Book Links: Roundup, 6/19

Another week, another link roundup! I'm kind of beginning to enjoy these...

Here's an interesting discussion that involves two of my favorite topics: gender and book blogging. Book Blogging and the Gender Gap, Redux at the Reading Ape asks if "so few men blog about books [because] male-oriented book discussion already HAS a venue."


Malinda Lo (author of Ash) has a great series of posts on avoiding LGBT stereotypes in YA fiction. An absolute must read for anyone writing YA lit, and not a bad resource for those of us who read it to help identify problems when they appear.


Here's a blog post that resonated with me, about when and how to critique a book when the problems come from production design rather than the writing. I received a book to review the day before I found this post at Read Roger, and I had to double check that it was in fact a finished book and not an ARC because it's one of the flimsiest books I've ever held. Should I note this in the review? I haven't decided yet (let me know if you'd like to hear about it!)


My favorite TV show of the moment (okay, pretty much the only TV show I watch), Glee is going to get its own book series. The first novel will be a prequel to the show and will be out in August. Half the fun of Glee is the musical numbers (and in fact, the show has a lot of problems outside of its musical numbers), so I'm not sure how well it will translate to books, but I'm certainly curious.


I don't know why I haven't seen more excitement about this - maybe because its an older series that was originally published in Australia? But I, for one, loved the Tomorrow When the War Began series in middle school, and now we've got a trailer for the movie!



It's been years since I've read any of the books, let alone the first one, so I can't really comment as to how accurate this looks. I can say that I don't remember there being so many guns or grown ups in the first book, so I wonder if maybe they're pulling some things from the later books? Wikipedia is pretty sparse on details, so I don't know if they're planning on making this a series of films, or even if it's going to get a US release (only release date listed is September 2nd for Australia).

And now for a little bit of self-promotion and nepotism...

If you missed it yesterday, I've started a new feature here on Bookish Blather called Sci-Fi Fridays, which will be a day to review a science fiction book or discuss other aspects of SF in YA lit. I hope by next week to have a shiny image that goes with it and turn it into something of a meme. Feel free to leave your SF reviews for the week in the comments!

Here's the nepotism, since this has nothing to do with books or reading, but does have to do with family: for those of you who are reality TV and/or golf fans, I encourage you to check out the Big Break on the Golf Channel, premiering Monday June 21st. My sister-in-law is one of the contestants!

And now to conclude on topic, my husband has jumped into the blogosphere and has started his own blog! He's posting excerpts of his writing at his blog Dysfunctionally Creative. Right now the opening scenes for his urban fantasy novel are posted, but I know he's also got a couple of scripts in the works that might be making an appearance soon.

Feel free to leave any links to something interesting you read or wrote this week! I'm taking next Saturday off from my roundups, as I'll be in DC checking out the exhibits at ALA and playing tourist.