Experiment BL626

"Protip: Check blurbs from your "friends" before forwarding to your publisher." - Scott Westerfeld

No kidding. LOL.

Christina Makes the Bookish Rounds is a feature that will let you know about recent MG/YA/NA book related news. I'll post about articles from the publishing industry, cover reveals, discussions from fellow bloggers, the latest tv/movie news, and giveaways that you're hosting. If you would like to follow along with cover reveals during the week, see my Pinterest.

Click here for the book news.

Christopher Hitchens

A thought-provoking article by YA author Zoë Marriott.

I came across this article in the beginning of the year. Read it. Agree with it. A bit guilty of it. Now every time I read a book, before I stamp the main character a Mary Sue, I ask myself: if the main character was a dude, would I still stamp him a Gary Stu?

Now, it's near the end of the year, and I believe I have improved. I have identified more Gary Stu's than Mary Sue's. Overcorrection? Maybe. But I am prepared to justify why, and my reviews are better (and longer) for it.

Hey, gang!

For anyone who would like to help, GRNW and the YA LGBT Books GoodReads group are partnering together on a Young Adult LGBT Book Drive for the Seattle nonprofit LGBT youth organization Lambert House.

Lambert House is a wonderful nonprofit organization that provides a safe, welcoming place for queer youth 22 and under, and hosts lots of fun activities, support groups, and meetings as well as programs to help develop leadership, social, and life skills.

Their library really needs YA LGBT books, and we thought it would fun to help out.

If you want to learn more about the drive, we have an info page here: http://gayromancenorthwest.wordpress.com/donate-a-book/

If you'd like to buy a book off our YA LGBT book gift registry on Amazon, our registry is here: http://www.amazon.com/registry/baby/1JVPZ9901JBAA

Any books bought off the gift registry are sent to us, and we'll deliver it to Lambert House after the drive ends on December 15.

(Amazon only has gift registries for babies and weddings. So, we're having a baby book drive. ^_^)

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has helped out so far. (Already 7 books off the gift registry have been bought! Thank you!)

:D

I have to share this review with all of you.  It addresses the Goodreads censorship policy, and is written by a teenager named Nour Sharif living in the middle east.

Here is just a quote I took from it. (Or you can Read her full review)

"Let me tell you something maybe a lot of you people are not aware of. We, people who live in the Middle East, look up towards the west, where presumably, everyone is free to say and do whatever they want, bounded by no tradition or religious law whatsoever. But when this kind of law is forced upon everyone from the west itself, we lose hope. We lose hope that anything will be good again. And well for someone (me), who has suffered a lot because of that (Facebook only made my freedom of speech more restricted), I found a haven for myself in Goodreads, where apparently no one gives a fuck whether you insult or disagree with them because well, they don’t care. And because they are mature enough to ignore any insults under the pretext that it is “your opinion”.

Read her full review

If it's not legible for you, click here to view the full size image.

Source: @berfrois on twitter

Heaven save us all. XD

Christina Makes the Bookish Rounds is a feature that will let you know about recent YA book-related news. I'll post about articles I've read from the publishing industry, cover reveals, discussions from fellow bloggers, the latest tv/movie news, and giveaways that you're hosting. Read the latest post.