2011 YA Books I've Read

In keeping with last year's tradition, I've put together some of my "Top 5" lists from this year. Here they are:

Top 5 Books to Make You Think:

5. How Not to Be Popular (Jennifer Ziegler) 

4. Hunger (Jackie Morse Kessler)

3. Hate List (Jennifer Brown)

2. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)

1. The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness)

Top 5 Books for Hard-to-Please Boys:

5. Across the Universe (Beth Revis)

4. Incarceron (Catherine Fisher)

3. The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness)

2. Pathfinder (Orson Scott Card)

1. Ship Breaker (Paolo Bacigalupi)

Top 5 Fantasy:

5. The False Princess (Eilis O'Neal)

4. Magic Study (Maria V. Snyder)

3. The Iron Queen (Julie Kagawa)

2. Pegasus (Robin McKinley)

1. The Shifter (Janice Hardy)

Top 5 Science Fiction:

5. Divergent (Veronica Roth)

4. Across the Universe (Beth Revis)

3. Ship Breaker (Paolo Bacigalupi)

2. Pathfinder (Orson Scott Card)

1. The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness)

Top 5 Favorite Books:

5. The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)

4. Pegasus (Robin McKinley)

3. The Shifter (Janice Hardy)

2. The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness)

And the best book I read this year...

1. Divergent (Veronica Roth)

Full list of all the books I read (with links to recommendations):

Ann Aguirre

--Enclave

Paolo Bacigalupi

--Ship Breaker

Holly Black

--White Cat

Jennifer Brown

--Hate List [rec]

Meg Cabot

--Being Nikki

--Runaway

--How to Be Popular

--Abandon

Orson Scott Card

--Pathfinder

Aimee Carter

--The Goddess Test [rec]

Cassandra Clare

--City of Glass

--Clockwork Angel

Rosemary Clement-Moore

--Texas Gothic [rec]

Ally Condie

--Matched

Lauren DeStefano

--Wither

Sarah Beth Durst

--Enchanted Ivy [rec]

Catherine Fisher

--Incarceron [rec]

--Sapphique

Gayle Forman

--If I Stay

Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl

--Beautiful Creatures

Janice Hardy

--The Shifter [rec]

--Blue Fire

Diana Wynne Jones

--Cart and Cwidder

Julie Kagawa

--The Iron Daughter [The Iron King rec]

--The Iron Queen

Jackie Morse Kessler

--Hunger [rec]

Karen Mahoney

--The Iron Witch

Melissa Marr

--Darkest Mercy [Wicked Lovely rec]

Robin McKinley

--Beauty

--Pegasus

--Chalice

Lisa McMann

--Cryer's Cross

Patrick Ness

--The Knife of Never Letting Go [rec]

--The Ask and the Answer

--Monsters of Men

Lauren Oliver

--Delirium

Eilis O'Neal

--The False Princess [rec]

Erica O'Rourke

--Torn

Dia Reeves

--Bleeding Violet [rec]

Beth Revis

--Across the Universe

Rick Riordan

--The Red Pyramid

Veronica Roth

--Divergent [rec]

Inara Scott

--The Candidates

Maria V. Snyder

--Magic Study [Poison Study rec]

Jennifer Ziegler

--How Not to Be Popular [rec]

Markus Zusak

--The Book Thief [rec]

Where I've Been

So it's been a while. Over two months in fact. My blogging hiatus was partly intentional—to give me more time to edit my book—but only partly, and I never meant the cutoff to be so sudden.

But sometimes a lot of “life” happens, and this fall has been one of those seasons.

I won't go into all the details (unless you're a vet and you happen to be interested in the specifics of cat UTIs, or you're an oral surgeon who wants to know all about my reaction to epinephrin in Novocaine). Soon enough the past few months will be little more than a blurry memory.

That being the case, I do want to hold on to a few good things that have happened this fall:

1. I've gotten to know some pretty incredible teens. Underneath all the “totes magotes” and finger hearts and “cool story, bro,” they have a lot of energy and character. I'm even more sure now than I've ever been that this is the age group I want to write for.

2. I've been editing Olympus Gate, which has gone more slowly than I hoped for the same reasons that the blog has been out of use lately, but I'm pleased with the results so far. My new critique partner is making me work hard! You think you know your character pretty well the first dozen times you get the comment “and what is she feeling in this moment?” Then you get to the thirteenth and all you can think is, “She's... um... sad? ...again? I DON'T KNOW!” So thank you, Jamie, for making me struggle through all the hard parts too.

3. I've made some more delectable edibles. Last night I had the pleasure of seeing several people's eyes bug out (in a good way) at the taste of my peppermint bonbons. And my husband got me a book of dessert recipes I've been wanting to try. (I'd have made the Boston Cream cupcakes already if last week hadn't turned out to be an insane mess of hectic days.)

So I'll leave you with a picture of the latest bonbons, a wish for the happiest of holidays to all of you, and my sincerest hopes to post more regularly in the coming months.

While You Wait...

Things to do while you force yourself to wait and digest a good critique instead of diving right into the edits:

- Tap your foot

- Search YouTube for songs to put on your character play lists

- Check twitter obsessively

- Pretend to read a research book for your next project

- Work on the outline for the next project (that rapidly devolves into squiggles depicting scenes from the current project)

- Play Angry Birds again and try to get three stars on everything

- Read whatever is on top of the TBR list

- Write a blog post about how painful it is to wait and let the ideas percolate

Yeah...

I got a really fantastic critique this morning from Jamie Grey. It's exciting and motivating, and I'm having a very hard time reminding myself that I should let the critique sit for a few days before I go tearing through the ms. But mostly I'm very grateful to have such a fabulous critique group. Don't know where I'd be without my fellow writers. Thanks, you guys!

Bonbons

Well, folks... I'm in trouble.

I've discovered a new hobby, and lately it's about all I want to do. Unfortunately it's expensive (well, not too expensive, but it does require money), time-consuming and fattening. What is it? It's creating these:

These are bonbons that I made a couple weeks ago. They are amazing. Inside is marshmallow fudge (that tastes like it has a hint of caramel). To borrow a quote from a friend, “It's like heaven inside my mouth.”

Of course they're also so full of calories that if I keep making and eating them I'll balloon up 50 pounds in no time. But maybe I'll make some at Christmas and give them all away.

So now that the great bonbon experiment was so successful, I want to try some other things too. In particular I want to see if I can make nougat, caramel and peppermint patties. I might be worried about finding people to give the finished products away to, but I know a whole bunch of teens who would be happy to take them.

Really, the biggest problem is that making candy and chocolates takes all day to accomplish. If I keep heading down that path I'll be in danger of never getting any writing done.

But hey, if the writing thing doesn't work out, at least I know I have a back-up plan now. Couldn't you see me as a chocolatier?

Clarinets and Saxophones

A long time ago I used to fall asleep to the sound of James Galway playing the flute on my mom's old record player. For a very long time I believed that the flute was the most beautiful instrument in the whole world, and if I ever had the chance to play an instrument, that would be the one.

But that was before I heard the clarinet. When fifth grade came around—the year I got to pick what I would play—just before that moment of decision I heard the music teacher perform a simple piece on the clarinet. And suddenly I was hooked.

I loved everything about the clarinet: the nostalgic tone, the look of the silver keys against the dark wood, and the way it seemed to tell me “there's more here if you're willing to look.” I didn't want to try out anything else; clarinet was for me.

And when I first got a clarinet of my own I became even more sure. I didn't just love hearing it, I loved playing it too. We were a great fit. We worked. (And I was ever so glad I had not chosen to go with, say, the saxophone—if the sounds coming from the sax section were any indication, it was a miserable instrument to play.) For several months, my clarinet and I were BFFs.

But then, one day, playing got a little bit harder. I had to transition from the comfortable low notes to the tricky, squeaky high notes. And suddenly I wasn't quite so sure that this clarinet thing was going to work out for me.

I remember something my teacher said at that time. She told us, “Clarinets, do you remember picking on the sax players just a few months ago for all their squeaks and messy notes? Well, now you get to go through what they did. And saxophones, it's your turn to sit back and learn some easier notes.”

That was motivation enough for me. If the sax players could stick with it through the hard notes, then I sure could too. And I did. I stuck with clarinet for a long time, and I never wished I'd chosen anything else. Clarinet wasn't always the absolute perfection I'd first thought it was, but it was worth the hard work.

And I kept that lesson of clarinets and saxophones in mind. I came to learn that a lot of things in life could be separated into “clarinet” groups and “saxophone” groups. Some things come naturally to me and at first seem like the perfect fit. Math was like that. For a long, long time it was really, really easy. Only once I got to college did it get hard. Other things start off really hard and get progressively more comfortable as I go along. And that's writing for me—difficult from the start, so I knew that I must really love it if I was willing to deal with all that difficulty right away. But regardless of whether something is a “clarinet” or a “saxophone,” if it's worth doing, at some point it will be challenging.

I think relationships are like that too. Sometimes we meet people and immediately hit it off and feel that click. Everything is rosy and the other person can do no wrong. The rose-colored glasses can sometimes stay on for a really long time. But eventually, they're going to come off. Something the other person does is going to rub us wrong. Something they say won't ring so well in our ears. And suddenly the relationship isn't so easy.

Other times we meet people we have no spark with. We have nothing in common, and their personalities are grating, and given a choice between talking with them and eating dinner with a hyena, we'd pick the hyena. But sometimes, whether through circumstance or simply being in proximity day after day, we come to find a lot of good in these people. We find that we love them in spite of all those things that originally annoyed us... and maybe we even start to love the very things that used to drive us crazy.

I guess all this is on my mind because right now I've got a lot of “clarinet” people and a lot of “saxophone” people in my life. So maybe this post is for them.

To all the “clarinets”: Some of us still have on the rosy glasses, and that's cool—let's enjoy that for a while. It's fun.

But some of us are starting to take the glasses off. And that's a little scary. I don't know if you'll like what you see in me when they come off. Maybe you'll notice one of my many bad habits and start to flinch every time it happens. Or maybe something you originally liked about me will start to get on your nerves. Maybe I'll start to feel that way about you too. But listen, if you're still willing to be friends with me, then I'm not letting go of you.

And to all the “saxophones”: I already like you more than you probably think I do. Because I know that even if nothing about us seems to work right now, the future has a lot of potential. Maybe one day we'll click. Maybe not. Either way, keep being you. In some way or another, you're awesome, even if I can't see it right now.