News, Reviews, and Musings is a new daily feature. Feel free to chime in, or to tweet/email us if we’ve missed something that you’d like to see featured.
News and features
The Daily Beast picks out some smart YA for smart YA readers. The books run the spectrum from mainstream to speculative fiction, and there are some promising contenders on the list.
The Inside Pocket blog reports on a marathon signing session for their new release Justin Thyme. Six hours! My hand is cramping at the thought of it!
Reading a book in a single sitting, like we often do on this site, is a harder task on e-readers than it is on paper, according to a new study. Phew, a good excuse to keep on buying books!
A collection of beloved writer Anne Franks stories, scribbles, and documents will be published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
Interviews
In this great video, writers from The Guardian and The Observer tell us about the books that turned them towards a life of bibliophilia.
Peter V Brett and Terry Brooks chat about all manner of bookish stuff, including whether trilogies should remain just that, or whether the story should remain king.
Reviews
The NYT reviews Ilyon Woos new book, which looks at marriage and divorce in a nineteenth century Shaker community, but is unfortunately a little light on research.
Tehani Wessley reviews Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris, and finds that she didnt love it quite as much as she wanted to.
Musings
Author Claire King contemplates on how airing the mind can be an essential prerequisite for sitting down to write.
Let presidents be presidents, says Meg Rosoff, who is tired of the sudden ubiquity of celebrity authors.
Epilogues: useful plot points or fluff designed to fill in those last few blank pages? Adele at PersnicketySnark discusses. (I know where shes coming from, having recently been disappointed by an epilogue that detracted from an otherwise excellent book)
Christopher Meeks discusses the differences between writing novels and writing short stories, and the challenges of moving between the two.
Despite women being the biggest buyers and consumers of fiction, female writers are often overlooked, argues Historian Elaine Showalter, who has compiled a list of Americas most important female writers.
Just for fun
Check out the astonishing work going on at AlphaBattle. Youll never look at the alphabet in the same way again!
Author birthdays
Happy birthday George RR Martin, author of the much-loved Song of Fire and Ice series!
Quote of the day
Writers might want to push the envelope, but getting challenged often means not getting read YA Bookshelf on authors well-founded concerns about censorship
Beautiful book cover of the day
