How Far Is Too Far?: Navigating the World of Young Adult Fiction

Few of us are immune to the sensation that is Stephenie Meyer. She dominates the bestseller lists, reduces teenage girls to catatonic wrecks, and has the entire literary world talking. Readers choose labels such as “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob” with the aggression of soldiers preparing for battle. Even I, a snob with a natural aversion to the subgenre of supernatural fiction, could not deny the sudden rise of the enigma that was Twilight. Journalists and peers alike claimed that Meyer’s creation had ousted J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter from popular consciousness; others believed it merely filled the hole Rowling’s recently-completed epic had left.

My expectations were high for Twilight. I wanted to love it. I wanted to be as enthralled by it as the rest of the female population appeared to be. I wanted to speak their secret language, to be ‘in’ on that juicy secret that no-one could stop whispering about.

I was bitterly disappointed. Perhaps I was always going to be. My opinions on Meyer’s writing, the characters, and the nuances of the plotline are, however, irrelevant.

I am referring to the relationship between the central characters: Bella Swan and Edward Cullen.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is one such novel. Anderson takes us inside the head of Melinda Sordino, a darkly humorous and artistic teenager trying to survive her first year of high school. Melinda is an outcast. She has been ever since a blurred trauma over the summer. As a result of this, she lost her friends. Strangers stare at her in the hall. She is bullied, teased, and ignored. It is a sharp contrast to the rise of Bella Swan, who achieves almost stratospheric popularity in a matter of hours after moving to the new town of Forks, Washington.

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7 Sci-Fi Books To Read Before You See Avatar

Most science fiction films never really leave Earth: they just tinker around with robots or crazed computers of post-apocalyptic landscapes. Well, not James Cameron’s Avatar, because this time there’s an actual alien planet and actual aliens on it. So if you don’t know your Arrakis from your Admiral Ackbar, read on to get a grounding in some of what you’re going to see…

Dune
Frank Herbert (1965)

The granddaddy of science-fiction epics, Frank Herbert’s masterpiece takes place on a world where a substance, spice melange, essential to interstellar travel is produced – something a little similar in price at least to the unobtanium that Avatar’s human explorers are determined to mine. A new ruling family, the Atreides, are sent to rule the planet and ensure that the spice flows (because the Spice must flow), but when son Paul Atreides finds himself in the wilderness beyond the human cities, he realises that Dune’s secrets go far beyond anything humanity had guessed.

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1. Beautiful Creaturesby Kami Garcia

2. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater 

9. Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) by Suzanne Collins

Read the rest of the list HERE

*Join OBS as we read & discuss ‘Shiver’,  it is November’s YA Book Club! read more HERE

Check out Amazon’s other lists, like Editor’s Top 100, Editor’s Top 10 Literature & Fiction, Top 100 customer favorites, etc. Read them all HERE

 Disney sets release date for San Antonio author’s latest book

San Antonio author Rick Riordan will release his newest book title next May through Disney Book Group’s Disney-Hyperion imprint.

The Kane Chronicles, Book One: The Red Pyramid is a new fantasy book that brings ancient Egyptian mythology to life in a modern-day setting. Disney-Hyperion has scheduled a release date for the book on May 4, 2010, in both print and audio editions. When a magical accident unleashes the Egyptian gods on the modern world, siblings Carter and Sadie Kane must find a way to defeat the evil god Set before he can destroy them. The Kane Chronicles represents Riordan’s newest book series aimed at children 10 and up.

Riordan is also the creator behind the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, which has sold more than 7 million copies to date in the United States and has been printed in 32 different languages. The first book in that series, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, has been adapted for a movie that will hit theaters on Feb. 12, 2010.

Read more HERE

What did you think of today’s book news? Do you agree with the opinion on Young Adult fiction? Are you a fan of any of the books on Amazon’s lists? Lastly, will you read Rick Riordan’s new series?