Elmira High School Library

step 2: read books i already own

step 3: read library books the day they’re due

step 4: don’t end up finishing said library books

step 5: return and reborrow said library books

Books I’ve Loved:  We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

John Green is working on a ‘Turtles All The Way Down’ movie with Fox

Some great books to read by the fire. Which book would you put in your TBR?

Some holiday spoofs of some favorite reads! Check out my booktube video for the synopses of the books and click on the pictures for the taglines! 🎄 📚

Turtles All the Way Down, When Dimple Met Rishi, Milk and Honey, Red Queen, and Murder on the Orient Express.

When poking around what sorts of celebrations are happening in the month of December, it was no surprise to see that “National Write A Letter To A Friend” Month popped up. It seems like the end of the year, as well as the dawn of the holiday season, are prime opportunities to sit down and put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboards).

In honor of letter writing, let’s take a look at a few YA books written in letter format. I’m a huge fan of alternate format novels, so long as the format makes sense for the story, so the books on this list that I haven’t already read are hitting the top of my TBR. I’ve also included a memoir on this list, as it’s a memoir about the power of writing letters.

I’ve also been liberal in my definition of “letter format.”

If you’re itching for more YA books in letter format, you’ll want to check out the post on this topic I did last year with a completely different array of titles.

NPR launched its 2017 book concierge of more than 350 discoverable titles NPR staff and critics loved this year.

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In fact, the researchers found that one factor in particular determined higher ratings. “Across both poem genres, we found that vividness was the best predictor of aesthetic appeal, followed by valence and arousal,” the researchers write in the paper. That is different from other studies in which a positive emotional valence—poems with a happy feel or tone—led to higher aesthetic ratings.

Aspiring poets, take note.

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Here are  seven Genuine Fraud-themed gifts I chose for the holiday season. Animal-shaped rings, chocolate cake, jasmine perfume, my favorite Dickens novel, a great lipstick, and more. 

Crooked Kingdom, Sun Is Also A Star finalists for Teen Choice Book Awards

The Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the finalists for the 2017 Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards. The young adult titles nominated this year are A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas, Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo, The Crown by Kiera Cass, Harry Potter and The Cursed Child: Parts 1 and 2 by J.K. Rowling, The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon, This Is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp and A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir.

In A Court of Mist and Fury, Feyre survived Amarantha’s clutches to return to the Spring Court–but at a steep cost. Her heart remains human, and it can’t forget the terrible deeds she performed to save Tamlin’s people.

In Crooked Kingdom, Kaz Brekker and his crew have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didn’t think they’d survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, they’re right back to fighting for their lives.

In The Crown, twenty years have passed since the events of The One, and America and Maxon’s daughter is the first princess to hold a Selection of her own. Now she must make a difficult choice.

In Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, while his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted.

In The Sun Is Also a Star, Natasha, a girl who doesn’t believe in fate, is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica when she meets Daniel, a boy on his way to a life-changing college interview. Daniel  has always been the good son, never the dreamer. But something about Natasha makes him think that fate has something extraordinary in store for them.

In This Is Where it Ends, when the students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class, the auditorium doors won’t open. Terror reigns as someone starts shooting and one student’s calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

In A Torch Against the Night, Laia and Elias must outfox their enemies and confront the treacherousness of their own hearts while being hunted by Empire soldiers, manipulated by the Commandant, and haunted by their pasts.

Hrm. This is a hard one! 

You might like The Careful Undressing of Love by Corey Ann Haydu!

Does anyone else in the bookly community have any suggestions for YA books similar to Oscar Wilde?