Technically this is post #200...but it's really kind of not, because some of those posts are scheduled and waiting to be released into the world later this week. But it does mean I've written 200 blog posts at this point, and that's something, isn't it?
This weekend was the 24 hour read-a-thon. My husband summed up my participation this way: "You making a goal to read a lot of books in a day is like someone making a goal to breathe a lot in one day. You're going to do it anyway!" And he's right - this wasn't like the bloggiesta where I really needed a community of support to help keep me working. During the bloggiesta we were all online at the same time, almost constantly, and we were constantly giving each other new ideas and helping out people who were stuck, because I don't usually spend hours at a time working on the nuts and bolts of my blog. This time around, while it was nice seeing the encouraging tweets and comments left by the cheerleaders I didn't feel it was something I needed. For one thing, I had to go out of my way to see the encouragement, since I wasn't already on the computer. Also, during the hours I was reading, it wasn't a great struggle at all. Waking up early so I could start reading right at 8:00 am was a bit of a struggle (I had to repeat my Starbucks order because the first time it was horribly mangled as I was so sleepy!) but after that I was on a roll. The only difference between yesterday and other Saturdays is that normally I take more breaks when I'm reading to surf the internet. So I'm not too sure I'll be participating in the next one. I like the idea, but the execution just doesn't work for me.
Something else I discovered this weekend: there's another top 100 YA books list being started. First there was the Fuse #8 list of the Top 100 Middle Grade fiction titles of all time, and then next I saw April at Good Books and Good Wine did a list for the top 100 YA books. I've been following that one as its been posted and I've been thinking it must have had a significantly smaller group of voters than Fuse #8's list, or at least a significantly different type of voter, because the list is weighted so heavily towards recent and very popular titles. I mean, I love The Hunger Games more than is probably healthy, but the best YA book of all time? I really don't think we can declare it that yet. I know YA is a younger genre than middle grade (well, technically, since I doubt books were marketed as "middle grade" until they'd come up with the "young adult" category, but there have been separate books for kids longer than there have been separate books for teenagers because even the idea of "teenagers" is a relatively recent one) but having so many books from just the last 5 years feels a little off.
Now I see that Persnickety Snark is doing her own top 100 YA list, with the methodology poached directly from the Fuse #8 middle grade list (with permission, obviously). She's directly solicited teachers and librarians and publishing folks before opening it wide for the general blogosphere to join in. Voting started March 19th and continues through April 30th. I just sent in my list of votes and just might share them once the list starts going up!
