One YA Dystopian Anthology, Coming Up!

Picture from Divergent Fans

Divergent Fans, to go-to place for all things Veronica Roth related, has announced that Roth will have an upcoming story in Shards and Ashes, a dystopian anthology due out early 2013. Whether or not the story will relate back to the Divergent trilogy or be a new story all together has yet to be mentioned.

After I learned that Brave New Worlds, a dystopian anthology that I've reviewed before, was out of print I was pretty upset, so I'm glad to see that there's another collection of stories on the horizon.

I'm very eager to see what these ladies have come up with, building a dystopian world can be tricky when you have a page limit, but I'm sure that our authors will come out on top.

You can read more about the anthology over at Divergent Fans.

Congrats, Presenting Lenore!!!

Presenting Lenore was the first book blog that I started following regularly, and I'm so happy to see that her project Level 2 has come to light! She revealed the cover this week, and everything has just been going so fantastic for her you should definitely head over and give her a little love :)

Presenting Lenore

Once again, congratulation! 

Mission Free Four: Success!

Boy, am I glad that I pre-ordered Insurgent by Veronica Roth last night, because I came home to a pleasant surprise today! Keeping good on her promise, after Insurgent reached 35,000 pre-orders Veronica Roth has released Free Four: Tobias Tells the Story, a Divergent story from Four's perspective!

Sadly, I'm up to my armpits in AP test prep right now (chemistry, macroeconomics, and English, here I come!), so I'll have to postpone reading it. You can pop right on over and do so right now though, at the Divergent Series Facebook page to check it out.

Happy reading, and don't spoil it for me!

Insurgent!!!

There are only 70 days left until the second book in Veronica Roth's series, Insurgent, is released! Huzzah!

Photo courtesy of Amazon

May 1st! Mark your calenders!

Ahoy! NaNoWriMo Approaches!

(Picture from The Booksmith)

What does Water for Elephants, The Night Circus (pictured above), and dozens of other books all have in common? They had their humble origins as rough copies from NaNoWriMo.

This Saturday, October first, marks the date where the NaNoWriMo website reboots itself, letting members new and old alike come in and set up their pages before the fun, challenging, totally off-the-wall awesome event that is National Novel Writing Month.

If you have never heard of it, National Novel Writing Month is an event spanning all 31 days of November where a participant writes a 50,000 word novel (or rather, novella, but it is generally agreed in NaNoWriMo that "novel" is a cooler word.) That breaks down to around 1667 words a day to make the deadline, unless you are like me and blow through 10,000 in the final weekend.

I'm writing about it for two reasons:
1) I first learned of it a few years (four, to be precise) ago on a blog, and am now using my blogging abilities to spread the word further
2) The book bloggosphere has been up in arms with love for The Night Circus recently, and today it was revealed to me that not only has it hit the New York Times bestseller list, but it started when Erin Morgenstern decided to sit down and takes the challenge that thousands of other people just like you take every November

Needless to say, it isn't easy. But then again, most of the worthwhile things in life ever are. And you only need one thing to start: that tiny spark in the back of your mind that says "Yes, I can do this."

Insurgent (Veronica Roth) cover revealed!

Mark your calender for May of 2012, because Veronica Roth has recently released the (very beautiful) cover for her next book, Insurgent, and I am spazzing out at the beauty of it.

They kept the set-up the same, with the symbol in the middle against the cityscape, but changed the color scheme to a darker, rather ominous green. If I'm being completely honest I like this cover more than the first one. I also like that they added the train, since it was such a big symbol in the first book, and it is finally getting the love it deserves.

You can send her some love herself on her blog, and you can read my review of the first book, Divergent, here.

Teens Top Ten!

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) is looking for votes to pick the top ten teen books! The list seems to be a mix of late 2010- early 2011 titles, and a mix of bestsellers and lesser known titles (but maybe I've just been living in a box...)

The voting is for teens only, so go and vote if you're young enough or do your part to spread the word! I jumped up to vote only to find that the only book on the list that I had read was Mockingjay and, well, I didn't exactly think it was the best book (if you saw my last Book Hop/ Follow Friday.)

Voting ends September 16th, and the winners will be announced during Teen Read Week, October 16th-22nd.