What are some of your pet peeves in YA fiction? The kind of things that make you groan aloud? If you’re an author, which of these have you been guilty of, or used with the intention of subverting it? If you’re a reader, which one do you secretly loooove? Or do you have an example […]
Books
Yes, you deserve to be paid!
We are somehow conditioned to believe that asking for money is a sordid undertaking. As authors, illustrators and storytellers, this means that when we get invited to events as resource people—guest speaker, workshop facilitator, expert speaker, competition judge, awards juror, or simply as an entertainer—we hesitate to ask for money. Even though writing (that is, […]
Five-star YA reads of 2019
The one good thing about 2019, was that it was a fantastic reading year. This was mainly thanks to NetGalley letting me read pre-publication proofs in exchange for reviews. Of course, there were good and bad books—including that eminently forgettable whodunit in which the only gay character was also the deranged killer—and also very unremarkable […]
Review: Jinxed by Amy McCulloch
A round of applause to Amy McCulloch for a book (the first of a series) about girls in engineering. That and the the world-building were the two things that got me hooked on Jinxed, even though it ended in a cliffhanger, which I hate. The story is set in a time about 50 years from […]
The annual update, version 43
Another trip around the sun and I live to tell the tale. A bit late with this update, mainly because there’s been a lot going on—such as, the #BDB campaign for which I’ve been doing much of the web admin work; a new YA book I started on; another regular assignment to fit into my […]
Older and wiser…again
It’s stock-taking-of-the-year time and the only thing I can think of is, 2017 was the year I discovered Berena! Well, in the larger scheme of things, the year that just went by was a horrible one. Right-wing bigots continued to be in power, the digital enslavement of Indian citizens went on, the economy remained effed, […]
Hit for a Six: The middle-of-the-book test
(Criminally late update? Let’s brush that under the carpet, shall we?) Back in 2010, the Guardian suggested the page-99 test to find out if you want to read a book. In short, you read page 99 of the book in question to decide if it’s worth your time. Since my new book, Hit for a […]
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Discovering Frances Hardinge
Most of my August was spent in the brilliant mind of the British children’s and YA author, Frances Hardinge. I’ve been ploughing through her books and marvelling at the sheer brilliance of her imagination. I believe, like the protagonist of the latest book of hers I read, A Face Like Glass, Hardinge too is a […]
Career of Evil — finish or abandon?
Should you review a book you’re not sure you’ll finish? Don’t know the answer to that one, so I just won’t call this a review. To be fair, I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to read Robert Galbraith’s Career of Evil so I can’t exactly moan about feeling let down. It sort dropped into […]
New book alert: A Helping Hand
Back in 2015, I was asked by Vidya Mani if I’d like to do a book on the theme of fitting in for the StoryWeaver open-source repository of stories. She was commissioning a set of books on the broad subject of emotional intelligence. Of course, the answer was yes. The result was A Helping Hand, […]