and heart-wrenching and just pretty much wonderful.

Ok, so this was a book I won a REALLY long time ago off of Goodreads as an ARC.  And, to be honest, the book does get a LITTLE over the top with all the things that happen to this family (seriously.  Everything that could go wrong, does.)  However, the book is about a massive outbreak of bird flu during a snowstorm.  The family lives in the mid-north west, (where the snowstorm hits), but the Bird flu hits the whole nation and lasts for years.

Even though the story line for the family is a little crazy, I do have to admit that Buckley is REALLY good at writing panic.  I FELT panicked reading this book.  I mean, really freaked out while reading it.  Definitely worth picking up if epidemics are your thing.

Who doesn't love a good parasitic alien is taking over the world novel?  That's what I thought.  I put this on the list because, while as the reader you know that it's an alien life form, the society as a whole doesn't.  They take over these bodies and infect them and drive them crazy and then completely disintegrate them so that no one has any idea what is causing all of this to happen.  As a reader, we only know because we're watching it happen first hand to one of the characters.

While I DO love this book and it's immensely well done, read it with caution.  Sigler is INCREDIBLY graphic.  I have a particularly high tolerance for things and there were even times that it was a little much for me.  So, if you're especially grossed out by things, he may not be the one for you.  If not, definitely pick him up.

Some of the Best Books This Season

So one of the benefits of working in a bookstore is that I get to see what some of the most popular books of the season are.

Now, I'll let you know in advance, I haven't read all of these.  But they have been bought in HOARDS and people have been telling me nothing but good things about them.  So that that for what you will when buying your last minute book gifting.

Yes, ok the movie is coming out, but I sell no less than five of these a day, sometimes more.  And for every five I sell, I get asked five more times where the book is.  It's a story of a man, surviving the wreckage of his plane in WWII and his journey through life, along with his journey of survival.

Boys in the boat is about the 1936 Berlin Olympics team.  It shows you a bunch of ragmatag guys who manage to come together and go for the gold for the rowing.  Another one that has passed through my hands more than a few times this Christmas season.

To be honest with you, I didn't even know what this one was about till I read the synopsis (which you can go read here.  It sounds really good.)  It sold really well this summer, but when Christmas time came, we couldn't even keep the book on the shelf.

Ok, so Miss Peregrine's is a little weird, and it's a little different, but I have yet to meet a person who didn't enjoy this book.  There's mystery and there is a little bit of super powers and there is some definite danger and it's a good transition book.  Not SO hard to read that a high 11-12 year old couldn't pick it up, but still interesting enough that your teens are going to want to read it.

Alright, this one comes with a lot of conditions, but also, a lot of ideas if you need them last minute for the Christmas season.  This is book five in a series.  And, what's more, it's book five in a SEQUEL series.  Do you remember The Percy Jackson Series?  It's pretty much fabulous.  In fact, it was SO fabulous, Riordan took those characters and started a SECOND series with them!  Cue The Heroes of Olympus series (see above).  So if the person you're buying for has never read Percy Jackson, Ta-Da!  If they have, but haven't gotten into this second companion series, there are five whole new books for them to pick up.  And, the best part, is that this is the last book, so they don't even have to wait for the end.

Favorite LONG Novel

Since Gone With The Wind is such a long book (1037 pages), we decided to pick our favorite thick novel this week.

The Mists of Avalon is just shy of 900 pages long.  It's one of Bradley's longest, I would say (she tends not to make them quite this epic) and probably one of her most well known and best loved series.

And there's a reason for that.  Because the book is wonderfully written.  I will give that Arthurian novels are about a dime a dozen.  But Bradley's is just on an entirely different level than the others I've read.  And combining the myths behind Avalon with the myths behind Arthur I think was the best way to take the story.  The characters were interesting and the story line compelling.

You have to love high fantasy to enjoy this book, I will give you that.  It's definitely a niche kind of read, but as long as you're ok with that, then this is definitely a book to read.  This is the time of year when everyone has some time off, so if you're looking for a good thick book, this is a great one to pick up.

My choice is kind of a cheat, since it's technically five novels in one book, but The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reads like one long book, so I say it's fair game.

There isn't much for me to say about it that I haven't already said before, so let's just say I'm a fan, and this compiled version is the reason I can't remember which scenes belong in which book. (Kind of like how I only ever watch Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies all in a row, so I can't remember which scenes belong in which movie.)

Favorite Travel Books

It never ceases to amaze me, in the course of writing this blog, when I run across an entire genre or subgenre of books I am shockingly unfamiliar with. You'd think, out of all the books I've read in my life, I would have read a few enjoyable books categorized in "travel." But despite all my searching and list-reading and remembering, I don't recall reading very many, and the few I have read, I didn't really like. (See exhibit A, The Museum of Intangible Things, the first one that came to mind.)

But I saw that Douglas Adams' Last Chance to See was on a Goodreads list of "travel books" so I'll roll with that. I haven't finished the book - I picked it up out of curiosity years ago and got really busy so I never got back to it - but I really liked what I did read.

Douglas Adams went to Madagascar with a zoologist to write about what he saw there. He wrote about how beautiful and unique it was, but also how we shouldn't be flocking there to gawp at it because we won't be doing it any favors, because humans are pretty destructive, if you haven't noticed. (Go ask the Galapagos... actually, don't, because you'll be doing more damage than good if you go there, too.) It's classic Adams funny, but also really serious and important.

So is it technically a traveling book?  Well, three out of our four main characters travel.  And the pants themselves, which are also kind of a character too, travel, so I'm going with yes, this is a travel book, if not one in the most traditional sense of the word.

It's a book about four friends who get separated for the first summer in sixteen years.  And not just a little separated: one goes to mexico, one goes to Greece, one goes to North Carolina and the last stays home.  So the pants (that mysteriously perfectly fit these four girls with DRASTICALLY different body types) are mailed from friend to friend, connecting them and keeping a hold on their friendship and making them realize what their friendship is about.  They go through really hard times, and made some huge mistakes, and all four of them do a whole lot of traveling that summer, but inevitably, the pants bring them through it.

The book, really, is about friendship, but it's also about learning how to be a friend when you're not together, and there is a lot of traveling, so it's my favorite travel book.  (Plus the word TRAVELING is right there in the title.)

Excuse me, Where is the Travel Section?

You'd be surprised at how many times a day I hear that phrase.  At least three (down the escalator and go directly to your left.)  And, usually, the person is looking for books to take with them to other countries.  These two are probably the two most popular series for that:

                                

But then why is the travel section so popular?  It's probably one of our most frequented sections in the store, one of the messiest, because so many people spend their time there.  Well, for one, people tend to pick up huge stacks of the books, take them up to the cafe, and look at all the pictures and then leave them there.

But that's neither here nor there.

But there are also a lot of things in the travel section that people don't realize.

There are one of these for just about every major city in the entire world located in the travel section, including the one that you live in.  It's a great reference guide when you want to know great places to eat not only where you live, but where you're going.

And speaking where you live, do you realize that there's and entire regional section in your bookstore?  It has outdoor and sightseeing activities.  It has family friendly events, not to mention a bunch of historical information about all the local towns in your area.  Now, I realize that I, personally, probably have a larger local section than most, due to the fact that Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. are all considered local to us, so they're all housed in our regional section, which is a little abnormal.  But we have local ghost lore and pictorial books, all housed in the travel section.  It's a great way to learn about activities in your area.

There's also the travel writing section, which is where our book this week is located.  It's books ABOUT travel, not books about specific places.  John Waters' book, Carsick, is about how he hitchhiked across america.  A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson is about his travels on the Appalachian trail (in my bookstore under local travel, anywhere else, would be under travel writing).

There are all sorts of things to discover in the travel section (including maps.  Yes, they do still exist.)  So maybe, just take a peek in there next time you visit your bookstore.

Review Me Twice - My True Love Gave To Me by Multiple Authors

I am actually a big fan of anthologies.  I have the theory that, by sheer odds, you're eventually going to hit ONE story that you like in it.  And I did.  In fact, there were a number of stories that I liked in it.  I really liked the one by Rainbow Rowell, though probably more so because when I went to see her at Politics and Prose, she read it.

If you ever get the chance to hear an author read their own work, do it.  It's SO MUCH BETTER than what happens in my head (and what happened there was pretty good.)

Some were definitely better than others, because you have twelve authors and while some are great authors, not all of them are meant to be short story writers.  David Levithan's was not one of my favorites.  I love him, and I liked his better when I heard him read it out loud, but I still didn't enjoy his story as much as I have enjoyed his books.

But probably my favorite out of the whole batch was Gayle Foreman's.  It was funny and poignant and sweet and just a great story.  I thought it was well done and one of those stories that was satisfying where it ended but still full of potential.

The book was a good anthology, and definitely worth reading, especially if you're just looking for a nice Christmas book.

I promise, one of my New Year's resolutions is to read every single Review Me Twice book beginning to end. But it's still 2014, so I didn't finish this one. What I did read, though, I really loved. My favorite thing about anthologies (other than what Cassy mentioned above, finding at least ONE you like) is how different authors take different approaches to the same theme or topic. I think a major reason why I didn't manage to finish this book on time was that I had to put it down between stories (and there are a lot of stories... twelve, so sayeth the subtitle). I don't read different authors' short stories back to back. When the anthology is all the same author, I can read straight through, but I have to do that thing where you put it down and digest what you read before I can pick it back up in the multi-author situation.

Favorite Anthology

Zombies Vs. Unicorns is one that I fell upon specifically because of Scott Westerfeld.  He had mentioned that he had taken part in it on his blog, so I ended up picking it up at super deep discount years ago when Borders was going out of business.  Sad, I know, but it worked out well for me.

And it was a fun one, because the whole thing started when Christine Larbalestier (Westerfeld's wife and author of Liar) got into a blog war with Holly Black (author of The Spiderwick Chronicles) about which was better: Zombies or Unicorns.  Larbalestier was team Zombies and Black was team Unicorns.

This is what the cover of the book looked like under the dust jacket.

As the blog war went on, different YA authors took sides, and inevitably, the whole thing turned into a book.  So each author wrote a short story for their "side".  The whole thing was fun and hysterical, and I think ended up being great because it was such a pet project for all of them.  The whole concept was really, at the end of the day, a big practical joke.  But that's kind of what made the book so wonderful.  It didn't take itself seriously at ALL.

It also has some GREAT authors writing for it: Maureen Johnson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Garth Nix, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Carrie Ryan, Kathleen Duey, Margo Lanagan, Naomi Novik, and Diana Peterfreund.

Basically, it's a book with Zombie and Unicorn short stories.  How could you POSSIBLY go wrong with this?

I tried to think of a multi-author anthology I liked better than this book, because to me, "anthology" implies multiple authors, and when it's all by one author, I think "collection." But whatever, it didn't work... this is apparently my favorite anthology: Everything's Eventual by Stephen King.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again... Stephen King is excellent at the short story. He loses me with the longer novels but that's just a personal preference. Obviously his novels do just fine, lots of people read and like them. They just aren't for me. His short stories, however, are just pure art.

I don't think I even have a favorite from this book, either. The title story is really great, and I think about it often. It's one of those stories that sticks with you. Possibly because I have the version pictured here, and that cover photo does wonders for solidifying the story in your head. Just amazing.

If someone told me they wanted to start reading Stephen King but they didn't like long books, and wanted to know where they should start, I would hand them a copy of Everything's Eventual. Then I'd probably pile The Running Man and The Long Walk on top of it, but still. Great book.

Twelve Author Bios

This week, we actually have TWELVE authors, because we're reading a Christmas Anthology!!  So, I thought it might be fun to actually do a quick bio on each of them (and that means most of them will be almost directly copy and pasted from Goodreads.  So be prepared for that.)

Stephanie Perkins

Perkins writes novels for teens (and for adults who aren't afraid to admit that teen books are awesome). She was born in South Carolina, raised in Arizona, attended universities in San Francisco and Atlanta, and now lives in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.

Her best friend is her husband Jarrod. Their house is almost a hundred years old, and every room is painted a different color of the rainbow. They share it with a cat named Mr. Tumnus.

She's always worked with books—first as a bookseller, then as a librarian, and now as a novelist. On weekdays, you'll find her at her desk, typing away, downing cups of coffee and tea. On the weekend, you'll find her at the movies, waiting for the actors to kiss. She believes all novels and films should have more kissing.

Holly Black

Holly Black is a best-selling author of contemporary fantasy novels for kids, teens, and adults. She is the author of the Modern Faerie Tale series (Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside), The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), and The Good Neighbors graphic novels (with Ted Naifeh) The Poison Eaters and Other Stories, a collection of short fiction, and The Curse Worker series (White Cat, Red Glove, and Black Heart). She is also the co-editor of three anthologies, Geektastic (with Cecil Castellucci), Zombies vs. Unicorns (with Justine Larbalestier), and Welcome to Bordertown (with Ellen Kushner). Her most recent works are the middle grade novel, Doll Bones, and the dark fantasy stand-alone, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown.

She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret library.

Ally Carter

Ally Carter is a writer living and working in the Midwest. She loved school so much she kept going...and going...and going...until finally she had to graduate. Now she has degrees from Oklahoma State University and Cornell University and a house and a job and other very grown-up things.

Her life is either very ordinary or the best deep-cover legend ever. She'd tell you more, but...well...you know...

Gayle Foreman

My name is Gayle Forman and I love to write young-adult novels. Because I do. So thank you for reading them. Because without you, it’d just be me. And the voices in my head.

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in such publications asJane, Seventeen, Glamour, Elle, and The New York Times Magazine, to name just a few. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

Jenny Han

(Han like Han Solo, not Han like hand) was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. She went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Go Heels!) and she went on to graduate school at the New School in New York City, where she received her MFA in Writing for Children. She lives in Brooklyn.  She is the author of To All The Boys I Have Loved Before and The Summer I Turned Pretty

David Levithan

David Levithan (born 1972) is an American children's book editor and award-winning author. He published his first YA book, Boy Meets Boy, in 2003. Levithan is also the founding editor of PUSH, a Young Adult imprint of Scholastic Press.

Kelly Link

Kelly Link is an American author of short stories born in 1969. Her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: sometimes a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and realism.

Myra McEntire

Myra McEntire is an avid Doctor Who fan and will argue passionately about which incarnation is the best. She loves to search thrift stores for things to upcycle, as she’s a big believer in second chances. She lives with her two boys and husband near Nashville, Tennessee. Myra is the author of the Hourglass trilogy, which has been nominated for two RITAs and a YALSA Teen Top Ten, and was chosen as a SIBA Okra Pick. She’s currently contracted with Storybird, where she’s serializing a middle grade novel, called THE SHADOW GATE.

Matt De La Pena

Matt de la Peña is the author of five critically-acclaimed young adult novels—Ball Don't Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, I Will Save You and The Living—as well as the award-winning picture book A Nation’s Hope: The story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis. Matt received his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University and his BA from the University of the Pacific, where he attended school on a full athletic scholarship for basketball. de la Peña currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. He teaches creative writing and visits high schools and colleges throughout the country.

Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell writes books. Sometimes she writes about adults (ATTACHMENTS and LANDLINE). Sometimes she writes about teenagers (ELEANOR & PARK and FANGIRL). But she always writes about people who talk a lot. And people who feel like they're screwing up. And people who fall in love.

When she's not writing, Rainbow is reading comic books, planning Disney World trips and arguing about things that don't really matter in the big scheme of things.

She lives in Nebraska with her husband and two sons.

Laini Taylor

Hi there! I'm a writer of fantasy books for young people, but my books can be enjoyed by adults as well. My 'Dreamdark' books, Blackbringer (2007) and Silksinger (2009) are about faeries -- not dainty little flowery things, but warrior-faeries who battle devils. My first young adult book, Lips Touch, is a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award! It's creepy, sensual supernatural romance. . . about kissing. I am also an artist with a licensed gift product line called "Laini's Ladies."

Kiersten White

Hi! I'm the New York Times best-selling author of Paranormalcy and Supernaturally. I also give the most awkward hugs in the world. You should probably opt for one of my books over one of my hugs, but then again, maybe you like awkward hugs.

As for me, I like writing flirting scenes, and fighting scenes, and sometimes I write scenes that fall somewhere in between the two, but only if I can't avoid it.

And don't forget to enter our contest to win a signed copy of Unwind!!!

My Author count is hitting the stratosphere this year.

Because I like to keep you posted on all of the authors I see, here are some pictures from the book signing I went to tonight.

On the left is me with Rainbow Rowell (hard to tell, but she's holding a copy of Fangirl) and on the right is me and David Levithan.  I know: I can feel the jealous rolling off of you in WAVES right now.  It's practically tangible.

There were also some other awesome authors there, Coe Booth (Kind of Like Brothers), Tanuja Desai Hidier (Bombay Blues), and Bill Konigsburg (Openly Straight).  They were all funny and hilarious and wonderful and read passages from their books and really, if you get the chance to see David Levithan ever, go see him because he's hysterical, I think more so because he was with a group of people he was so comfortable with.

 And yes, I was close enough to David Levithan that the man was practically sweating on me.  It was fantastic.  And did I mention that he complimented my shoes?  I almost had to go die in a corner I was fangirling so hard.

Review Me Twice - The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

This is Alex's favorite book, and I do enjoy it.  I mean, Bradbury is a well known writer for a reason.  But, this is one of those times that you realize why Alex and I enjoy such different favorite books.  The Martian Chronicles is a series of short stories that are loosely related.  They're obviously chronological (and would be even if he didn't mark them with the date at the top) and Bradbury takes us through the extinction of the Martian race and then, inevitably, the human race.

Bradbury is a lot like Orwell.  He kind of hits you over the head with the message.  We're industrializing too much.  We don't respect cultures.  There's too much censorship.  We need to just live and let live (I don't know this for sure, but I get the feeling he was a Republican.  And I'm not even saying as a mean thing.  The vibe I get is just very anti-big government, pro-the individual.)  Orwell is very similar in the writing style.  He's really obvious about the message.  Almost like we, as readers, aren't smart enough to figure it out if we're not completely hit over the head with it (remember that conversation about didactic writing?)

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the book.  There's something about Bradbury's writing that's just... I don't know.  Calming.  It's soothing and enjoyable and like being read a good story by Barry White.  He just has that kind of writing that you can't help but enjoy, so even though it should kind of drive you crazy, it doesn't because he just writes it so well.

So, I liked the book, but I don't LOVE the book, like I know Alex loves the book.

(Why yes, I did write my review two days late... Let's just say it's because I assumed you've picked up on all the clues that I love this book and didn't really need my review.)

You may have heard that this is my favorite book! You may have even heard that I have a tattoo based on it. Both of these things are true.

I love good sci-fi, especially from the 1960s-ish era, I love collections of short stories (related or not), and I love Ray Bradbury's work. So it's kind of like the perfect book for me. I particularly like that all the stories are from very different perspectives. You have the astronauts on the first few expeditions to Mars; you have the Martians themselves; you have people from out in the country, people with the high-tech commodities in cities, families, loners, eccentric billionaires... everyone is a part of the story.

And this is a book that I can carry everywhere (it's short enough that the book fits in my purse... well, the paperback does, anyway) and pick up at any time to read from any point. It comes in very handy in waiting rooms or if you have a few minutes to kill before you need to go somewhere.

Author Bio: Ray Bradbury

This week's review book is one of my favorites (as you've heard before), The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury was born in Illinois in 1920 and died in Los Angeles, CA in 2012. In other words, he was writing science fiction during a truly golden age of science fiction, and lived to see a great deal from his work come true, for better or for worse.

You probably know him better as the author of Fahrenheit 451, especially if you're a banned book enthusiast Cassy and I. Some of his other particularly famous works include Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, and I Sing the Body Electric.

A lot of his great works are in the form of short stories (for example, The Martian Chronicles is a collection of loosely connected short stories about Mars and the human relationship with it).

The New York Times called him the author who most greatly contributed to bringing science fiction into the literature mainstream, and I won't argue with that. There's a reason we all read Fahrenheit 451 in high school.

Holocaust Literature

We talk a lot about holocaust literature around here, mostly because we (perhaps morbidly?) really enjoy reading about it.  There are probably three major types of that you can pick up about it.

Memoirs

We've read a lot of memoirs.  They're first hand accounts of the things that go on. The Diary of Anne Frank is probably one of the most well known first hand accounts.  I've also talked about The Girl in the Red Coat and, while Maus isn't a first hand account technically, it's someone taking down a first hand account of what happened almost word for word.  You get a lot of memoirs in holocaust fiction.  In fact, it's probably the most prevalent, probably because a lot of people I think need to get their experiences out of them.  They need to get it down on paper and let people know what happened.




Non-Fiction text

These are essentially like history books.  Biographies or just general history books.  Anything that tells about the time, but isn't a first hand account of what happened.  They tell about what's going on, but they aren't through anyone's eyes.  They stick to the facts.  They are (supposed to be) unemotional and unbiased.  Schindler's List is a good example of this.  While the book is mostly about Schindler and what he did, it tells you a lot about what went on in the time period and during the war.

Fiction

These are books that give us fictional accounts, but still relate the horrors of what happened during the time period.  Our book this week, Once, is a good example of that.  The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is also a good example of that, and rare because it's told from the German side of things, from a very innocent point of view.  The stories are a little more embellished, but often based on things that actually happened.