The morning paper is bulky with slippery ads. Toys and myriad electric shavers shriek for attention from blaring commercials and a horrifyingly fat man dragged by animatronic reindeer hangs from the neighbor’s bewildering rooftop Disney nativity (Frosty? Mickey? Baby, Shepherds, & Santa?). The season of EidChriskwanzukkah is upon us.
I am ignoring it all in favor of the continued balmy autumn days, and really could have taken another few days down in Monterey. But, alas, the rain was coming, and aside from that, I had to get back to my reading, my novel, and my blog… but hope you all had a lovely grateful weekend.
I suppose everyone has heard by now that there is going to be a Buffy graphic novel series. Okay, let’s just all say it — Comic Book. If someone (ahem, a. fortis!) can explain to me the difference between a graphic novel and a comic book, I’d love to hear it. At any rate, untold millions are blissed out that Buffy’s back. Season 8: The Graphic Novel. Sadly, no word yet of a musical within a comic book…
I wonder if this Buffy thing is part of the push to get girls involved in reading graphic novels. DC Comics has joined with Alloy Entertainment (eek, remember them from the Kaavya Viswanathan episode?) to come up with something just for girls called Minx Books. *Exciting Genre Crossover Alert!* Minx’s first graphic novel is called The P.L.A.I.N. Janes, and is written by Cecil Castellucci… and illustrated by Jim Rugg, who has his own comic creds firmly intact. This will be released in May of next year. Exciting, as it is said that this is DC’s biggest push in the last 30 years! Though this is all very cool, Minx is still a ways behind my girl Pancha who has been doing the girl+graphics thing since I met her in grad school in 2002. At any rate, happy graphic novels to all the girls — anything that encourages readers and artists is great.
Via Jen Robinson’s Book Page, a very interesting piece on Linda Sue Park’s time on the National Book Award committee. And yes, they read Every Single Book that is nominated for the award. So I shall no longer look around, bug-eyed, over the mere eighty I am called to read for the Cybils… Speaking of which, we were Review of the Day on the Cybils board on Friday. Yay! I think it’s a neat idea to showcase all of the reading and critiquing and blogging that’s gone on from all of us. This is a huge team effort, and it’s going to be fun to see it all pulled together… Meanwhile, over at Chasing Ray, we discuss adults reviewing YA books — are adult 
readers/reviewers really too old to think like teens and do we review books about YA sexuality fairly, given our not being the age of the author’s intended audience? I’m giving that some serious thought, especially in reference to the Cybils. Hmm.
The buzz on Cathy’s Book is pretty good, surprisingly. Despite the high degree of product placements that make it read like an ad, the plot as reviewed by The Chronicle is reportedly mostly okay. This is a book that I’ve wanted to read since I heard about it, because of the neat Web connections, etc. that were intended to deepen the mystery. It’s on my ever-lengthening to-be-read list…
Now, here’s something interesting. The Book Standard has book video awards for teen novels. Starting this week, they’ll begin the judging. It’s an interesting idea to get readers acquainted with books; I’ll be interested as the whole book video thing gets off the ground to see how successful it is for YA. (Via Bookshelves of Doom.)
Back to the books for now!
