Parenthetical.net

This one’s easy to sum up: Jacobs (who gets paid for his OCD, basically — he lets weird projects take over his life and then writes books about them; his last was about reading the entire encyclopedia cover-to-cover) spent a year living by the Bible’s rules as literally as possible. Everything from “though shalt [...]

[Read more →]

Fanboy (we never learn his real name) is a fifteen-year-old loner. His only friend is Cal, who shares his love of superhero comics and intellectual conversation, but since Cal’s also an athlete, they move in different social universes. His mother has remarried “the step-fascist” and they’re having a baby, so Fanboy feels like [...]

[Read more →]

A Grown-Up Table diversion into comics… Y is over. (Well, it’s been over for awhile, but I wait for the trade paperback compilations of the issues, and I just recently picked up the last one.) It’s one of the first series I fell in love with, and the end did not disappoint — [...]

[Read more →]

During the school year, I mostly read for work: how will I know what to give my kids if I don’t tear through as many YA novels as possible? Consequently, I almost never read sequels; I got enough of a taste with the first book, so I feel guilty if I linger. This summer’s reading [...]

[Read more →]

During the school year, I mostly read for work: how will I know what to give my kids if I don’t tear through as many YA novels as possible? Consequently, I almost never read sequels; I got enough of a taste with the first book, so I feel guilty if I linger. This summer’s reading [...]

[Read more →]

This ARC* randomly found its way into my life, and I picked it from my “haven’t read yet” shelf to take on a recent camping trip to Acadia National Park because it takes place in Maine, and I’m a sucker for reading a book while surrounded by its setting. The plot: Aslaug was raised [...]

[Read more →]

After finding out that John Green might be coming to speak at my school* (eee!), I grabbed his first book, Looking for Alaska. You might recall that I loved the shit out of his second book, An Abundance of Katherines. This is a very different book — weightier; more Dead Poets Society than [...]

[Read more →]

During the school year, I mostly read for work: how will I know what to give my kids if I don’t tear through as many YA novels as possible? Consequently, I almost never read sequels; I got enough of a taste with the first book, so I feel guilty if I linger. This [...]

[Read more →]

My YA lit professor in grad school, Amy Pattee, has an article in the new issue of Horn Book on Sweet Valley High and its triumphant (?) return to print. My favorite bit:
The new Double Love reads like a time-traveled transliteration of the original novel: the girls ride around in a Jeep Wrangler rather [...]

[Read more →]

During the school year, I mostly read for work: how will I know what to give my kids if I don’t tear through as many YA novels as possible? Consequently, I almost never read sequels; I got enough of a taste with the first book, so I feel guilty if I linger. This [...]

[Read more →]