Parenthetical.net

For the last month I’ve been reading middle grade fantasy & science fiction and discussing it with my fellow panelists, but I couldn’t blog about any of it. Now the winners are official! Yay!
Our Middle Grade F & SF winner is a sequel, Dreamdark: Silksinger by Laini Taylor. I don’t really do [...]

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That’s right, Parenthetical.net has been synonymous with me for eleven years. That makes internet-me the same age as LiveJournal and the word “blog.”
I started my “web journal” as a perpetually single 20-year-old on the day before Valentine’s Day. I was really, really bitter about it.
Dear 20-Year-Old Me, this video is for you:

(It’s from [...]

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Note: Even more than usual, note the disclaimer. I am speaking my own mind, not that of my Library Director (quoted in this article) or my school.
Today’s New York Times includes an online Room for Debate feature: Do School Libraries Need Books? The debaters include James Tracy, Head of the now infamous in [...]

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This recent xkcd makes an excellent point. This is why I always loved the end of Labyrinth when all the critters tell Sarah that they’ll come “should you need us” — and then she cries that she needs them and they come rock out in her bedroom! Because they didn’t just mean the [...]

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I got myself up at 7:45 to watch the ALA Youth Media Awards webcast. (Why do they do this so early, again?) I lost video at the announcement of the Printz winner, but fortunately I could still hear all of it. Congratulations to the middle grade & YA winners! (Here’s the [...]

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If you write, or care about writing, or teach students who write, you must read “Writing English as a Second Language”. It’s a talk William Zinsser gave to new international students at the Columbia Graduate School for Journalism, and it’s so brilliant it made me choke up a little.
It helped me understand the writing [...]

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I’m too cheap to attend the American Library Association conference for real. But I am not too cheap to spend $35 on an exhibit pass when the conference happens to swing by my town! That $35 easily paid for itself in free ARCs this evening alone:
The Prince of Mist, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Green Witch, [...]

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Due to a conflict of interest, I’ve switched into the Middle Grade Fantasy & Science Fiction category. I’m totally excited, if for no other reason than that the books are shorter.
The fabulous finalists are:
11 Birthdays, Wendy Mass
Dreamdark: Silksinger, Laini Taylor
The Farwalker’s Quest, Joni Sensel
Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
The Prince of [...]

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Good morning, 2010! The Cybils elves were hard at work over New Year’s, and we now have a list of the 2009 finalists!
The YA Fantasy and Science Fiction finalists are:
Candor, by Pam Bachorz
The Demon’s Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan
The Dust of 100 Dogs, by A. S. King
Fire, by Kristin Cashore
Lips Touch, by Laini Taylor
Sacred [...]

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Via Kristin Cashore: The Known Universe. Full-screen highly recommended.
Thank you for making me miss science fiction.
And just for fun, a Christmas card from somewhere else out there. Happy days-between-Christmas-and-New-Year’s, everyone!
(Do those days have a name? Besides “The Dead Days,” that is. I want something a tad more uplifting. [...]

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