What I'm Reading: Romance Books

Ah...teen romance novels. Call it listening to too much Taylor Swift, or actually having mostly positive memories of high school (boys included), but I loved this week's genre. Interestingly, I couldn't remember any romance/love stories that I loved as a teen reader but I devoured three of my picks in a matter of days this week. I started off my exploration by searching "Popular Lists" on my nook and quickly found a Contemporary YA Romance list with 53 titles to sift through. My neighboring library has a much larger YA section than my local one, and I got lucky finding two of my top picks there as well as finding another one on display. I suspect I may be checking out a few more of these once my class is over and I can get back to leisure reading!

As in previous weeks, I tried to find at least one title that (might) appeal to a teen boy, though this genre was a little more difficult. Per usual, in no particular order...

What I'm Reading: Funny Books

This week, we are focusing on funny books. This is kind of a tough one for me...it's not that I don't think I have a sense of humor, or don't enjoy laughing (though who would admit to that, I suppose!), but I am not really drawn to comedies in any of my entertainment choices (books, movies, stand up, etc.). Throw in that I am looking at books that are meant to be funny to teenage boys and girls and I'm even more out of my element. But as with anything that puts you outside of your comfort zone, it's certainly not a bad thing!

The book I was assigned to read this week was Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle, which I did enjoy, and had some laugh out loud moments. Others I have found in my searching this week are highlighted below, again in no particular order.

What I'm Reading: Award-Winners

It works out well that my prior "What I'm Reading" topic fits nicely into the required blogging of my Lit course. Each week, we'll be looking at a different category of YA literature, searching for titles published in the last 10 years or so, and providing annotations of some of the books we find.

This week, it's Award-Winners. For any of you non-library/education folks, the Newbery has been the "king" of the awards, dating all the way back to 1922, and has included such classics as A Wrinkle in Time (1963), Bridge to Terabithia (1978), and Sarah, Plain and Tall (1986). Another award list that I discovered this week, where I found some quality books was the Michael L. Printz Award. Perhaps it's because the list is newer, and also solely focused on YA books (vs. the Newbery which includes children's titles as well), but I jotted down a ton of books I wanted to read from this list. A 3rd list I focused on this week were the National Book Awards (Young People's Literature category, abbreviated as NBA further in this post), where I also found some excellent titles.

The genre I nearly always gravitate towards is realistic fiction, so I made a conscious effort to mix up what I read this week (though as you'll see, I couldn't resist including at least one in my list!). In one of our class discussions a few weeks ago, we talked about the difficulty in drawing in teen male readers, so I also made an effort to include at least one title that would appeal to them. In no particular order, here are my award-winning choices for the week:

And, I'm back...

I really had the best of intentions when I made my last post for my course last semester about keeping my blog going, but alas...

In sum, I wound up applying (and getting accepted) to the M. Ed program in Library Media Studies at Salem State and launched right into a Survey of Children's Literature course this summer, which explains my blogging hiatus. Lots of reading of excellent children's books (plus a killer midterm assignment, including 66 annotations, but who's counting?) took the place of my blogging. But, now we are onto the YA portion of the class and we are back to required blogging (hi, Barb). Which is a good thing, I think.

Hopefully, I can keep it going this time!