Parenthetical.net

Post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian fiction! It’s: a) pretty much all I read as an adolescent, b) what made the hippie I am today, c) ridiculously popular all of a sudden in YA lit, or d) all of the above?
D, obviously. The YA lit world is exploding with talk of dystopias. This article from [...]

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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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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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Why do we often find it so hard to criticize the stories we love? Why do we feel we have to deny their flaws in order to love them? (*cough*Twilight*cough*)
I just read an excellent article by Mitali Perkins in the April School Library Journal, “Straight Talk on Race”. She designates five [...]

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I wanted to link to John Green’s recent post about genre because I think this thought is so damn neat:

The main reason books are organized the way they are is that it makes it easier to sell them at bookstores and circulate them at libraries. As acquiring (and reading) books become less physical experiences, we’ll [...]

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Nobody can shut up about vampires these days. What do they represent? How have they changed from Dracula to Lestat to Spike to Edward? People usually reach for the sexual symbolism. But I just read this post from Slacktivist, one of my favorite political bloggers, about vampires as a reminder that [...]

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Some personal stuff intervened last week*, but I still have many, many thoughts about the Simmons conference to post. The theme was “Crimes & Misdemeanors,” and most of the authors stuck remarkably well to it. A few smart thoughts from smart people, lifted from my notes:
Many people argued that crimes (for a sufficiently [...]

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Nobody can shut up about vampires these days. What do they represent? How have they changed from Dracula to Lestat to Spike to Edward? People usually reach for the sexual symbolism. But this morning one of the full-time teachers at the GED center where I tutor was talking with a couple [...]

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In the immortal words of Jeremy Piven in Grosse Pointe Blank: “Ten years! Ten years! Ten! Years!” Yes, believe it or not, I have owned this domain for an entire decade. It’s been home to everything from passive-aggressive collegiate angst to stories of my travel adventures to this YA lit [...]

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I have a love-hate relationship with the New York Times Style section. Their articles seem to come in two forms: “Hey, two of my friends tip cows ironically / wear elaborately carved and shellacked pumpkins on their heads / eat nothing but mangos! It must be a trend!” or “People have been doing [...]

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